Hill article, headlined DOJ faces big decision on home confinement, provide an effective accounting of the building discussion around the status of home confinement in the federal system as it appears the pandemic is winding down. I recommend the full piece, and here are excerpts:
The Biden administration will soon have to decide whether to send back to prison thousands of inmates who were transferred to home confinement after the start of the COVID-19 pandemic. President Biden and Attorney General Merrick Garland have been facing mounting calls to rescind a policy implemented in the final days of the Trump administration that would revoke home confinement for those inmates as soon as the government lifts its emergency declaration over the coronavirus.
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Brian Miller reflects on a year of coronavirus oversight.
Coming up on the one-year anniversary of his confirmation, Special Inspector General for Pandemic Recovery Brian Miller is reflecting on the challenges and successes his office has experienced in overseeing relief programs for the novel coronavirus and resulting economic recession.
“We ve had people challenge our jurisdiction. We ve had people trying to slow us down in various ways,” Miller said in an interview with
Government Executive. “We ve come through that in the last year, I think, in a very successful way, in a very surprising way. In some ways, this office was almost set up to fail and yet we re succeeding and accomplishing the job.”
Advocates and lawmakers argue that the program has been a resounding success, and that it would be unjust to reincarcerate thousands of individuals who abided by the terms of their home confinement.
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“If you re one of these people, you re trying to figure out, Do I go back to college? Do I start a new job? Do I start a family? Do I sign a lease? I mean, what can I do, not knowing where I m going to be in six months?’ That s cruel to keep somebody in that doubt and uncertainty for this long and to say, ‘You know, don t worry about it, it s not going to happen tomorrow,’” said Kevin Ring, president of the advocacy group Families Against Mandatory Minimums.
Judge Amy Berman Jackson s Barr rebuke opens the door to DOJ accountability
There are four possibilities for holding an attorney general accountable if evidence suggests he did abuse his office to protect a president.
Bill Barr needs to learn that good government requires transparency. Leah Millis / Reuters; MSNBC
May 7, 2021, 7:49 PM UTC
Good government requires transparency. It’s why we have a free press, enshrined in the First Amendment. It’s why Supreme Court Justice Louis Brandeis once wrote, “Sunlight is said to be the best of disinfectants; electric light the most efficient policeman.”
And it’s why U.S. District Judge Amy Berman Jackson’s 35-page opinion in Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington v. U.S. Department of Justice is so important. In a move that drew only passing attention at the time, CREW filed a Freedom of Information Act request in April 2019 seeking guidance documents the DOJ’s Office of Legal Counsel provided to newly confirmed
Spotlighting effectiveness of home confinement under CARES Act and concerns about OLC memo disruption
USA Today has this lengthy new piece highlighting the administration of home confinement in the federal system during the pandemic and the worries about a Justice Department memo which could return offenders to prison. I recommend the piece in full, which is headlined Inmates sent home during COVID-19 got jobs, started school. Now, they face possible return to prison. Here are some excerpts:
In the weeks and months since he was sent home, RJ Edwards found a job, bought a car, got an apartment for him and his mother and started working toward a bachelor’s degree in computer science..