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LAW FORCES END OF ELDERLY HOME DETENTION PROGRAM
The Federal Bureau of Prisons’ Elderly Offender Home Detention pilot program (EOP) is over for now, Whether it will ever return is an open question.
Originally adopted as a pilot program in the Second Chance Act of 2007, the EOP was authorized at a single BOP facility only, permitting nonviolent offenders who were 66 years old to serve the final months of their sentences at home. The First Step Act expanded the program to the entire BOP system in 2018, allowing “offenders who are over 60 years of age, have served two-thirds of their sentence, are not convicted of a crime of violence, and do not have a history of escape to be placed on home confinement for the remaining portion of their sentence.”
A great idea: take nonviolent, unlikely-to-offend-again oldsters who are costing the BOP a ton of money for healthcare, and send them to home confinement. OK, Boomer!
But tucked into a corner of the EOP statute at 34 USC 60541(g)(3) was the limitation that the EOP would remain a “pilot program and shall be carried out during fiscal years 2019 through 2023.” Fiscal 2023 ended on September 30th.
By all accounts, the program worked well. Since 2018, the BOP has placed over 1,220 people at home under the program with no reports of new criminal conduct.
Writing in The Hill, former BOP Director Hugh Hurwitz noted a July 2022 Sentencing Commission study showed that the recidivism rate for people over 50 is less than half that of those under 50. “Under the pilot program,” Hurwitz wrote, “only those over 60 are considered, and they can’t have any history of violence, thus making their recidivism rate even lower.”
The Vera Institute of Justice reported six years ago that the cost of keeping older people locked up “is double that of housing younger ones, due to health care expenses.” Even a decade ago, the BOP spent a fifth of its budget on older inmates. The average prisoner age is up about 8% since then. “People serving time on home confinement see their own doctors (while being monitored electronically),” Hurwitz wrote, “and bear the costs themselves, saving taxpayers millions.”
Walter Pavlo wrote in Forbes that “many are calling for EOP’s renewal. Budget constraints, administrative changes, and shifts in policy priorities left the EOP program hanging in the balance. This termination has raised concerns among advocates and experts who believe that the program’s end is a step in the wrong direction.”
Sadly, reauthorization of the program will require action by a Congress that is not producing much in the way of legislation and is awaiting reauthorization of a program that will send prisoners to home confinement – even a proven one that makes perfect sense – may have a long wait. In fact, I doubt that we will see the program return in the next five years.
Not OK, Boomer.
The Hill, Moving elderly prisoners home saves taxpayer dollars without sacrificing safety (September 27, 2023)
Forbes, Old and Facing Prison (October 7, 2023)
Dept of Justice, First Step Act Annual Report (April 2023)
Vera Institute, Aging Out (December 2017)
– Thomas L. Root