• Updated BOP Home Confirment Critera
  In a Memorandum for Chief Executive Officers dated April 13, 2021, BOP issued a new policy for expanding and reviewing at-risk inmates for placement on home confinement in accordance with the CARES Act and guidance from the Attorney General.  The new memorandum provides updated guidance and supersedes the memorandum dated November 16, 2020. 


• CARES Act: Practice Alert Video (only available on the password protected side of fd.org)
  This presentation reviews several provisions of the CARES Act that impact federal criminal defense practitioners and their clients, including the types of proceedings that can be conducted by video or telephone conferencing, the BOP's expanded authority to lengthen the maximum amount of time for which our clients may be placed on home confinement, provisions allowing the BOP to provide free video and telephonic visitations, and other ways to facilitate the release of our most vulnerable clients to community supervision.


• BOP Update on COVID-19 and Home Confinement (4/5/2020)
  ("Given the surge in positive cases at select sites and in response to the Attorney General's directives, the BOP has begun immediately reviewing all inmates who have COVID-19 risk factors, as described by the CDC, starting with the inmates incarcerated at FCI Oakdale, FCI Danbury, FCI Elkton and similarly-situated facilities to determine which inmates are suitable for home confinement.")


• AG Barr Memo for Director of Bureau of Prisons: Increasing the Use of Home Confinement At Institutions Most Affected by COVID-19 (4/3/20)
  In the memo, the AG exercises his authority, under section 12003(b)(2) of the CARES Act, "to expand the cohort of inmates who can be considered for home release upon my finding that emergency conditions are materially affecting the functioning of the Bureau of Prisons." (emphasis added).


• Federal Public & Community Defenders Letter to AG Barr re: COVID-19 (4/1/20)
  This letter urges the DOJ & BOP to "immediately reduce the number of people entering federal detention and aggressively transfer or release individuals detained in federal pretrial custody," pursuant to the powers granted to the AG to expand the availability of home confinement under the CARES Act.


• Federal Judiciary Authorizes Video/Audio Access During COVID-19 (3/31/20)
  The Judicial Conference, pursuant to Section 15002(b) of the CARES Act, made a finding that “emergency conditions due to the national emergency declared by the President with respect to COVID-19 will materially affect the functioning of the federal courts generally …”. Under the CARES Act, this finding allows chief district judges, under certain circumstances and with the consent of the defendant, to temporarily authorize the use of video or telephone conferencing for certain criminal proceedings during the COVID-19 national emergency.


• 1-Page Chart of CARES Act Provisions Impacting Federal Defendants & Inmates (3/26/20)
  By Sentencing Resource Counsel


• Full Text of Coronavirus Aid, Relief, and Economic Security Act ("CARES Act"), PL 116-136, 134 Stat 281 (Mar. 27, 2020)


• Text of AG's Expanded Home Confinement Authority of the CARES Act, Sec. 12003(b)(2)


• Text of Video Visitation provisions of the CARES Act, Sec. 12003(c)(1)


• Text of Videoconference for criminal proceedings of the CARES Act, Sec. 15002


• Letter to AG Barr from Jerrold Nadler, House Judiciary Committee Charmian, & Karen Bass, Chair, Subcommittee on Crime, Terrorism and Homeland Security (3/30/20)
  Urges BOP, in light of first death of a prisoner due to COVID-19 in BOP custody on March 28, 2020, at FCC Oakdale in Louisiana, to take immediate action to "release medically-compromised, elderly, and pregnant prisoners in the custody of the BOP" under BOP's compassionate release authority, 18 U.S.C. Sec. 3582(c)(1)(A), and newly enacted home confinement release authority under the CARES Act.