Senate Approves Legislation Enhancing Monitoring of Federal Prisons Following Increased Reports of Sexual Abuse – One America News Network
OAN Staff Taylor Tinsley
6:14 PM – Thursday, July 11, 2024
On Wednesday, the Senate unanimously passed bipartisan legislation to strengthen federal prison oversight.
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Senator Jon Ossoff (D-Ga.) first introduced the bill in 2022 while spearheading an investigation with Senator Ron Johnson (R-Wis.), which he said revealed an urgent need to overhaul federal prison oversight.
“The human rights crisis behind bars in the United States is a stain on America’s conscience,” said Ossoff.
The investigation’s findings later revealed that two-thirds of women housed in federal prisons had been sexually assaulted by staff.
Inmate sexual assault and mistreatment is said to be perpetuated by a severe staffing shortage and overcrowded prisons nationwide.
The act will require the Department of Justice’s Inspector General to conduct risk-based inspections of the Federal Bureau of Prison’s (BOP) 122 facilities, which manage 160,000 people altogether, to provide recommendations to address issues and give a risk score. Higher-risk facilities will be inspected more often.
The Inspector General must report all of its findings to Congress and the public, and the BOP must respond with a corrective action plan within 60 days.
The legislation would also set up a secure hotline and online form where an independent ombudsman would collect, investigate, and report claims to the Attorney General and Congress.
Hopefully, this will help alleviate women who come forward from being retaliated against, which incarcerated women from a now-closed facility in Dublin, California, continue to submit complaints for.
605 women were transferred from FCI Dublin in California to facilities across the country or were released after eight correctional officers and the prison warden faced federal convictions for having sexual contact with dozens of female prisoners.
One prisoner transferred from Dublin to the Federal Medical Center Carswell in Texas, which already has allegations of staffers committing sexual assault, claimed that both officers have made it clear that their lives do not matter.
Another FCI Dublin inmate transferred to FCI Hazelton in West Virginia, who similarly dealt with its own abuse allegations, was told not to expect a callback from a job she had applied to.
In another instance, according to Catherin Sevcenko, who is on the National Council for Incarcerated & Formerly Incarcerated Women and Girls, Dublin inmates were even held at gunpoint on the bus ride over to Hazelton after one of the women was accused of trying to slip out of her handcuffs.
“The driver pulled over by the side of the road, and the guard said, ‘Well, let’s take care of this Dublin problem right now’, went and got their rifles, and said, ‘Let’s just shoot ’em all,’” Sevcenko said. “They actually cocked the rifles, terrifying the women who really believed that they were about to die.”
As senators continue their efforts to hold federal prisons accountable for their lack of oversight, the bill now rests in President Biden’s hands as it heads to his desk for signature.
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