Natl: Prison Abuse Commission Releases Report

After a year-long inquiry, the Commission on Safety and Abuse in America's Prisons has released Confronting Confinement, a report covering four distinct areas: dangerous conditions of confinement — violence, poor health care, and inappropriate segregation — that can also endanger corrections officers and the public; the challenges facing labor and management; weak oversight of correctional facilities; and serious flaws in the available data about violence and abuse.

After a year-long inquiry, the Commission on Safety and Abuse in America's Prisons has released Confronting Confinement, a report covering four distinct areas: dangerous conditions of confinement — violence, poor health care, and inappropriate segregation — that can also endanger corrections officers and the public; the challenges facing labor and management; weak oversight of correctional facilities; and serious flaws in the available data about violence and abuse.

The commission's work included four public hearings in cities around the country where nearly 100 people testified, visits to jails and prisons, conversations with people about their experience of life behind bars, discussions with current and former corrections officials and experts working outside the profession, and a thorough review of available research and data. 

Among thirty concrete, practical reforms, the commission recommends:

• Increased investment at state and local levels to recruit, train, and retain skilled, capable workers at all levels.
• Expanding the capacity of the National Institute of Corrections to work with states and localities to create a positive institutional culture in corrections facilities.
• Creating an independent agency in every state to oversee prisons and jails and changing federal law to narrow the scope of the Prison Litigation Reform Act.
• Developing standardized reporting nationwide on violence and abuse behind bars so that corrections officials, lawmakers, and the public can have reliable measures of violence and monitor efforts to make facilities safer.
• A re-investment in programming for prisoners to prevent violence inside facilities and reduce recidivism after release.
• Changing federal law to extend Medicaid and Medicare reimbursement to correctional facilities and ending prisoner co-pays for medical care, reforms necessary to protect the public health.

The report and much more information about the commission is available at the website for the Commission on Safety and Abuse in America's Prisons.