Cite as: 531 U. S. 230 (2001)
Stevens, J., dissenting
evaluate every prisoner seeking the sentence reduction on an individual basis to determine whether that prisoner "successfully completed" his or her drug treatment program. Individualized consideration of the second salient question involves consideration of many of the same personalized factors that go into determining whether a prisoner's course of drug treatment has been "successful." To the extent that answering the second question requires consideration of additional factors with a concomitant administrative burden, the costs of such a scheme are, in Congress' judgment, outweighed by the benefits of encouraging drug treatment and of carefully distinguishing between those prisoners who have earned an early return to their communities and those who require further incarceration.
The majority's worry that individualized decisionmaking might lead to "favoritism, disunity, and inconsistency" is similarly misplaced. Ante, at 244. To suggest that decisionmaking must be individualized is not to imply that it must also be standardless. If the Court today invalidated the regulation in question, its decision would not preclude the BOP from adopting a uniform set of criteria for consideration in evaluating applications for sentence reductions. Nor would it necessarily preclude the Bureau from giving dispositive weight to certain postconviction criteria or near-dispositive weight to preconviction criteria. Cf. Heckler v. Campbell, 461 U. S. 458, 467 (1983). The Bureau would remain free to structure its decisionmaking in any way it saw fit as long as in so doing it did not contravene policy decisions explicitly made by the statute's drafters. As Congress has already addressed preincarceration conduct in § 3621(e)(2)(B), the Bureau may not categorically exclude a prisoner not convicted of a violent offense from consideration for early release on the basis of such conduct without exceeding the limits of its discretion.
Accordingly, I respectfully dissent.
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