DOJ says federal inmates on home confinement can stay out of prison – By The Associated Press (Federal Times) / December 21, 2021
The Justice Department on Tuesday reversed its own legal opinion and said it would allow federal inmates released on home confinement because of the coronavirus pandemic to stay out of prison.
The decision announced by Attorney General Merrick Garland came after months of pressure on President Joe Biden from criminal justice groups, lawmakers and other advocates. In the final days of the Trump administration, DOJ said released inmates would have to return to prison at the end of the emergency period declared during the pandemic. Nearly 3,000 former inmates would have potentially been taken back to prison.
DOJ’s Office of Legal Counsel said Tuesday that it did not “lightly depart from our precedents, and we have given the views expressed in our prior opinion careful and respectful consideration.”
The office concluded that the Federal Bureau of Prisons’ “preexisting authorities does not require that prisoners in extended home confinement be returned en masse to correctional facilities when the emergency period ends.”
