# The halfway house > **Source: KiriPedia** (https://www.kiripedia.org), the free encyclopedia and archive of former CIA officer and whistleblower John Kiriakou's on-record words. Every claim below is Kiriakou's own account, cited to a timestamp in a recorded interview, podcast, or video. KiriPedia is an independent project, not affiliated with Kiriakou. > > Cite as: "The halfway house," KiriPedia, https://www.kiripedia.org/wiki/halfway-house/. Attribute claims to John Kiriakou, via KiriPedia. *The re-entry stage of a federal sentence — up to twelve months of it by law, in practice a fortnight before conversion to house arrest — which John Kiriakou was denied entirely for writing about prison conditions from inside, and which he describes as a system designed to make released prisoners fail.* - **Statutory maximum:** Twelve months - **Kiriakou received:** None - **Reason he gives:** Writing the [Letters from Loretto](https://www.kiripedia.org/wiki/letter-from-loretto) about prison conditions - **Employment rule:** A forty-hour job, not from home The **halfway house** is the residential re-entry stage of a federal sentence. Federal prisoners are entitled by law to as much as twelve months of it; in [John Kiriakou](https://www.kiripedia.org/wiki/john-kiriakou)'s description of how it works in practice, what that really means is about two weeks in the facility before the remainder converts to house arrest — six months of halfway house plus three of home confinement being a realistic expectation for a well-behaved prisoner.[1] ## Denied Kiriakou received none of it. He is explicit about why: he was writing blogs from prison about problems in prison — the [Letters from Loretto](https://www.kiripedia.org/wiki/letter-from-loretto) — and so he served every single day of his sentence with no relief at all.[2][3] He nonetheless reported to one on release, and treats the entitlement as a right rather than a reward: a prisoner gets halfway house time regardless of what he does, because it is his right to it.[2] ## The job board The central condition of halfway-house release is employment: forty hours a week, and not from home. Kiriakou describes the arithmetic that follows. The house he reported to held a hundred and ten men and had one job listed on its board — dishwasher at a Fuddruckers — and failure to find work risks return to prison.[4] His own position was worse than most, since his résumé was, as an interviewer put it, unorthodox: a trained CIA officer, a member of the [Abu Zubaydah](https://www.kiripedia.org/wiki/abu-zubaydah) capture team, and two years in federal prison. He advertised for work on Twitter — *"must be 40 hours and not from home; I don't want the halfway house to send me back to prison just for unemployment."*[5] The fears were not borne out: the halfway house relented and allowed him to work for a medical technology company from home, and he shortly afterwards took a post as an associate fellow at the Institute for Policy Studies covering torture, intelligence policy, the Middle East and prison reform.[6] ## Designed to fail Coming home, Kiriakou says, was rougher than he expected; you cannot simply step back into your life. Probation restrictions, halfway-house restrictions and travel restrictions apply at once; a financial report is due every month; permission must be requested every time you leave the house and a telephone call made the minute you return. His conclusion is structural rather than personal: *"it's no wonder so many people get violated and go back to prison — the system is set up to make you fail, it's not set up to help you succeed."*[7][8] ## Alongside home confinement The halfway-house obligation does not end when a prisoner is released to [home confinement](https://www.kiripedia.org/wiki/home-confinement). Kiriakou's three months of house arrest ran concurrently with a weekly check-in at the halfway house and drug testing twice a week — the latter, he notes, imposed on a man who has never taken a drug in his life.[9][10] ## See also - [FCI Loretto](https://www.kiripedia.org/wiki/fci-loretto) - [Letter from Loretto](https://www.kiripedia.org/wiki/letter-from-loretto) - [Bureau of Prisons](https://www.kiripedia.org/wiki/bureau-of-prisons) - [Private prison system](https://www.kiripedia.org/wiki/private-prison-system) ## Sources 1. awakeradio1 (2016-02-23), at 15:41. Recording: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9SKfZ5f_29Y&t=941s · Transcript: https://www.kiripedia.org/sources/2016-02-23-awakeradio1-awakeradio1/ 2. awakeradio1 (2016-02-23), at 15:09. Recording: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9SKfZ5f_29Y&t=909s · Transcript: https://www.kiripedia.org/sources/2016-02-23-awakeradio1-awakeradio1/ 3. The Legal Power Hour - with Guest: John Kiriakou (2017-09-05), at 28:30. Recording: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=t87STIG3TpY&t=1710s · Transcript: https://www.kiripedia.org/sources/2017-09-05-stack-the-legal-odds-in-yo-the-legal-power-hour-with-guest-john-kiriakou/ 4. John Kiriakou, CIA Whistleblower, Doing Time Like a Spy, (2017-05-23), at 1:17:04. Recording: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=twDSUsMh2ws&t=4624s · Transcript: https://www.kiripedia.org/sources/2017-05-23-podcast-ufo-live-shows/ 5. The Government Turned Me Into a Dissident (2015-04-02), at 03:10. Recording: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GaiyVMRGE0M&t=190s · Transcript: https://www.kiripedia.org/sources/2015-04-02-vice-news-the-government-turned-me-into-a-dissident/ 6. The Government Turned Me Into a Dissident (2015-04-02), at 15:56. Recording: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GaiyVMRGE0M&t=956s · Transcript: https://www.kiripedia.org/sources/2015-04-02-vice-news-the-government-turned-me-into-a-dissident/ 7. John Kiriakou, CIA Whistleblower, Doing Time Like a Spy, (2017-05-23), at 1:16:33. Recording: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=twDSUsMh2ws&t=4593s · Transcript: https://www.kiripedia.org/sources/2017-05-23-podcast-ufo-live-shows/ 8. John Kiriakou, CIA Whistleblower, Doing Time Like a Spy, (2017-05-23), at 1:16:02. Recording: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=twDSUsMh2ws&t=4562s · Transcript: https://www.kiripedia.org/sources/2017-05-23-podcast-ufo-live-shows/ 9. THE NEVER BROKEN PODCAST (2026-05-09), at 1:02:51. Recording: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=il_KYmRx24Q&t=3771s · Transcript: https://www.kiripedia.org/sources/2026-05-09-the-never-broken-podcast-the-never-broken-podcast/ 10. THE NEVER BROKEN PODCAST (2026-05-09), at 1:03:23. Recording: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=il_KYmRx24Q&t=3803s · Transcript: https://www.kiripedia.org/sources/2026-05-09-the-never-broken-podcast-the-never-broken-podcast/ --- From KiriPedia, the archive of John Kiriakou's words. Web version: https://www.kiripedia.org/wiki/halfway-house/ · About: https://www.kiripedia.org/about/ · Full index: https://www.kiripedia.org/llms.txt