We post news and comment on federal criminal justice issues, focused primarily on trial and post-conviction matters, legislative initiatives, and sentencing issues.
We thoroughly enjoyed our week off (our first in several years). Now, we’re back at it…
“ACCOUNTABILITY, IF YOU CAN KEEP IT”
The Senate passed legislation yesterday to bring adult oversight to what the Associated Press calls “the crisis-plagued” Federal Bureau of Prisons.
The Federal Prison Oversight Act (S. 1401), sponsored by Sens. Jon Ossoff (D.GA), Mike Braun (R-IN), Richard Durbin (D-IL), Shelley Caputo (R-WV), Joe Manchin (D-WV) and Tim Kaine (D-VA), sailed through the Senate on a unanimous vote.
The House of Representatives passed the same legislation as H.R. 3019 last May by a lopsided 392-2 vote. The bill now goes to President Joe Biden for signature.
The bill provides for the appointment of an ombudsman within the Dept of Justice who will investigate the health, safety, welfare, and rights of incarcerated people and staff. The ombudsman would establish a secure hotline and online form for family members, friends, and representatives of incarcerated people to submit complaints and inquiries. The measure prohibits BOP retaliation against those who complain or institute any investigation or inspection under this bill.
FPOA also requires the DOJ Inspector General to conduct risk-based inspections of all 122 federal prisons, identify deficiencies, recommend changes to address shortcomings and assign each facility a risk score. Higher-risk facilities would then receive more frequent inspections. The IG must report its findings and recommendations to Congress and the public, and the BOP will be required to respond to inspection reports with a corrective action plan within 60 days.
The Associated Press — whose reporters Michael Balsamo and Michael Sisak deserve kudos for their relentless reporting on BOP peccadillos — said that the bill comes “in the wake of rampant sexual abuse and other criminal misconduct by staff, chronic understaffing, escapes and high-profile [inmate] deaths.”
Ossoff, Durbin, and Braun launched the Senate Bipartisan Prison Policy Working Group in February 2022. That group’s efforts resulted in the bill’s passage in the Senate. Reps Kelly Armstrong (R-ND) and Lucy McBath (D-GA) backed the House version of the bill.
“We applaud today’s actions by the Senate in passing this landmark bill, which paves the way to ensuring conditions in prisons are safer and more humane for staff and incarcerated people alike,” Heather Rice-Minus, president and CEO of Prison Fellowship, said in a statement. Prison Fellowship, a Christian nonprofit serving currently and formerly incarcerated people and their families, blitzed Capitol Hill three weeks ago with a “Day of Action,” during which over 40 Prison Fellowship employees, most of which were formerly incarcerated, visited 29 congressional offices to urge passage of FPOA.
Benjamin Franklin famously answered a question posed to him by Elizabeth Willing Powel – who asked him after the Constitutional Convention in 1789 whether the document delivered a republic or a monarchy – with the response, “A republic, if you can keep it.”
The FPOA establishes within the DOJ a mechanism intended to make the BOP accountable for its management of the custody of 158,646 inmates. True, under Director Colette Peters, we eschew “inmate” for the “woker” term “Adult in Custody.”
Catchy name (and we all love acronyms). However, those AICs continue to suffer sexual abuse, harassment, gross mistreatment, and denial of their statutory right to release and placement in community programs. It brings to mind a pseudo-Franklin quip (that is actually just a line in the Broadway plan-turned-movie musical “1776”): It “is like calling an ox a bull. He’s thankful for the honor, but he’d much rather have restored what’s rightfully his.”
Calling inmates “AICs” so far has been both the most visible and the most hollow change ordered by Director Peters. It has not moved the needle on the treatment of the AICs (although the female inmates being bussed from FCI Dublin would probably have preferred being called “AICs” to being called “bitches.”
Congress may figure that FPOA solves its federal prison problem, but asking the DOJ – the same folks who have permitted the situation at its component agency BOP to fester and continue to impede judicial efforts to address BOP misconduct – to exercise “oversight” hardly ensures accountability.
We now may have BOP accountability. If we can keep it.
Associated Press, Congress OKs bill overhauling oversight of troubled federal Bureau of Prisons (July 10, 2024)
Federal Prison Oversight Act (S.1401)
Sen Jon Ossoff, Senate Passes Sens. Ossoff, Braun, & Durbin, Rep. McBath & Armstrong’s Bipartisan Federal Prison Oversight Act (July 10, 2024)
Federal Prison Oversight Act (HR 3019)
Prison Fellowship, Prison Fellowship Applauds U.S. Senate for Passing the Federal Prison Oversight Act (July 10, 2024)
– Thomas L. Root