Federal Prison Oversight Act

Floor Speech

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Mr. OSSOFF. 3019.

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Mr. OSSOFF. I further ask that the bill be considered read a third time and passed and that the motion to reconsider be considered made and laid upon the table with no intervening action or debate.

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Mr. OSSOFF. Mr. President, how did it come to pass that in a nation whose founding document guarantees due process and civil rights and prohibits cruel and unusual punishment, a Federal prison in Dublin, CA, would become so notorious for the endemic sexual abuse of female inmates by prison staff that it would be known as the rape club--rape club--sexual assault and abuse of Federal inmates by the warden, by the chaplain.

Senator Johnson of Wisconsin and I led a bipartisan investigation of sexual assault in Federal prisons. We found that in two-thirds--two- thirds--of Federal prisons that housed female inmates, inmates had been sexually assaulted by members of prison staff.

We found that at the U.S. penitentiary in Atlanta, in my home State of Georgia, for nearly a decade, unchecked corruption and civil rights abuses had been ongoing with the knowledge of the leadership of the Bureau of Prisons, and no effective action had been taken to address them. Pretrial detainees sleeping in paper pajamas were denied access to counsel, denied access to hygiene products, denied access to fresh air--pretrial, presumptively innocent Federal detainees.

The human rights crisis behind bars in the United States is a stain on America's conscience.

We just passed the most significant Federal prison reform legislation in many years, and now it is on the way to the desk of the President of the United States. I am grateful to my colleague Senator Braun of Indiana for joining me in offering and introducing the Federal Prison Oversight Act, which has now been passed by the Senate and the House.

This is landmark prison reform legislation. It will require the inspector general of the Department of Justice to undertake ongoing and regular inspections of every single Federal prison in the United States.

It will establish an independent ombudsman at the Department of Justice to investigate the health, safety, welfare, and rights of incarcerated people and staff.

It will also create a secure hotline and an online forum for family members, friends, and representatives of incarcerated Americans to submit complaints and inquiries.

It will require the IG to report the findings from its routine inspections of Federal prisons and recommendations to Congress and to the public and require the Bureau of Prisons to respond to all inspection reports within 60 days with a corrective action plan.

We were able to pass this legislation because we worked together, Senator Johnson and I, leading multiple bipartisan investigations of human rights abuses and corruption in the Federal prison system and Senator Braun and I forming the Prison Policy Working Group to develop bipartisan solutions like this one.

I am grateful to my colleague from Georgia in the U.S. House, Representative McBath, for her tireless efforts to shepherd this bill to passage in the U.S. House, and today, we passed it on the floor of the Senate. I am grateful for the support of my colleagues.

Let the leadership of the Bureau of Prisons know that the U.S. Congress will no longer tolerate the wanton and ongoing and widespread abuse of those who are in their custody.

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