Biden: Don’t Play Bait and Switch with Freedom
Real-life experiments show many long-incarcerated individuals can be freed
By Pam Bailey and Rob Barton
If you could choose between warehousing an individual at the cost of an average of $33,000 a year and allowing him or her to live with and support his family, hold a job and pay taxes, which would you opt for? It seems to us a no brainer, yet the Biden administration is ignoring the results of a large, natural experiment and choosing the former option — one that is so very expensive both in terms of dollars and human potential.
Some background: In what could be seen as a silver lining to the otherwise devastating coronavirus pandemic, Congress passed and former President Trump signed into law the CARES Act, which allows the federal Bureau of Prisons to reduce the risk of the virus to those behind bars by releasing some prisoners to home confinement. Now, let’s be clear about what this means: Individuals on home confinement wear a bulky ankle device — called a “bracelet” (how’s that for a euphemism?), but heavy and cumbersome. It’s equipped with a global positioning system (GPS) that monitors the wearer’s every movement. Once affixed, the device must be charged twice daily and cannot ever be removed. Wearers must keep it on in bed, in the shower and everywhere else. Any trip outside the home must be approved by their case managers at least several days in advance. But that’s not enough.
Antonio Kingsbury, a D.C. resident recently released to home confinement, explains how it works:
“They know where you’re at, at all times. And you still have to ask [your case worker] days ahead of time if you want to go places, and they tell you when and for how long. They are very strict. Like, for example: I go to religious service on Fridays, and I’m supposed to write down the address where I’m going, take a photo of it and text it to my case worker every time. But once, I forgot to send to them. Then, while I was at religious service, my monitor started vibrating, and they start sending texts telling me to call them. They asked me where I was at, and I told them I was at religious service. I go to religious service every Friday! They said, ‘But you didn’t ask.’ So, even though they know your normal routine, you still got to ask first. You’re always kind of walking on thin ice.”
The case of Gwen Levi is a prime example. After serving 16 of her 24-year sentence for drug trafficking, the 75-year-old was released to home confinement to finish the rest of her sentence due to COVID. To say she was successfully reintegrating into society would be an understatement. She had been free for a year, living with her 95-year-old mother. She managed to rekindle her relationship with her children, was getting to know her grandkids and was working at a prison advocacy agency. Then she attended a computer class administered by the Maryland Justice Project, held in a building owned by the Baltimore City Police Department. What she didn’t realize is that the building was designed to deflect GPS and other signals as a security measure, so her ankle monitor lost its signal. In addition, she turned her phone off so she wouldn’t be distracted during class. You can guess what happened, right? She was labelled an “escapee” and was ordered back to jail.
What the hell is going on in this country, when a 76-year-old grandmother is sent to jail for such a minor violation? Why is our so-called justice system so intent on extracting its pound of flesh above all else? What happened to morality, common sense and the greater public good when making decisions about a human life? Where is the “just” in our determination of what justice is? One of the main failings of our system is the lack of care and concern for the persons it judges.
Fortunately, the massive media coverage of Mrs. Levi’s case resulted in the judge granting her a compassionate release. But too many others don’t attract that kind of attention. We have heard of too many people on probation or parole, for example, who are penalized simply for the amount of time it takes to get to work or to a meeting with their case managers. We also have heard of people being hit with a violation because the rules say they cannot be in a certain area or be around others with past criminal records, yet they have nowhere else to live. Our “justice” system, however, is blind in that sense. As Mrs. Levy’s attorney was told, “She could have been robbing a bank, so we’re going to treat her as if she was robbing a bank.” In other words, the rules are the rules; no one cares about intent or mitigating circumstances, and no one takes the time to determine if public safety was even at stake.
Over the past year, 7,569 people like Gwen Levi have been released to home confinement due to the devastating sweep of COVID-19 in prisons. And in April, Michael Carvajal, the director of the Bureau of Prisons, said in a Senate judiciary hearing that only three had been arrested for new crimes. Meanwhile, many of them have found jobs, enrolled in career courses and have been reunited with their families.
So, you’d think these individuals would be allowed to permanently build new lives. However, in January, Biden’s Justice Department issued a memo saying that those released on home confinement through the CARES Act would have to return to prison after the COVID-19 emergency ended. A pressure campaign forced his administration to backtrack, but just a little. The Justice Department has offered possible clemency only to individuals convicted of nonviolent drug offenses and who have four or less years left to serve. It’s not known how many of the thousands of people who are on home confinement fit this narrow category, but in any case, it unfairly excludes people who deserve a second chance.
There is a growing body of empirical evidence that individuals who were once convicted of violent crimes can be safely — and productively — returned to their families: To date, 67 men who had already served at least 15 years have been released early under D.C.’s Incarceration Reduction Amendment Act, and only one has been arrested for committing another serious crime. And then there is the “Unger experiment”: In 2012, Maryland released 130 lifers (known as the Ungers because of the name of the case) after the state court of appeals decided the juries in the 1970s had been given faulty instructions. Most of the released defendants had previously applied for parole and been denied. Yet their recidivism rate is only 3% to date despite being deemed the “worst of the worst.”
Yet Biden’s administration is playing games with even those you’d think would be the easiest PR-wise to free. Take the case of Rufus Rochelle: Until he was transferred to home confinement in April 2020 to spare him the risks of COVID-19, the 70-year-old from Florida was serving a 40-year sentence for a 1988 conviction for conspiracy to sell crack cocaine. Rufus is on his 34th year now, and he merely wants to spend his time with the daughter who was born after he was incarcerated, getting to know his church family and helping distribute food to those in need.
“No one is telling me what’s gonna happen,” he says. “Sure, it’s great to be home, although I’m really not free. But my life is in limbo and it’s like [Biden] is playing with me.”
Mark Osler, a former prosecutor and professor of law at the University of St. Thomas in Minneapolis, sums it up: “The façade of the statement that incarceration in the interest of public safety has been knocked over.”
