US President Joe Biden signed into law the Federal Prison Oversight Act Thursday which established an inspection process and ombudsman in the Department of Justice.
The act warrants that inspections conducted may be announced or unannounced, where each facility is assigned a risk score. Higher-risk facilities will receive more frequent inspections than other facilities. After the investigations conclude, the findings must be communicated to Congress and the public. The Bureau of Prisons must respond to these findings in 60 days with a corrective action plan.
The newly established ombudsman will receive complaints and decide, or decline, to undertake an investigation. The Bureau of Prisons is not allowed to retaliate against any individual who makes a complaint or is involved in any inspection. The Ombudsman is also tasked with educating incarcerated people and the public about the ombudsman’s function.
“The United States Congress will no longer tolerate the ongoing and widespread abuse of those who are in Federal Bureau of Prisons’ custody,” said Senator Jon Ossoff, who led the bipartisan investigations of the BOP as chair of the Senate Homeland Security Committee’s subcommittee on investigations and introduced the bill in 2022.
Federal Affairs Director for Justice Action Network JC Hendrickson also commented that bipartisan public safety policy is effective, highlighting that overseeing abuse and neglect is necessary to ensure that rehabilitation can be accomplished.
The signing of the act follows an Associated Press investigation exposing the poor living conditions within the US federal prison system. The report claimed that systemic issues persist in federal prison systems, such as sexual abuse of incarcerated people by employees, staffing shortages, Federal Prison workers convicted of crimes, and living conditions that led to the spread of COVID-19 during the pandemic. The investigation began following the 2019 suicide of Jeffrey Epstein.
This is not the first time oversight of the US federal Bureau of Prisons (BOP) has been established. In March, US District Judge Yvonne Gonzalez Rogers ordered a special master appointment to oversee the Federal Correctional Institute Dublin, describing it as a “dysfunctional mess that can no longer be tolerated.” The judge ruled that prison officers commit sexual misconduct and exploitation against inmates persistently and “BOP has lost the ability to manage with integrity and trust.”
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