Custody Classification, Work Assignments, and Transfers
Often, the best person to help answer questions and concerns about custody classification, work assignments, and transfers is a person’s case manager. People generally do not have an enforceable legal right to: any specific custody classification, any specific work assignment (or to have a work assignment at all), or be transferred to a different facility. Those are all decisions that prisons are allowed to make in their discretion, even if a sentencing judge recommended something different (like work release, or that someone be sent to a specific facility).
We can give people in prison who write to us general guidance based on what we know about how prisons handle these decisions. But prison case managers should be able to give much more detailed and specific guidance, because they know more about the procedures at each prison and they may have a role in making some decisions about custody levels and programs. If someone believes that they were hurt by a decision about one of these issues, and that decision was made because of discrimination on the basis of race, nationality, gender, sexual orientation, or disability, please see the section of this website about discrimination claims, and write to us for more information.
