The New York Times: New Rule Makes Thousands of Federal Inmates Eligible for Release

Thousands of federal inmates will become eligible for release this week under a rule the Justice Department published on Thursday that allows more people to participate in a program that allows prisoners to earn shorter jail terms.

As part of those guidelines, the Federal Bureau of Prisons has begun transferring eligible inmates to supervised release programs, residential re-entry centers or home confinement.

The rule, together with a decision by the department last month that well-behaved inmates released to home confinement during the pandemic would not have to return to prison, is a major step toward overhauling and shrinking the federal prison system, which some Democrats and Republicans consider costly and often unfair.

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Justice Action Network, a bipartisan criminal justice reform group, said that the new guidelines could result in the release of as many people as were freed immediately after passage of First Step Act, which was more than 3,100. The home confinement decision had already affected about 2,800 inmates. There are 157,596 federal inmates, according to the Bureau of Prisons.

https://www.nytimes.com/2022/01/13/us/politics/federal-prisoners-release.html