Attorney General Merrick Garland said that prisoners 'who have made rehabilitative progress and complied with the conditions of home confinement' would not be 'unnecessarily returned to prison.'
"Thousands of people on home confinement have reconnected with their families, have found gainful employment, and have followed the rules," Garland said in a statement."In light of today's Office of Legal Counsel opinion, I have directed that the Department engage in a rulemaking process to ensure that the Department lives up to the letter and the spirit of the CARES Act."
"We will exercise our authority so that those who have made rehabilitative progress and complied with the conditions of home confinement, and who in the interests of justice should be given an opportunity to continue transitioning back to society, are not unnecessarily returned to prison," he continued.
Attorney General Merrick Garland said the Department of Justice would ensure that federal prisoners who had"made rehabilitative progress and complied with the conditions of home confinement" would not be"unnecessarily returned to prison." Garland, flanked by a masked Associate Attorney General Vanita Gupta, is pictured during a press conference in Washington, D.C. on December 6, 2021.The decision to release federal inmates was made as part of the CARES Act in March 2020.
Despite pressure from criminal justice and prison reform activists, Biden administration lawyers sided with the Trump administration's OLC opinion in July, according to