An investigation into the federal prison designation process for convicted inmates offered few answers as to how the Federal Bureau of Prisons (BOP) determined unjustly imprisoned January 6 defendant Stewart Parks should spend his eight-month sentence in FCI Memphis, a medium security facility with a minimum security satellite camp.
The BOP on Wednesday refused to comply with a request by Representative Andy Ogles (R-TN-05) for FCI Memphis Warden F.J. Bowers to move Parks to the minimum security camp, with BOP Legislative Affairs Chief David Mapp asserting Parks is “housed at an appropriate facility for his security, programming, and care needs” which also complies with the 2018 First Step Act.
The most recent version of the BOP’s Inmate Security Designation and Custody Classification document was released in 2019, adding First Step Act language that stipulates prisoners should be housed within 500 miles of their homes whenever possible.
A table included in the manual suggests male inmates with less than 12 points should be held in a minimum security prison, while those with between 12 and 15 points should be held in a low-security facility, and those with 16 to 23 points should be held in a medium-security prison.
Parks’ voluntary surrender to FCI Memphis should net him -3 points. The government should have been unable to assign additional points to Parks in various categories due to the fact he does not have a criminal history or history of violence, is not an addict and has a high level of education.
However, as Parks is under 35, he was likely assigned four points due to his youth.
The document also clarifies that those with sentences greater than one year must be assigned to at least a low-security prison, which suggests that Parks’ short sentence of just eight months does not preclude him from being housed in a minimum-security facility.
Parks was convicted of entering the U.S. Capitol illegally, impeding official business while in a restricted building, disorderly conduct on the Capitol Grounds, and theft of government property. The charges each net him additional points, though how many for each charge is not clearly defined and is only known to the BOP’s Designation and Sentence Computation Center (DSCC) in Texas.
The theft prosecutors claimed Parks committed involved picking up a baton from the floor of the Capitol. He placed it back on the ground before leaving the building, but was nonetheless convicted of theft by D.C. District Court Judge Amit P. Mehta in a 2023 bench trial. Mehta later refused Parks’ request to stay his sentence pending appeal.
While BOP claims on its government website that answers for “[g]eneral questions about the sentence computation process” are provided over the phone, though information about “arrests or periods of prior custody” is restricted, a call placed by The Tennessee Star to the DSCC reached an automated recording that appeared to offer advice for incarcerated individuals.
DSCC terminated the call without the agency’s automated operator offering an opportunity to speak to a DSCC or BOP spokesman.
Reached by email, a spokesman from the DSCC claimed to The Star that it “cannot speak specifically to the circumstances relating to an individuals [sic] designation to a particular institution,” and provided a similar, general explanation to offered to Ogles by Mapp in the earlier letter.
Though Mapp insisted in his letter that the staff at FCI Memphis maintains rigorous cleanliness and maintenance standards, he also acknowledged the existence of a leak in Parks’ cell. Parks first mentioned the leak in a phone call to The Star Editor-in-Chief Michael Patrick Leahy in February.
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Tom Pappert is the lead reporter for The Tennessee Star, and also reports for The Georgia Star News, The Virginia Star, and the Arizona Sun Times. Follow Tom on X/Twitter. Email tips to [email protected].
Photo “Stewart Parks” by Stewart Parks.Â
