This will become a problem
But elsewhere in the country, compassionate release is a different story: Nearly 50% of compassionate release motions decided by the federal court in Massachusetts and more than 60% decided by the court in Oregon were approved during the same time period -- including some for inmates with far less serious medical conditions than Estrada-Elias.
Federal judges in all of these districts are applying the same laws, which allow compassionate release in "extraordinary and compelling" cases. But those wide disparities show that whether defendants get released early during the pandemic has had almost as much to do with which courts are hearing their motion as it does with the facts of their cases, legal advocates and researchers say.
The compassionate release process, expanded by Congress in a landmark 2018 criminal justice reform bill, has acted as a safety valve for the federal prison system during the pandemic, with more than 3,600 inmates being released in 2020 and the first half of 2021. But it has given judges broad discretion to interpret which sentences should be reduced, leading to a national patchwork of jarringly different approval rates between federal courts.
Framed as a "why won't this idiot judge let this 90-year old dying man out of prison?" but the piece shows too many are likely being released too soon.
https://www.cnn.com/2021/09/30/us/covid-prison-inmates-compassionate-release-invs/index.html
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