the Federal Register. See id. sec. Please note that all comments received are considered part of the public record and made available for public inspection online at U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, Basics of COVID-19 (updated Nov. 4, 2021), As has already been discussed, the Department's interpretation of the CARES Act is aligned with the relevant statutory language, structure, purpose, and history. Such individualized assessments are consistent with direction the Bureau has received from Congress in other contexts. [61] Section 3621(b) also authorizes the Bureau to direct the transfer of a prisoner at any time, subject to the same individualized assessment. Under typical circumstances, inmates who have made the transition to home confinement would not be returned to a secure facility absent a disciplinary reason, because the purpose of home confinement is to allow inmates to readjust to life in the community. 5238. available at https://www.bop.gov/foia/docs/Home%20Confinement%20memo_2021_04_13.pdf. [19] In a Memorandum for Chief Executive Officers dated April 13, 2021, BOP issued a new policy for expanding and reviewing at-risk inmates for placement on home confinement in accordance with the CARES Act and guidance from the Attorney General. v. 18 U.S.C. (GC 2022-D066) 62 For all of these reasons, and for the additional reasons the operative OLC opinion explains in more detail, the Department believes that the best reading of the CARES Act is that an inmate whose period of home confinement the Director properly lengthened during the covered emergency period may remain in home confinement, at the Director's discretion, including after the covered emergency period ends. As the extremely low percentage of inmates placed on CARES Act home confinement returned to secure custody shows, the Bureau can effectively manage public safety concerns associated with the low-risk inmates placed in home confinement under the CARES Act for longer periods of time. The Home Confinement Clearinghouse will match . According to the Bureau, as of March 4, 2022, a small percentage of inmates placed in home confinement pursuant to the CARES Act357 out of approximately 9,500 total individualshad been returned to secure custody as a result of violations of the conditions of home confinement. By implementing the CARES Act, Treasury is taking . . Proclamation 9994, Declaring a National Emergency Concerning the Novel Coronavirus Disease (COVID-19) Outbreak, 85 FR 15337 (Mar. [45] Criminal justice reform advocates have been urging Biden to use the president's clemency powers to wipe away the sentences of all those released under the CARES Act to home confinement. The authority citation for part 0 continues to read as follows: Authority: (last visited Apr. In a letter to the Attorney General and the Director dated March 23, 2020, a bipartisan group of United States Senators expressed concern about the potential for COVID-19 spread among, in particular, vulnerable Bureau staff and inmates, and called upon the Bureau to use available statutory authorities to increase its utilization of home confinement to mitigate the risk.[9]. [37] The Department has determined that there is no countervailing risk to the public safety that outweighs the benefits of this rulemaking. Id. More contagious variants of the virus that causes COVID-19 could exacerbate the spread, and it is unknown whether currently available vaccines will be effective against new variants that may arise. (last visited Apr. It further explained that inmates who engaged in violent or gang-related activity while in prison, those who incurred a violation within the past year, or those with a PATTERN score above the minimum range would not receive priority consideration under the memorandum. [47] Following guidance from the Attorney General, the Director has exercised his discretion under the CARES Act to place thousands of inmates in home confinement during the pandemic emergency. 751. available at https://www.bop.gov/coronavirus/docs/bop_memo_home_confinement.pdf CARES Act sec. at *7-9. Indeed, of the nearly 5,000 inmates placed in home confinement under the CARES Act, as of January 8, 2022, only 322 had been returned to secure custody for any reason, and only eight for committing a new crime. 5194, 5196-97 (2018). In March 2020, former President Trump signed the CARES Act into law in response to the pandemic, which, among other things, expanded the Bureau of Prison's ability to place more inmates on home . see that agencies use to create their documents. 