CARES Act Home Confinement: How COVID-19 Sent Some Federal Prisoners Home

Update (October 2026): This bill became law as part of the CARES Act on March 27, 2020. The expanded home confinement power lasted only during the COVID-19 emergency period, which is now over. The BOP can no longer send new people home under it. But in April 2023, the Justice Department adopted a final rule letting people already placed on CARES Act home confinement stay there for the rest of their sentence if they follow the rules. Today, home confinement is governed by the normal limits in 18 U.S.C. § 3624(c)(2), plus First Step Act earned time credits.

What Congress did in March 2020

On March 25, 2020, the U.S. Senate passed a bill letting the Federal Bureau of Prisons (BOP) send more people to home confinement to slow the spread of COVID-19. The bill also allowed free video visits while that power was in use.

Home confinement means serving the rest of a prison sentence at home, under BOP supervision.

What the bill said

The power kicked in only if the Attorney General found that "emergency conditions will materially affect the functioning of the Bureau." Then the BOP Director could lengthen the maximum time a prisoner could spend on home confinement under 18 U.S.C. § 3624(c)(2), "as the Director determines appropriate."

Normally, the BOP may place someone on home confinement for only 10 percent of the sentence or six months, whichever is less.

Our concerns at the time

It was not clear how much the BOP would use this power.

The BOP has often been slow to use home confinement. For example, the First Step Act renewed a pilot program that lets some nonviolent prisoners age 60 and older serve the rest of their sentence at home after serving two-thirds of it. But the BOP read "two-thirds" narrowly and did not count good conduct time toward that two-thirds, even though it counts good time in most other decisions.

The bill gave the BOP Director full discretion over whether to use the new power, so we had little confidence the BOP would use it widely. And it would end when the crisis ended. It was unclear whether people sent home would have to go back to prison afterward. (As noted above, the 2023 rule settled that: they can stay if they follow the rules.)

We also worried that this language, added to the Senate bill at the last minute, was a "Trojan horse" the Justice Department would use to oppose compassionate release motions. Compassionate release is a request asking a judge to cut a sentence for "extraordinary and compelling reasons." DOJ could argue that judges should leave COVID-19 decisions to the BOP instead.

What happened next

When we wrote this, the bill still needed a House vote and the President's signature. The House was expected to take it up the next day, and the President had said he would sign it.

The House passed the bill and the President signed it on March 27, 2020.

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