The Federal Bureau of Prisons (BOP) is starting its vaccination program beginning with staff members. As first reported by AP in November, the vaccine was initially to be given to staff before inmates. When that report was made, there were 3,624 federal inmates and 1,225 BOP staff members who had tested positive for COVID-19. As of December 20, 2020, there are 5,771 federal inmates and 1,694 BOP staff who have confirmed positive test results (Covid cases are tracked by the BOP on their website).
Will vaccines slow the use of home confinement being used by the Bureau of Prisons?
According to an internal BOP memo to corrections staff which I reviewed;
As distribution of the COVID-19 vaccine begins, the Bureau of Prisons received its first shipment on Wednesday, December 16, 2020 and began administering the drug to correctional officers, health care workers and other full-time staff. Vaccinating staff protects the staff member, the inmates at the facility, and the community as staff go between the institution and the community and, therefore, vaccinating staff provides a wide umbrella of protection to numerous populations. Staff from FMC Ft. Worth, FMC Carswell, FCI Seagoville and FCC Butner were among the first to be vaccinated.
Operation Warp Speed selected the Bureau as one of five federal entities to receive the vaccine, saying federal corrections officers are eligible as members of law enforcement and throughout the pandemic, many of the nation’s prisons have emerged as hotspots for the coronavirus. Initially funded with approximately $10 billion from the CARES Act (Coronavirus Aid, Relief, and Economic Security), Operation Warp Speed is an interagency program that includes components of the Department of Health and Human Services, including the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, Food and Drug Administration, the National Institutes of Health, and the Biomedical Advanced Research and Development Authority (BARDA); the Department of Defense; private firms; and other federal agencies, including the Department of Agriculture, the Department of Energy, and the Department of Veterans Affairs.
Word came from someone who is an inmate in an institution in the mid-Atlantic US that they are on a list to receive the vaccination at the first of the year. The vaccinations represent the first step in curbing the spread of COVID-19 in prisons. The roll-out of the vaccines to inmates will certainly cause a disruption in the number of compassionate release cases and the release of inmates under the CARES Act. In March 2020, as part of the CARES Act, Attorney General William Barr directed BOP Director Michael Carvajal to use home confinement to reduce prison populations. According to the BOP, since Barr’s directive it has placed 8,070 inmates on home confinement from its prisons located across the country. Requests for compassionate release have clogged the federal judiciary since the pandemic began as those who were not released under the CARES Act sought to her their sentence reduced by a federal judge with claims that COVID-19 represented an imminent threat to their health.
I spoke to Jack Donson who retired from the BOP and now consults and provides commentary on BOP policies. Donson told me, “This is a turning point in the BOP’s reaction to COVID-19. First, I’ve noticed that some inmates who were told they were going to home confinement are now being told they will not. While I don’t have empirical data to see if this is a nationwide trend, there are a number of actions coming together that could mean the end of move toward home confinement offered under the CARES Act.”
The CARES Act removed the 6-month ceiling on how long certain inmates could serve a portion of their sentence on home confinement. In reality, a person could serve multiple years on home confinement under the Barr directive. “I know individual situations where there are people whose release date from prison is 2024 and they are home under CARES Act,” Donson said.
However, Barr’s memo on home confinement was implemented under “Emergency Conditions,” when the spread of COVID-19 was ripping through prisons infecting both inmates and staff members. Even though we are in a second wave of the pandemic, the vaccine could mean that there is an end to the crisis at hand. As Donson told me, “The BOP has put a number of people on home confinement and the resources associated with monitoring them is finite, there is a budget. I imagine the BOP has already exhausted their budget for CARES ACT placement given there are set quotas for each private Residential Reentry Services contract.”
