We post news and comment on federal criminal justice issues, focused primarily on trial and post-conviction matters, legislative initiatives, and sentencing issues.

SECOND CHANCE ACT REAUTHORIZATION BILL INTRODUCED, BUT NOTHING’S IN IT FOR FEDERAL PRISONERS

Republican Carol Miller (WV) and 10 co-sponsors have introduced a bill to reauthorize the Second Chance Act of 2007 by extending a number of its grants and programs intended to benefit states and counties for prisoner reentry after serving their sentences. All of which is good.

Only two provisions in the 2007 Act are of interest to federal prisoners–the provision authorizing (but not requiring) the Federal Bureau of Prisons to grant up to 12 months of halfway house and the Elderly Offender Home Detention pilot program.

The right to grant up to 12 months of home confinement–enshrined in 18 USC § 3624(c)–remains unaffected by the proposed bill.

Parenthetically, prisoners complain all the time that the BOP is denying them their Second Chance Act rights to 12 months of halfway house, but the Act only lets the BOP grant up to 12 months of halfway house (it was a max of 6 months before that): the BOP is not obligated to grant as much as a single day of halfway house time if it deems it unnecessary or undesirable to do so.

Given that the SCA of 2007 introduced the elderly offender pilot home detention program, which let the BOP send nonviolent offenders age 60+ home for the last third of their sentences, I hoped the reauthorization bill would extend the date of that program. It expired September 30, 2023. Unfortunately, the reauthorization bill does not mention the EOHD program at all.

EOHD is a favorite of Senate Judiciary Committee chairman Richard Durbin (D-IL) and Sen Charles Grassley (R-IA). If the bill passes the House and goes to the Senate, there is a decent chance the EOHD will be added before the bill gets to the Senate floor. However, the bill would have to make it to a vote in the House first, a tall order given that chamber’s dysfunction this year.

HR 8020, Second Chance Reauthorization Act of 2024

– Thomas L. Root