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Kevin Ring

20 Jan, 8 tweets, 2 min read

One last kick in the groin from the Trump Justice Department: while the White House was deciding on which 70+ sentences to commute, its DOJ's Office of Legal Counsel put out a memo which could force BOP to bring thousands of people on home confinement back to prison.

This should be stopped and I think it will be. The Biden DOJ can and should rescind the OLC opinion and if necessary Congress could pass a legislative fix. But the OLC memo, dated 1/15/2021, is a poorly reasoned piece of cruelty that could make families worry unnecessarily.

@waltpavlo

When this issue first came up - @waltpavlo reported on a US attorney who suggested people who received extra home confinement under the CARES Act would have to return when the AG declared the emergency over - we reached out to the White House. The White House reached out to DOJ.

Both were adamant that the US attorney was not speaking for the department and that neither the White House or DOJ had any intention of making people return. I believed them, and still think they were saying what was true at the time. For some reason, however...

OLC at the 11th hour issued this awful opinion saying, contrary to the clear text of the CARES Act, that BOP must bring people from home confinement back. It's not just the Paul Manaforts of the world who would have to go back for years.

I know plenty of people who were sent home years early because of Covid. DOJ should be using compassionate release or the president clemency to get those people off home confinement if they haven't screwed up. There is no reason to be on home detention for years and years.

Instead, the OLC says BOP should send them back. Now, the AG is not likely to say the emergency is over for months and there is plenty of time to fix this. And I am confident we will and families should not worry.

But it says something that Trump's DOJ, while signing off on a few commutations, was simultaneously laying the groundwork to try to force hundreds of people back to federal prison. Stupid and cruel. I'm confident it won't stand but the attempt alone is disgraceful.

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More from @KevinARing

Kevin Ring

@KevinARing

20 Jan

@lfrenchnews

@lfrenchnews, this is awful fear mongering. Seriously. I am glad you allowed people opposed to mandatory minimum to state their case, but no one will be able to consider the arguments when you lead with such an emotional crime.
wtvr.com/news/problem-s…

Unless I am missing something, of all the mandatory minimum sentences the legislature is considering repealing, none would have applied in the case you spotlight. The man could have received the same sentence today. Your viewers should be made aware of that.

Also, you have to realize that highlighting the case of one person who re-offended is how the US ended up with the highest incarceration rate in the western world. We simply can't sentence our way to zero risk. If there were some data to suggest that VA judges...

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Kevin Ring

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25 Sep 20

I saw an article that expressed skepticism about the First Step Act and success of recent federal reforms. I know being angry about everything is in fashion and that progress is considered problematic in case it breeds complacency, but let's run through some numbers...

The federal prison system is the biggest in the country. In 2013, year 5 of the Obama admin, the fed system ballooned to 219,298 people. Awful. Then, it finally started to fall. Today, the population is down to 155,530 people, a drop of nearly 64,000, which is 29 percent.

Do we want to reduce it further? Of course. Can we? Of course. But a 29 percent decrease in population is a good start. The fed prison population is down 17 percent since Trump took office. (Did anyone predict that? Sure...)

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Kevin Ring

@KevinARing

2 Sep 20

Today we wanted to reframe our core work to better advance the values we care about, including fairness, rehabilitation, and community safety.

Some thoughts...

link.medium.com/sTwhuw2Uq9

The feds and state govts are very good at locking people up. We have plenty of laws, especially mandatory sentencing laws and enhancements, to ensure that people spends lots of time in prison, especially when they have the temerity to exercise their right to trial.

What has been made painfully clear during the COVID-19 pandemic is that states don't have enough mechanisms to revisit lengthy sentences when appropriate, either because of an emergency, because the law has changed, or the person or their circumstances have changed.

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Kevin Ring

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12 Aug 20

She’s the one who made me a #girldad. She’s the one who cried when I left for work in the morning and the one who would have a dance party with me when I came home.

She’s the one who could read books when she was so young and then remember every detail when you asked about them.

She’s the one who always has to win and hates to be wrong. She’s the one who is introverted and loves when I am the icebreaker in new situations.

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Kevin Ring

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4 Aug 20

The federal government is letting relatively young women die from neglect in its prisons. We saw it with Andrea High Bear, of course. Yesterday, a 44-year-old woman died at Carswell. Today, a 34-year-old at Coleman.

Repeat, just 34 years old. Her name was Saferia Johnson. She has two children under the age of 7. Ms. Johnson was sentenced two years ago to 6 years in prison for identity theft and tax fraud. She and her co-defendants stole $2 million from the government.

The prosecutor at her sentencing said her sentence showed “that easy money means hard time in the federal criminal justice system.” It turns out it actually meant death.

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Kevin Ring

@KevinARing

28 Jul 20

I am tired of the weird dynamic among many supporters of criminal justice reform that makes us quiet when things like this happen. Like what? Like a bunch of teenagers and kids, mostly kids of color, getting shot and killed. It’s as if we say anything... nytimes.com/2020/07/27/nyr…

We think we are calling attention to something that will make passing reforms more difficult. Or that we are contributing to the inevitable overreaction by the media. But I don’t buy it. I don’t care to defend the current system. These killings don’t undermine the reforms I seek

I support reforms that I think will make communities safer so this spike in shootings isn’t something we should ignore or downplay. Every murder of a child is horrific. It should spur us to push for workable solutions.

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