codified at 1. More information and documentation can be found in our documents in the last year, 1476 BOP, This view is reinforced by the structure of the CARES Act, and particularly by a comparison of section 12003(b)(2) with the section of the CARES Act that immediately follows it. Section 12003(b)(2) ends with the phrase as the Director determines appropriate, which explicitly delegates authority to the Director to determine the appropriate amount to lengthen a period of home confinement. And third, it reasoned that the authority to place a prisoner in home confinement required the exercise of ongoing legal authority due to the Bureau's frequent interactions with inmates in home confinement, and that authority would not exist after the expiration of the covered emergency period. __, at *11-12. ). state, and national levels in all our countries to support gender affirming care. to rebuild ties between offenders and their families, while the offenders are incarcerated and after reentry into the community, to promote stable families and communities; . See 45 Op. Because the affected inmates are currently serving their sentences in home confinement, there will be no new costs associated with this proposed rulemaking. [37] Counts are subject to sampling, reprocessing and revision (up or down) throughout the day. (last visited Apr. Home-Confinement Placements [38] The Act's name is the Coronavirus Aid, Relief, and Economic Security Act. As explained below, in the Bureau's expert assessment, whether an inmate should remain in home confinement is a decision best made upon careful consideration of the appropriate management of Bureau institutions, penological, rehabilitative, public health, and public safety goals, and the totality of the circumstances of individual offenders. 7. An inmate's failure to comply with the conditions of home confinement results in disciplinary action, which may include a return to secure custody or prosecution for escape. 3624(c)(2), during and for 30 days after the termination of the national emergency declaration concerning COVID-19, provided that the Attorney General has made a finding that emergency conditions are materially affecting BOP's functioning. 110-140, at 1-5 (2007) (The Second Chance Act will strengthen overall efforts to reduce recidivism, increase public safety, and help States and communities to better address the growing population of ex-offenders returning to their communities. DOJ, Home Confinement Under the Coronavirus Aid, Relief, and Economic Security (CARES) Act, 87 FR 36787 (June 21, 2022) Forbes, Department of Justice Proposes Final Rule to End CARES Act for Home Confinement for Federal Prisoners (June 25, 2022) Order (ECF 27), Tompkins v. Pullen, Case No 3:22cv339 (D.Conn) [14] [47] The House of Representatives passed the Second Chance Act by a vote of 347 to 62, and the Senate passed the Act without amendment by unanimous consent. Document Drafting Handbook 21. L. 115-391, sec. The OFR/GPO partnership is committed to presenting accurate and reliable as part of your comment, but do not want it to be posted online, you must include the phrase PERSONAL IDENTIFYING INFORMATION in the first paragraph of your comment. On any given day, there are anywhere from 500,000 to 550,000 people the nation's jail systemsroughly half of whom would qualify for a Cares Act type home confinement. 3501-3521. FSA sec. 3621(a) (A person who has been sentenced to a term of imprisonment . en masse 43. The BOP proceeded to create stringent criteria to determine who would be released from prison and placed under home confinement during the national emergency order. electronic version on GPOs govinfo.gov. v. These data suggest that inmates placed on longer-term home confinement under the CARES Act can be and have been successfully managed, with only a limited number requiring return to secure custody for disciplinary reasons. The January 2021 OLC opinion based its conclusion on three principal determinations. 18 U.S.C. available at https://www.bop.gov/coronavirus/docs/bop_memo_home_confinement.pdf. (last visited Apr. CARES Act. See id. 503 U.S. 329, 335 (1992); 3. any impact on victims or witnesses, possible deterrence effects in the community, or other aspects of the agency's mission. 44. The . 509, 510, part 0 of title 28 of the Code of Federal Regulations is proposed to be amended as follows: 1. See 38. Where a United States Attorney's Office does not prosecute, BOP imposes administrative sanctions. Accordingly, by virtue of the authority vested in me as Attorney General, including 5 U.S.C. [3] Once the Bureau has appropriately lengthened an inmate's maximum period of home confinement under the CARES Act, sections 3624(c)(2), 3621(a), and 3621(b) provide the Bureau with ongoing authority to manage that placement. The age and vulnerability of the inmate to COVID-19; The security level of the facility housing the inmate, with priority given to inmates residing in low and minimum security facilities; Whether the inmate had a reentry plan that would prevent recidivism and maximize public safety; and, Authority delegations (Government agencies), Organization and functions (Government agencies). 509, 510, 515-519. 3624(c)(2) as the Director deems appropriate. (last visited Apr. CDC, The Possibility of COVID-19 after Vaccination: Breakthrough Infections (updated Dec. 17, 2021), 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. New law seeks to create path around state's constitutional health care provision adopted in 2012. .). The Department's interpretation of the statute is also consistent with Congressional support for increasing the use of home confinement as part of reentry programming, as the Second Chance Act of 2007 and the First Step Act of 2018 demonstrate. 