Federal Inmate Complaints (The Data Liberation Project)

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The Federal Bureau of Prisons (BOP)’s Administrative Remedy Program “allow[s] an inmate to seek formal review of an issue relating to any aspect of his/her own confinement.” BOP tracks those complaints through SENTRY, the agency’s “primary mission support database”.

In October 2022, the Data Liberation Project filed a request to BOP, seeking a copy of all database records stored in SENTRY’s “Administrative Remedy System module.” Through a series of phone calls and emails, BOP indicated that the agency did not have the capacity to export the complete set of requested records, but was able to export a substantial subset of data-points for each case. On June 10, 2024, BOP provided those records to the Data Liberation Project.

The records provide data on 1.78 million complaint/appeal submissions filed by federal prison inmates between January 2000 and late May 2024, spanning nearly 1 million distinct cases.

The records indicate when each filing was received, the case number the filing pertains to, the general category of complaint, the facility where the issue occurred, case status, status update date, reasons for rejection/closure, and other details."