Attorney General William P. Barr Monday ordered U.S. attorneys to only pursue pretrial detention for individuals charged with serious crimes or posing a flight risk to reduce the strain on federal prisons caused by the coronavirus pandemic.
“We have an obligation to minimize these risks to the extent possible while remaining faithful to the [Bail Reform Act’s] text and discharging our overriding obligation to protect the public,” Mr. Barr wrote in a memo. “That means you should consider not seeking detention to the same degree we would under normal circumstances.”
Mr. Barr said U.S. attorneys must weigh the gravity of a defendant’s crime with their vulnerability when deciding whether or not to request bail.
“Each time a new person is added to a jail, it presents at least some risk to the personnel who operate that facility and to the people incarcerated therein,” Mr. Barr wrote in a memo. “It also presents risk to the individual being remanded into custody.”
The attorney general also ordered U.S. attorneys to review previous cases in which a court denied bail to see if any of those defendants could be sprung in the wake of the coronavirus pandemic.
But Mr. Barr also cautioned U.S. attorneys to consider the risk of an individual released from a federal facility spreading COVID-19, the respiratory disease caused by the novel coronavirus, to their community.
“In assessing whether it is appropriate to revisit that determination, you should also consider the potential risk that the defendant will spread COVID-19 in his or her community upon release,” he said. “At the same time that the defendant’s risk from COVID-19 should be a significant factor in your analysis.”
The two-page memo expands the attorney general’s efforts to reduce the prison population to avoid a larger coronavirus outbreak.
As of Monday afternoon, 138 inmates and 59 staff members at federal complexes across the country have tested positive for the coronavirus, according to the Bureau of Prisons.
Mr. Barr last week ordered federal prison officials to increase their efforts to release elderly inmates and those with preexisting health conditions at three complexes besieged by the coronavirus.
In a separate memo, Mr. Barr urged sending home vulnerable inmates at facilities in Danbury, Connecticut, Oakdale, Louisiana, and Elkton, Ohio, because of the serious number of infections at those prisons.
The memo Monday goes a step further because Mr. Barr is now trying to reduce the number of defendants sent to prisons. Although he’s cultivated a law-and-order reputation, Mr. Barr told the U.S. attorneys they must “adapt to the current difficult circumstances” of the coronavirus.
• Jeff Mordock can be reached at jmordock@washingtontimes.com.
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