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December 22, 2021
With new OLC memo allowing home confinement cohort to stay home, what now of Prez Biden's nascent clemency efforts?
As noted in this post yesterday, some federal prisoners released due to COVID to serve their sentences on home confinement pursuant to the CARES Act received a holiday present in the form of a new opinion from the Justice Department concluding the Bureau of Prisons has "discretion to permit prisoners in extended home confinement to remain there" even after the pandemic ends. Prior to this new opinion, there was serious concern that thousands of federal prisons might have to be sent back to prison en masse when the pandemic was declared over.
Indeed, the concerns about having to send thousands of low-risk and well-behaving folks back to federal prison was so strong that it prompted, as detailed in prior post here and here, the Biden Administration reportedly started to gear up a screened program for (mass?) clemency program focused on nonviolent drug offenders on home confinement with less than four years remaining in their sentences. And now I am wondering what will come of those (still nascent) clemency plans.
In this ACLU press release, ACLU Justice Division Director Udi Ofer explains why clemency is still a concern for the home confinement cohort:
“We also recognize that the threat of eventual return to prison is still present, so we ask President Biden to use his clemency powers to provide permanent relief to families. A future administration can still force people back to prison, and families will not have permanent closure until their cases are fully resolved. So while we celebrate today, we also commit to continuing to advocate for President Biden to use his power of clemency to commute these sentences.”
For all sorts of reasons, a commutation of sentence to time served would surely be preferred by nonviolent drug offenders on home confinement with less than four years left on their sentences as well as by all other persons in the home confinement cohort. Will the clemency process keep churning in DOJ and the White House for this group now? Will advocates keep pushing clemency for this group or now turn its attention to those still stuck in federal prison during the on-going pandemic? And will Prez Biden actually use his clemency power for anyone anytime soon?
December 22, 2021 at 08:13 PM | Permalink