The Justice Department said Tuesday that thousands of federal inmates who were released to home confinement as a preventative measure to combat the spread of the coronavirus will be allowed to serve out the remainder of their sentences there, without being forced to return to prison. The decision overturns a late Trump-era edict that would have recalled the inmates back behind bars. The agency’s interpretation of the decision avoids disrupting “the community connections these prisoners have developed in aid of their eventual reentry,” the assistant attorney general in the bureau’s Office of Legal Counsel wrote in a 15-page opinion. It affects more than 7,700 inmates who remain on home confinement, of an estimated 36,000 released to their homes since March 2020. The remainder have either completed their sentences or been sent back to prison for violating program rules. “We will exercise our authority so that those who have made rehabilitative progress and complied with the conditions of home confinement... are not unnecessarily returned to prison,” Attorney General Merrick Garland promised.
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