WASHINGTON (Pakistan Point News / Sputnik - 01st December, 2021) Fears that the US will return to prisons more than 7,000 inmates now in home confinement due to COVID-19 prompted a lawsuit seeking details of plans for the prisoners when the pandemic ends, the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) said on Tuesday.
"The BOP (Bureau of Prisons) told incarcerated people, their families, the American public, and Congress that if people followed the rules on home confinement, they would be allowed to rebuild their lives outside of prison. Now thousands of those people are in limbo, wondering whether, when, and how they may be needlessly forced back to prison even after proving that they can safely and productively reenter society" ACLU Criminal Law Reform Attorney Emma Andersson said in a press release.
The lawsuit citing the US Freedom of Information Act seeks details of BOP plans after repeated requests for information from the agency went unanswered, the release said.
Congress provided, as part of the March 2020 CARES Act, that BOP could place incarcerated people in home confinement as a way of reducing the population of crowded prisons and mitigating the virus' spread, the release added.
As a result, BOP placed more than 34,000 people � including many elderly or medically vulnerable � on home confinement. While most have now completed their sentences, 7,769 remain on home confinement, according to the release.
Although the Biden administration has said that the president will consider granting clemency to a subset of this group so that they will not be sent back to prison, he has not yet granted any such petitions, the release said.
