Earlier this month we wrote about a new U.S. Bureau of Prisons policy implemented at the behest of Attorney General Ashcroft. The effect of the new policy, according to Ashcroftwould be that white collar offenders with short sentences would no longer be able to go directly to a half-way house. They would have to serve their sentence in a federal prison. For the past decade, the BOP has been allowing such offenders to go directly to a halfway house.

"In a December memorandum to Kathleen Hawk Sawyer, the director of the Bureau of Prisons, Mr. Ashcroft said that the practice violated federal sentencing laws that require imprisonment and that it offered favorable treatment to white-collar criminals. Based on his memorandum, a new policy was instituted, which is available <a href="The new policy is available here. It provides, "When an offender has received a sentence of imprisonment, the Bureau of Prisons does not have general authority, either upon the recommendation of the sentencing judge or otherwise, to place such an offender in community confinement at the outset of his sentence or to transfer him from prison to community confinement at any time BOP chooses during the course of his sentence."

Only, it's not the white collar offenders, e.g., low-level Enron types, who are being forced out of the halfway houses and back into prison facilities.

Philadelphia criminal defense lawyer and post-conviction/appeal specialist Peter Goldberger, writes in to say:

The new policy is not only a legal sham but more important is a political stunt -- and a cruel one at that. No big shot white collar defendant gets direct Community Corrections (CCC) designation, either because the guidelines come out too high from the dollars of loss or because of "central inmate monitoring" triggered by notoriety of the case. Direct CCC designations are mostly little nobody cases, borderline in terms of being worth prosecuting in the first place, who were then on the tipping point between some prison and straight probation, They go to CCC so they can work and make money for restitution and family support. Many are single parents (mostly mothers) whose ability to work while serving time allows the kids to stay with a family member who otherwise couldn't afford it, rather than go into foster care or adoption. The idea that the present system is not punitive enough on the lowest-level offenders is ridiculous.

What's more, defense lawyers have been filing challenges to the new policy in federal courts around the country --and winning. Several judges around the country have granted defense requests for temporary injunctions preventing the offenders from being moved out of the halfway houses.

The National Association of Criminal Defense Lawyers (NACDL) is providing assistance to lawyers and updates on the challenges here.