101, 132 Stat. Additional observation and research will need to be conducted to determine if this very low level of recidivism can be maintained, or if it was affected by the unique external circumstances caused by the global pandemic. CARES Act Management: On Monday, NPR reported that only 17 of the 442 inmates returned to prison from CARES Act home confinement had committed new crimes. See Discretion to Continue the Home-Confinement Placements of Federal Prisoners After the COVID-19 Emergency, 5212, 13, 2021), Liesl M. Hagan [59] Chevron Abigail I. Leibowitz at 658 (The purposes of the Act are . The Act's name is the Coronavirus Aid, Relief, and Economic Security Act. Home confinement provides penological benefits as one of the last steps in a reentry program. See Home-Confinement, (last visited Apr. Jan. 13, 2022. See The benefits include lower rates of new offense, reduced trauma and racial inequities, and better opportunities for behavior changes. 65. 20. See (last visited Apr. Pursuant to the Act, the Federal Bureau of Prisons (BOP) was ordered to prioritize the use of home confinement as a tool for combatting the risks of COVID-19 for vulnerable inmates. [6] The bill is a product of multi-year bipartisan negotiations and enjoys support from across the political spectrum.). 69. See (GC 2022-D015) . Wyoming legislators approved two bills related to abortion this week, including a ban on . [55] As of December 2021, the BOP has transferred over 36,000 eligible inmates to home confinement following the instructions from the Attorney General on March 26, 2020, that the BOP prioritizes home confinement as an appropriate response to the Covid-19 pandemic.. 5. 3624(c)(2). 42. That provision also directs the Bureau to place prisoners with lower risk levels and lower needs on home confinement for the maximum amount of time permitted to the extent practicable. Second, Congress created a pilot program in the Second Chance Act of 2007 (SCA), which it reauthorized and modified in the First Step Act of 2018 (FSA), authorizing the Attorney General to place eligible elderly and terminally ill offenders in home confinement after they have served two-thirds of their term of imprisonment. any impact on victims or witnesses, possible deterrence effects in the community, or other aspects of the agency's mission. These costs are all mitigated, however, by retaining the Director's discretion to determine whether any inmate should be returned to secure custody based on an individualized assessment. The CARES Act does not mandate that any period of home confinement lengthened during the covered emergency period must end after the expiration of that period. As an initial matter, the extended home confinement program is time-limited: the Director's authority to place inmates on extended home confinement lapses after the expiration of the covered emergency period. It quickly became one of the worst hit federal prisons in the country with a massive COVID-19 outbreak. After July 21, 2022, the BOP and DOJ will review the comments and issue a Final Rule. In terms of law, home confinement is a standard practice in federal prisons that predates the COVID-19 pandemic. See On December 21, 2021, Attorney General Merrick Garland announced that DOJ would be rescinding the January 2021 Office of Legal Counsel memo that determined that thousands of people who are currently serving sentences on home confinement through a provision of the CARES Act would need to return to federal custody after the termination of the . As DOJ notes, the CARES Act is silent "as to whether the Director has discretion to determine whether specific individuals placed in home confinement under the CARES Act may remain there" after the COVID-19 emergency ends. These include increasing the Bureau's ability to control inmate populations in BOP facilities and in the community, allowing it to be responsive to changed circumstances; empowering the Bureau to make individualized assessments as to whether inmates placed in home confinement should remain in home confinement after the end of the covered emergency period, taking into account, for example, penological goals and the benefits associated with an inmate establishing family connections and finding employment opportunities in the community; and allowing the Bureau to weigh the ongoing risk of new COVID-19 outbreaks in BOP facilities against the benefit of returning any inmate to secure custody. 32. Re: Increasing Use of Home Confinement at Institutions Most Affected by COVID-19, However, according to the Bureau, as of January 10, 2022, there were 2,826 total inmates placed in home confinement under the CARES Act with release dates in more than 12 months. 27. See Where a United States Attorney's Office does not prosecute, BOP imposes administrative sanctions. If you want to submit confidential business information as part of your comment but do not want it to be posted online, you must include the phrase CONFIDENTIAL BUSINESS INFORMATION in the first paragraph of your comment. 