About 4,500 people on home confinement, used as a way to release some incarcerated people as Covid-19 roars through facilities, face the possibility of being returned to prison once the pandemic recedes.
“It upsets me to be home doing all the right things and now they talk about I may go back,” Paulette Martin, 74, said.
“It upsets me to be home doing all the right things and now they talk about I may go back,” said Paulette Martin, 74, who lives with her son and his family in West Virginia. Kevin Ring, president of Families Against Mandatory Minimums, said his organization had been urging the Biden administration to"stop this nightmare" since January.
He wears an ankle monitor and his days are restricted by rules, but he said he is happy to be out of prison. An ankle monitor doesn’t stop him from playing with his grandchildren, ages 3, 6 and 7. "We’re working on 'Jingle Bells' now and 'Old MacDonald,'" Martin said."She sings, too. The sister’s got soul."
Though the drug test itself takes five minutes, Martin said, at times the lengthy waits can make her visit last for up to five hours.Some people on home confinement and their advocates also complain about the lack of universal rules or procedures and the lack of skills by some contractors who provide monitoring and supervision of home confinement.
“I’m waiting to see if I have to go back,” she said. “That disturbs me, waking up every day not knowing whether I’m going back or not.”