Maybe now, finally, sunlight will pierce the concealing walls of the embattled and scorned Bureau of Prisons (BOP).
After decades of complaints and years of investigations, Congress has approved a strict level of scrutiny on an agency in crisis that is responsible for the lives of almost 160,000 inmates in 122 prisons.
Last week, with overwhelming bipartisan support during an era of nasty partisanship, the Senate voted for the Federal Prison Oversight Act with no senator objecting. The House vote in May was nearly unanimous, 392-2, with only Republican Reps. Paul A. Gosar (Ariz.) and Matt Rosendale (Mont.) dissenting.
The bill, which must be signed by President Biden, will not immediately improve BOP’s many endemic problems, notably understaffing and failing facilities. Its significance is in the transparency it imposes on an agency that houses a population unable to advocate for itself.
“They always say sunlight is the best disinfectant. So, it will allow transparency as well as accountability,” said Matthew Charles, who spent 22 years locked in federal prisons on drug charges. Other advocates agreed. Now, as a senior policy adviser with Families Against Mandatory Minimums, Charles pushed the legislation that could have helped when he was incarcerated. BOP allows problems to be covered up, he said, and “never really checks itself.”
Coverups will be more difficult under the legislation. The Justice Department’s Office of Inspector General (OIG) will conduct comprehensive, periodic inspections of all correctional facilities. Those inspections will include inmate confinement conditions and staff working conditions. Other areas covered are prison deaths, use of lockdowns, solitary confinement, access to legal assistance, health care, and allegations of threats, abuse and violence against inmates and employees.
The inspector general’s office will assign each institution a risk score, with higher risk facilities being inspected more often, and report its findings to Congress and the public. BOP must respond with a corrective action plan within 60 days.
Colette S. Peters, who became BOP director in August 2022, welcomes the tougher scrutiny, but with a caveat.
“I think the oversight act really enhances the work that we’ve been engaged in over the last two years,” she said in a video call. “One of my concerns is that we’re going to have this additional oversight without the resources to respond in an effective and efficient way. And I don’t want to be left flat-footed, not being able to respond to [the inspector general’s] additional oversight.”
Inspector General Michael E. Horowitz already is familiar with the many prison problems. His inspectors documented them in report after report. In 2023, they issued more than a dozen reports with recommendations for prison improvements.
“I applaud Congress for passing the ‘Federal Prison Oversight Act,’ and for the overwhelming bipartisan show of support to improve oversight of the Federal Bureau of Prisons (BOP),” Horowitz said in a statement. “Last year, the OIG launched an unannounced inspection program of BOP facilities. The inspections we conducted have identified critical shortcomings in BOP operations, including staff shortages in health and education programs, infrastructure in desperate need of repair, and moldy and rotten food being served to inmates.”
Another form of transparency will be a BOP ombudsman to take complaints from employees, inmates and others, “regarding issues that may adversely affect the health, safety, welfare, or rights of incarcerated people or staff,” according to the bill. The ombudsman must “provide multiple internal ways for incarcerated individuals in covered facilities to privately submit to the Ombudsman complaints and inquiries.” Online forms and a telephone hotline will be provided for complaints from prisoner advocates and family members. The ombudsman would not investigate topics related to the conviction of incarcerated people.
“I think this is the most significant prison reform legislation passed by Congress in many years,” Sen. Jon Ossoff (D-Ga.) said during an interview. He is the lead sponsor of the Senate legislation and organized four Senate Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations hearings on issues affecting federal prisoners in 2022.
“One investigation, which found that in two-thirds of federal prisons that house female inmates, inmates had been sexually abused by members of the staff,” he continued. “Another investigation focused on the U.S. penitentiary in Atlanta, which found that for nearly a decade, virtually unchecked, corruption and abuse had been ongoing at the facility. BOP headquarters had been warned repeatedly of it and failed to take action. … The Federal Bureau of Prisons over time has become a diseased bureaucracy, with crumbling infrastructure. And, nationwide, incarcerated people are among the most abused, neglected and voiceless populations in the country.”
Ossoff worked methodically to secure bipartisan support long before the final vote.
“Investigations into our Federal prisons produced shocking and alarming findings,” Republican co-sponsor Sen. Shelley Moore Capito’s (W.Va.) said in a statement. “I was incredibly upset to read reports of misconduct by some prison officials, see the conditions of some facilities, and hear stories about the abuse of inmates.”
Their legislation is designed to expose those problems, not fund the solutions. It could, however, provide the congressional groundwork and data necessary to increase funding for badly needed staffing and improved infrastructure.
Brandy Moore-White, president of the American Federation of Government Employees Council of Prison Locals, welcomed “more transparency to the working conditions of our staff,” but the union leader also has a caveat. “While this bill requires reporting about our staffing, it does not fix the core issue,” she said. “Staffing is the root of almost every issue we are facing.”
But more people and better buildings alone won’t solve an agency culture so rotten that a warden and a chaplain at BOP’s Dublin, Calif., prison were imprisoned after sexually abusing prisoners.
“I don’t presume that this legislation will single-handedly or instantaneously transform a broken federal prison system into one that is perfectly safe and perfectly functioning,” Ossoff said. “But it is, a very important and historic step forward.”
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