64
Opinion of the Court
It may seem unwise policy to treat defendants differently for purposes of sentence credit under § 3585(b) when they are similarly situated in fact—the one is confined to a community treatment center after having been "detained" and committed to the Bureau's custody, while the other is "released" to such a center on bail. But the alternative construction adopted by the Court of Appeals in this case has its own grave difficulties. To determine in each case whether a defendant "released" on bail was subjected to "jail-type confinement" would require a fact-intensive inquiry into the circumstances of confinement, an inquiry based on information in the hands of private entities not available to the Bureau as a matter of right. Even were such information more readily available, it seems certain that the phrase "jail-type confinement" would remain sufficiently vague and amorphous so that much the same kind of disparity in treatment for similarly situated defendants would arise. The Government's construction of § 3585(b), on the other hand, provides both it and the defendant with clear notice of the consequences of a § 3142 "release" or "detention" order.
Respondent finally suggests that the rule of lenity requires adoption of the "jail-type confinement" test for purposes of calculating credit under § 3585(b) because "there is a split of authority in the Circuits concerning the reach of 'official detention,' " Brief for Respondent 34, n. 13, and because there is ambiguity as to which forms of custody fall within the meaning of " 'official detention.' " See id., at 34. Respondent misconstrues the doctrine. A statute is not " 'am-ant to the Bail Reform Act of 1984, we need not and do not rule here on the propriety of BOP's decision to grant credit under § 3585(b) to a defendant who is denied bail pursuant to state law and held in the custody of state authorities. Thus, the dissent is simply wrong when it states that we have "adopt[ed] an interpretation that the Bureau of Prisons itself has rejected" by not allowing any " 'credit for time spent in state custody.' " Post, at 67, 68.
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