From Forbes:
The Director of the BOP, Michael Carvajal, has been silent since the pandemic began, preferring to issue written directives to address contagion within prison facilities. Social and legal visitations are suspended through the middle of April and that will likely be extended for weeks or even months. Supplier and contractor visits are limited to essential business and deliveries to the facilities. Most recently, Carvajal instituted a 14 day lockdown in all federal prisons to achieve some sort of isolation to prevent disease contagion. It has not worked.
On March 26, Attorney General Barr directed Carvajal to “prioritize the use of your various statutory authorities to grant home confinement for inmates seeking transfer in connection with the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic.” House Judiciary Chairman Jerrold Nadler followed up with a letter to AG Barr telling him that even more needed to be done to prevent a humanitarian disaster in US prisons. However, since then, more inmates have been infected, deaths are on the rise and no large action has been taken to release low-risk (minimum chance of violence, recidivism and risk to society) inmates who have health risk profiles (over 60 or who have underlying health conditions).
President Donald Trump signed the CARES Act into law on March 27. In addition to providing trillions in stimulus payments, it also had provisions in it to waive the limit on home confinement to the last ten-percent of a person’s prison term (up to 6 months). So now, there is no limit and Barr wants that waiver used to move large numbers of eligible inmates quickly. Continue reading >>>
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