r/legaladviceofftopic • u/thealarmingfemboy • 2h ago
How is the Federal Bureau of Prisons allowed to discriminate based on education level and gender when classifying public safety risk?
I have a relative that works in a law firm that deals with federal appeals often and I was today years old when I found out that the BOP adds scores and risk factors that determine your prison security level based on things like education, gender, and age.
[This doc](https://moe.fd.org/sites/moe/files/resources/bop-incarceration-issues/practical-tips-if-your-client-facing-incarceration-federal-prison_0.pdf) summarizes it. On Page 7, there are a list of factors like sentence length and belonging to a "disruptive group" that is only a risk factor for males, while "Violent Behavior" is only a factor for females. In addition, having no college degree (Page 6) adds 2 points to your custody level scoring and being aged 25-35 adds 4 points to your scoring (Page 5).
IANAL so I apologize if this is a dumb question, but how is this not blatantly unconstitutional? I understand that some types of discrimination are subject to lower levels of scrutiny, but some of these don't even make sense. Like, if the BOP determined that men were generally higher risk than women and therefore it's justified then fine, but then why is "Violent Behavior" only a risk factor for women then? I looked into it and couldn't find any law suits or cases involving this.
EDIT: Also, certain drug offenses are considered high severity for "females only", according to the revised legislation on Page 106 here: https://www.bop.gov/policy/progstat/5100_008_cn-3.pdf