The White House has threatened to veto a Republican Senate resolution that would result in 3,000 federal offenders who were released to home confinement during the COVID-19 pandemic being sent back to prison, reports Reason. The Biden administration opposes a resolution introduced by Sen. Marsha Blackburn (R-TN), that could reach the Senate floor this week. It would overturn a Justice Department rule allowing some federal offenders to remain under house arrest after the end of the federal COVID-19 emergency declaration. The White House cited the low recidivism rate among those released to home confinement and the reduced cost to taxpayers compared to incarceration."Of the over 13,000 people released to home confinement under the CARES Act, less than one percent have committed a new offense—mostly for nonviolent, low-level offenses—and all were returned to prison as a result," the White House says. "Moreover, since home confinement is less than half the cost of housing someone in prison, this program has saved taxpayers millions of dollars and eased the burden on [prison] staff so they can focus on the higher risk and higher need people.."
The resolution is the latest in a battle among the Biden administration, criminal justice advocacy groups, and Republicans over the continuation of the pandemic-era policy. In the final days of the Trump administration, the Justice Department said that once the federal government ended its COVID-19 emergency declaration, all former inmates with remaining sentences would have to return to prison. Criminal justice advocacy groups pressed the Biden administration to reverse that decision, arguing that the program had been a success and that it would be bizarre and cruel to send back people who had thrived on the outside. Last December, the Justice Department said that the federal prison bureau had the discretion to leave them under house arrest for the remainder of their sentences. Sen. Tom Cotton (R–AR), one of 28 GOP co-sponsors of Blackburn's resolution, said the DOJ policy "betrays victims and law-enforcement agencies that trusted the federal government to keep convicted criminals away from the neighborhoods that the offenders once terrorized."