Thread by @KevinARing

The New York Times story last week has generated a lot of buzz about the home confinement issue. For newcomers, here is a get-you-up-to-speed thread. nytimes.com/2021/07/19/us/…

In March 2020, Congress passed the CARES Act to expand BOP’s discretion to give home confinement in order to combat the spread of Covid. This was smart. Typically, BOP is only authorized to send ppl to home confinement for a bit of their sentence – 6 mos or 10%, whichever is less

The CARES Act authorized DOJ to give more time on home confinement so long as the AG found that COVID was “materially affecting” BOP’s functioning. Barr did that right away and DOJ established strict eligibility criteria – to get extended home confinement, a person:

had to have served at least 50% of their sentence, have no violence in record, no disciplinary infractions in past 12 months, have COVID risk factors, and have a “minimum” risk assessment score. Lots of people, including us, complained that the criteria were too strict.

After all, people’s lives were at risk – why sacrifice anyone just because they stole an egg from chow hall 10 months ago? But those are the criteria they went with and began sending people home. NOTE: BOP didn’t tell any of them they would have to come back to prison.

By December 2020, a dozen or so people on home confinement had reached out to us and said, “we are grateful to be home, but we have x years left on our sentence. Are we going to have to be on an ankle monitor the whole time?” Fair question. Why keep them like that if they behave?

Biden won in November. FAMM met w/ transition team on Dec. 2 and raised home confinement issue. We asked new team to expand the criteria and to figure out a way to get people on HC off surveillance if they’ve followed the rules. We suggested compassionate release and clemency.

On January 15, Trump’s Office of Legal Counsel dropped a bomb. It issued a legal opinion, in response to an inquiry from BOP, which stated that BOP had to bring everyone back 30 days after the AG declared BOP’s operations were no longer materially affected by COVID.

Families started calling us panicked. We had talked to Trump WH last summer and they assured us that they had no intention of bringing people back – a position those officials maintain today – but OLC’s interpretation would force BOP to do just that.

In mid-February, we met with the new appointees at DOJ and urged them to rescind the OLC memo. We also met with various officials in the new White House. Everyone understood the problem and said they would look into how best to fix it.

5 months later, we are still waiting. The NYT confirmed many of our worst fears. DOJ officials are privately pushing back on the NYT report, but no one is contesting it on the record. Why not?

In January and February, the press was not interested in the story because many deemed it too speculative. Surely the new admin would fix this. I wondered if maybe I was overreacting. @HollyHarris said nope, we need to raise hell. So we wrote about it.
usatoday.com/story/opinion/…

The press said no one would be interested because the pandemic wasn’t close to over. This is the same thing BOP and DOJ say today – and it completely ignores how urgent it is to the people on home confinement who wake up every day worried about where they will be in a few months.

Every day, more and more people were reaching out to us, telling us their stories and how scared they were at the prospect of having to go back, despite following the rules, having a job, etc. We did a town hall with a handful of them in March.

Finally, in April, Sarah Lynch with Reuters wrote a great story, featuring some of the compelling folks that had reached out. reuters.com/world/us/thous…

We tried to amp up the threat to match the intensity we were getting from the families reaching out to us. abovethelaw.com/2021/04/refill…

In May, the press began covering the story more, which was great. And sharing the stories of those affected. thedenverchannel.com/news/national/…

Perhaps the most compelling story of all was Gwen Levi’s. 76-year-old grandmother who had already served 16 years was being threatened with a return to prison. NBC News talked to her: nbcnews.com/now/video/fede…

Then BOP stupidly tried to send her back and story went viral. Now she and dozens of groups from across the ideological spectrum are now working together to prevent these people from going back to prison. Members of Congress have weighed in, as well. washingtonpost.com/opinions/2021/…

The options at the Biden admin’s disposal have not changed since we met with their transition team in early February or since we last spelled them out in a June 7 letter to AG Garland: famm.org/famm-urges-u-s…

The Biden admin might very well take the position that sending thousands of people back to prison would be better than using its authority to keep them home. But if they do, they should pay a price. And every day they wait to act, they should pay a higher one. /end

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