Eligible older and terminally ill prisoners could seek court-ordered home detention

A court could replace remaining prison time with supervised release that requires home detention. The provision covers prisoners who qualify as eligible elderly or terminally ill offenders. The court would have to consider federal sentencing factors and find that the prisoner meets the program’s eligibility rules. A request would not guarantee release. Prisoners could file on or after whichever comes first: completing administrative appeals or 30 days from submitting their request to the warden, regardless of its status.

The elderly-prisoner eligibility rule would use half the sentence, reduced by credited good-behavior time, as its time-served threshold. The elderly and terminally ill eligibility provisions would expressly include offenses under District of Columbia law. Meeting the time-served threshold alone would not guarantee home detention.

Prisoners could ask a court to reduce their sentence through compassionate release, including for offenses committed before November 1, 1987. Compassionate release is a process for seeking a shorter prison sentence; the wording expressly covers offenses committed before November 1, 1987. Permission to ask the court would not guarantee a shorter sentence. Prisoners could file on or after the earlier of completing administrative appeals or 30 days from submitting their request to the warden, regardless of its status.