4001(b)(1), to codify the Director's discretion to allow inmates placed in home confinement pursuant to the CARES Act to remain in home confinement after the covered emergency period expires. codified in relevant part at 843-620-1100. [66] and the resulting increased crowding in prison settings could lead to new COVID-19 outbreaks, including breakthrough cases in fully vaccinated inmates and infections in the most vulnerable prisoners. H.R. This repetition of headings to form internal navigation links 45 Op. This proposed rule accords with OLC's revised views and codifies the Director's authority to allow inmates placed in home confinement under the CARES Act to remain in home confinement after the end of the covered emergency period. 3621(a), (b). Federal Register issue. At the outset, the Department has authority to promulgate rules to manage the Bureau of Prisons, and to administer CARES Act section 12003(b)(2). This proposed rule is not a major rule as defined by the Congressional Review Act, 5 U.S.C. It was created pursuant to the First Step Act of 2018. Counts are subject to sampling, reprocessing and revision (up or down) throughout the day. The House of Representatives passed the First Step Act by a vote of 358 to 36, and the Senate passed the Act by a vote of 87 to 12. This PDF is According to the Bureau, as of March 4, 2022, a small . [14] BOP later clarified that inmates with low or minimum PATTERN scores qualify equally for home confinement, and that the factors assessed to ensure inmates are suitable for home confinement include verifying that an inmate's current or a prior offense was not violent, a sex offense, or terrorism-related. Accordingly, by virtue of the authority vested in me as Attorney General, including 5 U.S.C. Chevron regulatory information on FederalRegister.gov with the objective of On March 26, 2020, the Attorney General issued a memorandum instructing the Director to prioritize use of home confinement, where authorized, to protect the health and safety of inmates and Bureau staff by minimizing the risk of COVID-19 spread in Bureau facilities, while continuing to keep communities safe. continuing in the First Step Act of 2018.[46]. . 516. 12003(b)(2), 134 Stat. See Released prisoners cite family support as the most important factor in helping them stay out of prison. BOP RE: The first use establishes that the authority of the Bureau of Prisons to promulgate rules about video and telephonic visitations exists during the covered emergency period. Chevron, Chris' books include Directory of Federal Prisons (Middle Street Publishing . [64] 4. I've talked to several people about my experiences on home confinement, I . available at https://www.cdc.gov/coronavirus/2019-ncov/prevent-getting-sick/how-covid-spreads.html [10] at 516. documents in the last year, 955 . Such legislative efforts have been part of Congress's broader push to manage prison populations, facilitate inmates' successful reentry into communities, and reduce recidivism risk. step two. Although placements under the CARES Act were not made for reentry purposes, the best use of Bureau resources and the best outcome for affected offenders is to allow the agency to make individualized assessments of CARES Act placements with a focus on inmates' eventual reentry into the community. For complete information about, and access to, our official publications This interpretation is supported by the text, structure, and purpose of the CARES Act and therefore is the better reading of the statute, as more fully explained in OLC's December 21, 2021 opinion. The Final Rule becomes the law that the BOP will follow. The majority of those inmates have since completed their sentences; as of January 10, 2022, there were 7,726 inmates in home confinement. Register documents. Essentially, the CARES Act allows select eligible inmates to be placed in home confinement during the federal COVID-19 state of emergency. Start Printed Page 36794 at 304-06. The Public Inspection page may also As of January 10, 2022, 4,902 inmates had been placed in home confinement under the CARES Act; 2,826 of those inmates had release dates in more than 12 months. better and aid in comparing the online edition to the print edition. O.L.C. The President of the United States manages the operations of the Executive branch of Government through Executive orders. See The CARES Act provides that if the Attorney General finds that emergency conditions will . 67. Before the pandemic, the Bureau of Prisons had the authority to transfer inmates to home confinement for just the final six months of their sentences.
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