Few Inmates Released To Home Confinement Due To COVID Committed New Crimes

A natural experiment arising due to COVID legislation reveals that home confinement for low level federal offenders (which is vastly less expensive, probably reduces recidivism and prison violence due to interactions with other inmates, and greatly reduces the spread of infectious disease), who made up about 20% of pre-COVID federal prison inmates, is vastly underutilized.

In all, 99.24% of prisoners released to home confinement due to COVID did not even commit a "technical violation" of their parole rules. Only 0.02% committed new crimes. None of those crimes was violent or harmed an unwilling third-party victim. 

Recidivism rates for inmates who serve their entire terms in prison are typically 25-65 times higher, with an even greater relative recidivism rate restricted to released inmates who commit new crimes, as opposed to technical violations of parole conditions.

More than 300 federal inmates who were transferred to home confinement as a pandemic mitigation strategy reoffended and were sent back to prison, a top federal official said Thursday. Bureau of Prisons Director Michael Carvajal told the House Judiciary Subcommittee on Crime, Terrorism, and Homeland Security that substance abuse was the “most common” offense that landed inmates back behind bars.

“About 160 of those 320 were for abuse of alcohol or drugs,” Mr. Carvajal said. “Some of them were escapes – they weren’t where they were supposed to be – most of them were violations of that nature. Some was misconduct, eight of those were new crimes committed, the rest of those were technical violations.”

A bureau spokesperson told The Washington Times that six of the eight new crimes were drug-related, one was for escape with prosecution and one was for smuggling non-citizens....

During Thursday’s hearing, he said the 320 reoffending inmates are among more than 37,000 who were transferred to home confinement since Congress passed the Coronavirus Aid, Relief, and Economic Security Act (CARES) in March 2020 to address threats posed by the pandemic.

The CARES Act allows the bureau to transfer certain low-level inmates convicted of nonviolent crimes to home confinement if they meet the COVID-19 risk factors identified by the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. While some transfers have been put back in prison, others have completed their sentences and 5,485 inmates are still in home confinement.

From the Sentencing Law and Policy Blog.

For comparison purposes, in 2019, prior to COVID, there were 175,116 federal inmates (the group affected by the CARES Act). The CARES Act transferred about 20% of federal inmates to home confinement.

The CARES Act significantly reduced COVID deaths, hospitalization and infection rates for people who had been incarcerated in federal prison when the pandemic started in 2020 or were convicted of federal crimes after the pandemic started.

Federal and State Inmates Compared

The potential to reduce prison populations from a state equivalent to the CARES Act isn't as great as in the federal system, however.

This is because the one out of nine prison inmates who are incarcerated in the federal system includes a larger share of white collar crime offenders, non-violent drug crime offenders, and immigration law offenders (with the last two categories being classic "victimless crimes") than state prisons. 

But, federal prisons confine a far smaller share of violent criminals, and far fewer people who commit "blue collar" property crime offenders like people who commit larceny and burglary (even though some of the "worst of the worst" terrorists, hijackers, and kidnappers are often incarcerated in federal prisons).

Out of all people incarcerated in state prisons in the U.S., about 56% were convicted of violent crimes (mostly homicide, rape, robbery and aggravated assault), and 14% were convicted of burglary, car theft, or larceny and other non-violent "blue collar" property crimes, a combined 70%. About 5% of state prisoners are incarcerated for weapons possession violations.

About 14% of state prisoners are incarcerated for drug crimes, about 2% are incarcerated for fraud, and about 8% are incarcerated for other crimes, mostly regulatory offenses and felony DUI cases (the total number of state inmates adds to 99% due to rounding errors).

So, proportionately, far fewer state inmates would be eligible for a CARES Act styled release to home confinement. But, because there are 8 times as many state prisoners as there are federal prisoners, the absolute number of state inmates affected would still be significant.

In contrast, in federal prison, 8% of inmates are violent criminals and 1% committed non-violent "blue collar" property crimes (a combined 9%), and about 18% were convicted of non-violent weapons offenses, predominantly possession of a firearm by a former felon.

In federal prisons, drug offenses are the most serious offense conviction for 46% of inmates, immigration offenses make up 5%, private sector fraud offenses account for about 4%, and federal regulatory offenses like contempt of court (usually a serious violation of a court order), federal traffic felonies, tax fraud, bribery, perjury, prostitution, child pornography, gambling law, liquor law, national defense secrecy law,  hunting law, and environmental law felonies make up most of another 16% (although a small number within that percentage involve racketeering which is sometimes a white collar offense and sometimes a violent one, witness intimidation, extortion, and escapes that are more than technical), for a total of 74% of federal inmates (the total number of federal inmates adds to 101% due to rounding errors).

Inmate Citizenship

As an aside, due to the focus of the federal criminal justice system on immigration offenses and other crimes with international dimensions, 18.0% of federal inmates are not U.S. citizens, while only 5.7% of state inmates are not U.S. citizens (significantly less than in the general population, especially when comparing populations of similar age and gender to federal and state prison inmates respectively).

The lion's share of non-citizen prison inmates at both the state and federal level will be deported when they finish serving their sentences, greatly reducing the likelihood that those inmates will reoffend within the United States.