DOJ: Prisoners Placed In Home Confinement During COVID-19 Emergency Won’t Have To Return To Prison
A Real-Life Get Out Of Jail Free Card
A new Department of Justice rule may allow inmates who were removed from prisons and sent to serve time under home confinement during the COVID-19 pandemic to stay out of jail — even after the White House lifts the public health emergency.
The Coronavirus Aid, Relief, and Economic Security (CARES) Act gave the Director of the Bureau of Prisons (BOP) the ability to extend the maximum amount of time prisoners could be kept in home confinement, also known as “house arrest.” Extensions were given to thousands of inmates, as the number of infections began to rise in prisons, more were sent to serve time at home.
“The Department has concluded that the most reasonable interpretation of the CARES Act permits the Bureau to continue to make individualized determinations about the conditions of confinement for inmates placed in home confinement under the CARES Act, as it does with respect to all prisoners, following the end of the covered emergency period.”
DOJ — Fox News
According to Fox News, around 52,000 prisoners were allowed to serve time at home, many of whom would have been immediately mandated to go back behind bars on May 11th, when the public health emergency was set to expire. However, the new DOJ rule punts that responsibility to the BOP Director, who has been given the “discretion to ensure that those who have made rehabilitative progress and complied with the conditions of home confinement are not unnecessarily returned to prison,” according to U.S. Attorney General Merrick Garland.
Reuters interviewed one inmate-turned-homebody, Kendrick Fulton, who said, “Words can’t really express how I feel to be home 11 years earlier. To get a job, to get a bank account. I served over 17 years already. What more do you want? I should go back for another 11 years to literally just do nothing?”
Prisoners sentenced to home confinement do have rules that need to be followed and perimeters that cannot be broken, however many are allowed to get a job, attend doctor appointments and therapy sessions, and live a relatively normal life, comparatively.
