Jesse Jackson Jr. released from halfway house

Former U.S. Rep. Jesse Jackson Jr. has been released from a halfway house in Baltimore, where he’d been living since his release from an Alabama federal prison in March.

Jackson was released from the Volunteers of America halfway house shortly before 9 a.m. EDT Monday and left in one of two black SUVs that were waiting for him.

Jackson, 50, a former Democratic congressman from Chicago, entered prison on Oct. 29, 2013, after he was convicted for misuse of about $750,000 in campaign funds.

He spent the money on vacations, furs, celebrity memorabilia, everyday goods and two mounted elk heads.

He entered a halfway house in Baltimore on March 26 after spending about 17 months in federal prisons in North Carolina and Alabama.

His wife, Sandi, 51, a former Chicago alderman, has been ordered to spend one year in prison and may land in a federal facility in Marianna, Fla. She is to surrender voluntarily 30 days after Jackson is no longer under Bureau of Prisons supervision Sept. 20.

Sandi Jackson was convicted for failing to report most of the couple’s haul on income tax returns. They have a home near Washington’s Dupont Circle and another on Chicago’s South Side.

Jesse Jackson Jr., son of the Rev. Jesse Jackson, served in Congress from 1995 until he quit in 2012 amid a federal investigation. Sandi Jackson represented the 7th Ward on the South Side from 2007 until she resigned shortly before the two entered guilty pleas in February 2013.

Home confinement lets offenders “assume increasing levels of responsibility while … providing sufficient restrictions to promote community safety and convey the sanctioning value of the sentence,” according to a Justice Department publication, the Legal Resource Guide to the Federal Bureau of Prisons.

The guide says inmates on home confinement must remain at their residence during nonworking hours and may be monitored either by phone or an electronic device.

Ed Ross, a spokesman for the Bureau of Prisons, said that he could not discuss the specifics of Jackson’s case, but generally, inmates on home detention are expected to work or look for work unless a medical condition rules that out.

The Justice Department guide says inmates’ whereabouts and curfew compliance are monitored either through daily phone calls and periodic in-person contacts, or with electronic monitoring, usually involving an ankle bracelet.