3624(g). Even if section 12003(b)(2) of the CARES Act were found to be ambiguous, the Department believes its view would be entitled to deference as a reasonable reading of a statute it administers. Start Printed Page 36789 Federal Bureau of Prisons Program Statement 7320.01, CN-2, Home Confinement (updated Dec. 15, 2017), Rep. No. Violations of the conditions of home confinement requiring return have been rare during the pandemic emergency, however, and very few inmates placed in home confinement under the CARES Act have committed new crimes. 3624(c)(2). This information is not part of the official Federal Register document. sec. [FR Doc. id. 301. The updated memo is here, and also included below in additional resources. CARES Act inmates who remain in home confinement after the covered emergency period would continue to be subject to these requirements until the end of their sentences, and possibly into a term of supervised release. Crista Colvin, Office of General Counsel, Bureau of Prisons, phone (202) 353-4885. Inmates who violate these conditions may be disciplined and returned to secure custody. Start Printed Page 36793 Older adults and individuals with underlying medical conditions are at increased risk of severe illness or death. Supervision of inmates in home confinement is also significantly less costly for the Bureau than housing inmates in secure custody. Wendy Hechtman tells her story below. 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. 41. Although the Bureau has not yet published the average cost of incarceration fees (COIF) for Fiscal Year (FY) 2021, in FY 2020 the average COIF for a Federal inmate in a Federal facility was $120.59 per day. First, 18 U.S.C. For all the reasons set forth above, the Department proposes to promulgate this rulemaking under the Attorney General's authority, on The economic impact of this proposed rule is limited to a specific subset of inmates who were placed in home confinement pursuant to the CARES Act and are not otherwise eligible for home confinement at the end of the covered emergency period. 603(a), 132 Stat. Finally, this interpretation permits the Bureau to take into account whether returning CARES Act inmates to secure custody, thereby increasing populations in BOP facilities, risks new, potentially serious COVID-19 outbreaks in prisons even after the broader national emergency has passed. (Mar. for conditions such as hypertension, diabetes) in their original dispensed packaging with instruction labels. Based on BOP's success and emerging evidence about the public safety benefits of electronic monitoring, lawmakers should begin expanding, testing, and evaluating home confinement as a way to help end mass incarceration in the U.S. To help limit the spread of COVID-19, the CARES Act authorized BOP to allow some prisoners to serve their . (last visited Jan. 11, 2022). regulatory information on FederalRegister.gov with the objective of Personal identifying information identified and located as set forth above will be placed in the agency's public docket file, but not posted online. In response . It uses the term covered emergency period twice, at the beginning and the end of the section. . The CARES Act provides that if the Attorney General finds that emergency conditions will . Finally, the Bureau needs flexibility to consider whether continued home confinement for CARES Act inmates is in the interest of the public health, and whether reintroduction of CARES Act inmates into secure facilities would create the risk of new outbreaks of COVID-19 among the prison populationeven after the conclusion of the broader pandemic emergency. 36. 281, 516 (2020) (CARES Act). The . 18 U.S.C. 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. on First, it found that because Congress passed the CARES Act to provide various forms of temporary relief, the Act was best read to limit its effects to the covered emergency period. SCA, Public Law 110-199, sec. This document has been published in the Federal Register. 12003(b)(2), 134 Stat. codified at Copenhaver, Data show that these procedures have been working to preserve public safety where inmates were placed on extended home confinement under the CARES Act, and the Department expects that such measures will continue to be effective after the end of the covered emergency period. See id. The Public Inspection page 55. The massive CARES ACT granted then-Attorney General Bill Barr the option to broaden the use of the home confinement program, which had previously only been allowed to be used at the very end of a . 18 U.S.C. .). documents in the last year, by the Nuclear Regulatory Commission See Discretion to Continue the Home-Confinement Placements of Federal Prisoners After the COVID-19 Emergency, available at https://doi.org/10.17226/25945 It was previously unclear whether inmates would have to return to prison when the pandemic ends. . Third, the FSA created an incentive for eligible inmates to participate in programs shown to reduce their risk of recidivism by allowing individuals to earn time credits, which may be used for earlier transfer to prerelease custody, including home confinement, notwithstanding the time limits included in 18 U.S.C. It is further supported by evidence demonstrating that the Bureau can appropriately manage public safety concerns related to inmates in home confinement, and by the penological, rehabilitative, public health, public safety, and societal benefits of allowing inmates to effectively prepare for successful reentry after the conclusion of their criminal sentences.