(San Francisco, CA, February 18, 2015)–The Law Offices of Alan Ellis is pleased to announce that Jeff Carson has affiliated with the firm as a federal prison consultant after retiring from a 27-year career with the Federal Bureau of Prisons (BOP) in January 2015.
“We are excited about the contributions that a professional with Jeff’s background and experience will bring to the team,” said firm owner Alan Ellis. “Our practice is focused on federal sentencing, prison and post-conviction representation of federal criminal defendants and inmates. Jeff is an experienced and hands-on authority in these areas, and his up-to-date knowledge and experience will be valuable to our clients.”
While employed by the BOP, Carson had wide-ranging responsibility for case management, sentence computations, inmate classifications, and, most recently, inmate placement and designations. Carson was part of the BOP team that implemented and managed the operations of the Designation Security Classification and Computation Center (DSCC)—the sole entity responsible for the computation of sentences, classification and designation of all inmates in the BOP’s 118 institutions.
“I am very pleased to be working with Alan and his topnotch team,” said Carson. “Alan is widely regarded as the go-to lawyer in the complicated area of federal sentencing, and the other consultants who work with him are at the top of the field. I look forward to being able to assist the team as the firm works to try to obtain for its clients the best possible prison placement with release at the earliest time.”
Carson joins J. Michael Henderson and Phillip S. Wise as consultants to the firm. Henderson and Wise also spent more than two decades each with the BOP.
Henderson brings expertise to bear in security classification oversight and prison designations and transfers, as well as the inmate areas of discipline, inmate programs, regional legal appeals, compassionate release applications, and special placement and movement. During his career, he worked at several prisons, including ones in high, medium, minimum and administrative security, and received numerous awards and recognition for his work. He is the co-author with Ellis of the Federal Prison Guidebook, the 2015–17 edition of which will be released by James Publishing in early March.
Over his 25-year career with BOP, Wise, former deputy director of Health Services, directed or participated in the development of national policies related to corrections, correctional health care, public health issues and post-release services. With the director of the BOP and the other members of the executive staff, he was responsible for the overall administration of the federal prison system. He has provided testimony and briefings to members of Congress and senior government officials. Before becoming deputy director for Health Services, Wise was the warden at the Federal Medical Center in Rochester, Minnesota, and the warden at the female Federal Prison Camp in Alderson, West Virginia. His primary areas of focus as a consultant are health care, mental health care, case management and female inmate issues. Wise often testifies at sentencings on how a defendant with medical problems is likely to fare in prison.
About the Law Offices of Alan Ellis The Law Offices of Alan Ellis is a federal sentencing, prison and post-conviction, appeal and 2255 motion law firm representing federal criminal defendants and inmates throughout the United States. For the past 40 years, Alan Ellis has successfully represented federal criminal defendants and prisoners throughout the United States and Americans arrested abroad charged with foreign crimes. Ellis, a past president of the National Association of Criminal Defense Lawyers and a Fulbright Award recipient, has been described by Federal Lawyer Magazine as “one of this country’s pre-eminent criminal defense lawyers.” The San Francisco affiliate of ABC-TV has said that he is “the best in the business.” The United States Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit, in a published decision, described him as a “nationally recognized expert in federal criminal sentencing.” Verdict magazine quotes other legal commentators as saying that he is “the go-to guy in America if you’re in deep trouble with the feds.”
By Alan Ellis
By Melanie Trudeau