The Department of Justice headquarters in Washington. (J. David Ake/Associated Press)

Like many things in and out of government, there often is a difference between policy and practice.

In the case of the Bureau of Prisons (BOP), that can have serious consequences. It means that some high-risk offenders, who most need the transitional services from prison to community that halfway houses provide, don’t get them, while some low-risk inmates, who could be fully released, are exposed to tougher convicts.

Those are among the concerning take-aways from a report released this week by the Justice Department’s Office of Inspector General (IG).

Inspector General Michael E. Horowitz said BOP’s policy of assigning inmates to halfway houses is “based on individual inmate risks and needs, the safety of the community, and available resources. Those policies appeared reasonable to us.”

Unfortunately, the BOP’s practice does not always follow policy.

Because the department’s prison agency sometimes veers from policy, “low-risk, low-need inmates are far more likely to be placed in halfway houses than high-risk, high-need inmates,” Horowitz said. Yet, the low-risk inmates might not benefit from the halfway houses to the same extent as “higher-risk inmates who have a strong need for transitional services.”

At the same time, the spaces taken by the lower-risk people “increases the likelihood that these high-risk inmates will be released directly into the community when their sentence is completed, without first receiving the benefits of a halfway house.”

The IG audit identified other problems, including halfway houses at or above capacity, a lack of proper measures to evaluate halfway houses and inadequate procedures to monitor services provided by halfway house contractors.

Horowitz’s report also looked at BOP’s home confinement program, where some of the same or similar problems apply.