§4047 Prison Impact Assessments

Summary

When the Executive or Judicial branch sends proposed laws that could change how many people are held in federal prisons, those proposals must include a prison impact statement. The Attorney General, working with the Sentencing Commission and the Administrative Office of the U.S. Courts, must prepare these assessments and give them to Congress on request within 21 days. Each assessment must project prison, probation, and post‑prison supervision numbers; estimate federal costs, including construction and operation for the current year and the next 5 fiscal years; note other major cost or operational effects; and say what methods and assumptions were used. By March 1 each year the Attorney General must send Congress a yearly report showing the combined effect of law changes that took effect in the prior calendar year.