For a federal defendant who has been living in the community while awaiting sentencing, the final moments of a sentencing hearing can lead down two very different paths.

A judge can permit the defendant to remain on release for a period and voluntarily surrender to the federal prison designated by the Bureau of Prisons (BOP). The court can set a surrender date, giving the BOP time to designate an institution and allowing the defendant to report directly there.

Or the judge can order the defendant remanded immediately.

For defendants who pose a danger to the community or a serious risk of flight, detention can be entirely appropriate. In fact, a number of those heading into a sentencing hearing are coming from surrounding county jails that have been holding them for many months. But there is another population worth examining: defendants who have complied with pretrial supervision, appeared for every court proceeding and are expected to serve their sentences at minimum- or low-security federal institutions.

For these defendants, immediate remand should make us examine what exactly are we accomplishing.

Voluntary surrender is not merely a courtesy to a defendant. In fact, furlough transfers where minimum security inmates transfer from prison to prison are routine, allowing inmates the opportunity to catch their own ride to their next destination. The BOP has expanded use for these furlough transfers as a cost saving method.

Voluntary surrender can eliminate an expensive, cumbersome and sometimes punishing process involving the U.S. Marshals Service, local jails and the BOP. The arguments for allowing appropriate defendants to surrender voluntarily extend to defendants, their families and the federal agencies responsible for moving them into custody.

What Happens After The Judge Says “Remanded”

To someone sitting in the courtroom gallery, remand can sound straightforward. The defendant is sentenced, taken into custody and somehow makes their way to federal prison.

A defendant remanded at sentencing will typically first be held in a facility under contract with the U.S. Marshals Service, often a county or local jail (sometimes they are near facilities that have a Federal Detention Center or Metropolitan Detention Center. Meanwhile, the BOP’s Designation and Sentence Computation Center determines where the defendant will serve the sentence. The designation process itself can take weeks, with transportation to the designated institution taking even longer.

That responsibility falls into the federal prisoner transportation system involving the U.S. Marshals Service and the Justice Prisoner and Alien Transportation System (JPATS). A trip that would take a family member a few hours by car or airplane can become a complicated journey through detention centers and transfer points.

A person ultimately designated to a minimum-security federal prison camp could therefore spend weeks in county jails, detention centers and transportation status before ever reaching that camp. In the past, many inmates believed this to be a punishment known as “Diesel Therapy.”

The federal government operates JPATS with annual operating costs of roughly $70 million to $80 million. When a low-risk defendant who could have voluntarily surrendered is instead remanded at sentencing, the government assumes responsibility for housing, healthcare, guarding and transporting that person through this system until he reaches his designated BOP institution.

Additionally, federal prisoner detention overall cost the Marshals Service about $2.2 billion in 2025, with an average daily detention cost of $121 per prisoner

The Punishment Before The Prison Sentence Really Begins

A designated BOP institution is built around serving a sentence. There can be work assignments, education, vocational training, recreation, treatment and, depending upon eligibility and location, programs such as the Residential Drug Abuse Program and release preparation.

However, a detention center or county jail has a different mission. Meaningful programming can be extremely limited during the holdover period. Many important BOP programs generally become available only after a sentenced prisoner reaches the designated institution.

So the clock is running on the person's prison sentence, but the individual may have little opportunity to do anything productive with that time.

Family contact presents another problem. Relatives may not know exactly where the defendant will be held next, and visiting can be difficult or impossible during transfers. Even after arrival at the designated prison, family members normally must go through the institution's visitation approval process. In most cases, families have no idea where their loved one is until they are finally available to make a phone call.

A defendant who voluntarily surrenders can arrive at the institution where BOP staff will ultimately manage his or her healthcare. This happens across the country with very few issues. A prisoner moving through temporary detention facilities faces a more fragmented system. Prescription formularies can differ, substitute medications may be used and medical records may not move as quickly as the prisoner. The arguments against unnecessary remand specifically identify the potential for missed medication during detention and transit and a comprehensive medical evaluation may not occur until arrival at the final designated facility.

For an older defendant or someone dependent on several prescription medications, these are not trivial concerns.

Remand Also Creates Work For The Government

There is another side of this issue that receives surprisingly little attention. Every prisoner unnecessarily remanded becomes a logistics project for the federal government.

The Marshals Service assumes custody. A detention bed must be found and paid for. The prisoner must be processed. Transportation must be arranged. Staff must move and supervise that person. Eventually, the prisoner must be delivered to the BOP institution designated to receive him or her.

Contrast that with voluntary surrender where the BOP designates the institution and a date is set by the Court (or BOP) for the person to report to prison, at their own expense. The defendant buys a plane ticket or gets into a car, travels to the institution and walks through the front door.

If both produce the same result why should taxpayers routinely pay for the more complicated option when public safety does not require it? Also, why put this burden on federal agencies that are experiencing record low staffing shortages in facilities that are crumbling.

There Can Be Consequences Beyond Transportation

The arguments submitted in favor of voluntary surrender point to the BOP’s security-classification process and state that voluntary surrender can provide a three-point reduction in security scoring that is unavailable to someone remanded into custody. Those points can matter because security classification helps determine the level of institution in which a person serves a sentence. Someone who is allowed to surrender to a facility may have avoided going to a higher security prison.

There is also the human reality of transportation. Temporary federal detention facilities can house people with vastly different criminal histories and security classifications. During the transportation and holdover process, minimum-, low-, medium- and higher-security prisoners can encounter one another in ways that would not necessarily occur once they reach their designated institutions. For a first-time offender with no experience in custody, that environment can be particularly intimidating and potentially dangerous.

Again, the question is not whether prison should be unpleasant. Prison is punishment. The questions are whether unnecessary additional hardship serves a legitimate sentencing purpose and is it worth the cost.

Remand Should Have A Reason

There are defendants who should leave the courtroom in handcuffs.

Someone who represents a danger, has threatened witnesses, violated release conditions, attempted to flee or otherwise demonstrated that voluntary surrender cannot reasonably be trusted presents an entirely different situation. Courts must protect the public and preserve the integrity of the judicial process.

But that rationale becomes much harder to understand when applied to someone who has spent months, or sometimes years, on pretrial release without incident and they are remanded into custody at sentencing based on a judge’s decision even though their behavior up to that point would lead someone to believe that voluntary surrender could be successfully accomplished.

Consider the defendant who has maintained employment, complied with U.S. Probation, observed travel restrictions, appeared for every court date and demonstrated no intention of fleeing.

If that person is going to prison anyway, what is gained by remanding him at 11:00 a.m. on sentencing day? The sentence doesn't become longer. The public isn't necessarily safer.

Instead, the Marshals Service acquires another person to house and transport, a local jail acquires another federal detainee, and the BOP eventually receives a prisoner who may have spent weeks traveling through the system to reach precisely the same institution to which he could have surrendered on his own.

Meanwhile, the defendant loses access to family, encounters interruptions in medical care, receives little meaningful programming and experiences the uncertainty of not knowing when or where h/she is going next.

Give the BOP time to make its designation. Give the defendant a surrender date. Maintain supervision through U.S. Probation until that date. Then require the defendant to report directly to the designated federal institution.

If the defendant fails to appear, which is extremely rare, there are serious consequences. But when a defendant has already demonstrated months or years of compliance, courts should at least ask whether immediate custody accomplishes anything that voluntary surrender would not.

Sentencing is supposed to impose the punishment ordered by the court.

For minimum- and low-security defendants who present little risk of flight or danger, judges should think carefully before adding another punishment.