Imagine living in home confinement after being moved out of a prison cell due to the pandemic. For more than a year, you have followed the rules. You’ve proven you’re not a threat to your neighbors or community. You have mended relationships, created new ones, and found work and a place to live. Yet in the end, the rug is torn out from under you, demonstrating that rehabilitation is irrelevant because you’re going back to prison. More than 7,400 Americans are facing exactly this because of the White House’s lack of leadership.
In 2020, as the COVID-19 pandemic raged across the country, Congress enacted the Coronavirus Aid, Relief, and Economic Security Act. A provision of the CARES Act authorized moving federal prisoners who were at particular risk of COVID-19 from Federal Bureau of Prisons facilities to home confinement. The goal was to reduce the risk of contagion to other inmates, BOP employees and contractors, and communities adjacent to federal prisons. According to the Justice Department, 28,881 people qualified for home confinement under criteria set forth by then-Attorney General William Barr in a March 26, 2020, memo. Many of those have completed their sentences. As of today, approximately 7,400 remain at home under federal supervision.
