Congress Threatens Home Confinement Program, PA Jail Deaths Report & More

"While there are certainly plenty of legitimate issues with the [Bureau of Prisons] that merit senators focusing oversight on the Bureau, CARES Act home confinement is an example of a program that is working..."
 
A Senate resolution introduced by Sen. Marsha Blackburn is threatening to send thousands of individuals who have been living in their communities for three years back to federal prison. At the height of the COVID-19 pandemic, roughly 13,000 individuals were released from federal prisons to home confinement under the federal CARES Act, and the U.S. Justice Department affirmed this year that this population could remain on home confinement following the expiration of the covered emergency period. Despite the success of the program—this population has an astonishingly low recidivism rate of 0.2%, for example—some GOP Senators, including Sen. Tom Cotton and Minority Leader Mitch McConnell, are supporting Sen. Blackburn’s resolution to void the Justice Department's rule, which would require thousands who have been safely living in their communities to report back to federal prison. Now, some advocates are proposing that Congress codify the rule as an alternative to rejecting it outright as an example of executive overreach. 
 
"While this may seem like a few days on the calendar to the legislature, to people who are waiting for this bill to be passed, it is just painful." 
 
Advocates, business organizations, law enforcement and individuals impacted by past criminal records held a press conference in Pennsylvania this week to urge lawmakers to pass legislation that would expand eligibility for the state's automated expungement system, which would provide many more Pennsylvanians with a pathway to a true second chance. With just six session days left in the year, local legal services non-profits say people are becoming dispirited by a political stalemate that has nothing to do with the policy. 

"Punishing people for conduct for which they have been acquitted has long been an especially egregious practice within our criminal justice system."
 
The U.S. House Committee on the Judiciary unanimously approved the Prohibiting Punishment of Acquitted Conduct Act of 2023 (H.R. 5430) this week, which aims to end the routine and shockingly permitted practice of allowing federal judges to lengthen a defendant’s criminal sentence based on conduct for which he or she has been acquitted. The bipartisan measure, championed by Congressman Kelly Armstrong (R-ND) and Congressman Steve Cohen (D-TN) is now set to advance to the full U.S. House for a floor vote. Senators Richard Durbin (D-IL) and Charles Grassley (R-IA) have introduced a companion bill, S.2788, in the Senate. 
 
"What we are trying to do is not punish kids, but change their behavior. We don’t need to use a criminal justice response to change the behavior."
 
Decades of research have shown that incarcerating adolescents for most cases of lawbreaking is neither necessary nor effective, as it often harms public safety and increases likelihood of future interactions with the justice system. A new Sentencing Project report released this week highlights that fewer than one-third of incarcerated youth are incarcerated for serious violent offenses, and that states can and should adopt reforms to combat the overuse of incarceration and maximize the success of youth who are placed in alternative-to-incarceration programs. 
 
"We have a moral and legal obligation to document and investigate every single death in custody in order to acknowledge the dignity of the person who died, to develop strategies and policies to minimize future deaths in custody, and to hold responsible parties — whether they be individuals or institutions — accountable when they have behaved in a negligent manner."
 
A new investigation by PennLive and the Pittsburgh Institute for Nonprofit Journalism this week is the latest in a string of revelations about jail deaths across the county, this time revealing widespread underreporting of deaths in Pennsylvania jails. According to the outlets' review of records, at least 65 inmates died in Keystone State jails in 2022, but nearly 40% of those deaths went unreported despite requirements to do so. As in other states, some families have reported gruesome details of the condition of their relatives at their time of death, raising questions about how many of the losses could have been prevented.