Judges may get more power to free prisoners

WASHINGTON — Congress is poised to allow guidelines to go into effect Nov. 1 that would give federal judges greater power to exercise what is known as “compassionate releases” of federal inmates.

Such releases are typically for inmates who are terminally ill and those so profoundly disabled that they can no longer care for themselves.

But advocates for inmates say the way the statute is carried out is anything but compassionate. Few terminally ill inmates are approved for release, and the bureaucracy is such that even when people are approved, they often die before they get out. They also contend that prison officials have misconstrued the original intent of Congress and interpreted the grounds for release much too narrowly.

Some legal experts argue that the original intent of the law was to cover much more than health concerns, and that it should be used for a range of purposes, such as rewarding prisoners for acts of heroism or assisting the government, giving them the benefit of later changes in applicable laws, or eliminating disparities in sentences they received compared with co-defendants.

One of the proposed guidelines would allow for early release of incarcerated women with minor children in case of death or incapacitation of family members capable of caring for the children.

Whether the Bureau of Prisons will go along is not clear. Although the so-called compassionate releases must be ordered by federal judges, the Justice Department’s prisons bureau is the gatekeeper under the law in bringing requests for early release to the courts, so its cooperation is crucial.

A Justice Department official, commenting on the proposed guidelines last year, called them “an excess of permissiveness” that could be “an incitement to prisoners” to file lawsuits.

The new guidelines, developed by the congressionally chartered U.S. Sentencing Commission, would empower judges to commute sentences in “extraordinary and compelling” circumstances.

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