Diverse Commission Reaches Consensus
“A year ago, a group of individuals with little in common promised to recommend strategies for operating correctional facilities that serve our country's best interests and reflect our highest values. Today, we speak in a single voice about the problems, our nation's ability to overcome them, and the risks for all of us if we fail to act. . . . What happens inside jails and prisons does not stay inside jails and prisons. We must create safe and productive conditions of confinement not only because it is the right thing to do, but because it influences the safety, health, and prosperity of us all.”
—from Confronting Confinement
On June 8, 2006, the Commission released Confronting Confinement, a report on violence and abuse in U.S. jails and prisons, the broad impact of those problems on public safety and public health, and how correctional facilities nationwide can become safer and more effective. The report reflects the Commission's work over more than a year — an inquiry that featured 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.
Senate Judiciary Subcommittee on Corrections and Rehabilitation gathers to hear testimony from Commissioners about key findings and recommendations in the report on Thursday, June 8, 2006 — more >>
The report covers four 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. In response to these problems, the Commission offers 30 pragmatic recommendations for reform — many of them based on good practices and exemplary leadership in particular correctional facilities around the country.
Perhaps most impressive, the work of the 20-member Commission and this report represents consensus about controversial issues and solutions. The Commission reached agreement among people whom one would expect to disagree: those who run facilities and systems and those who litigate on behalf of prisoners, for example; liberals and conservatives; Democrats and Republicans. That consensus is a sign that real reform of prisons and jails in the United States is within reach.
As the report states, "There are nearly 5,000 adult prisons and jails in the United States — no two exactly alike. Some of them are unraveling or barely surviving, while others are succeeding and working in the public's interest. There is no reason why health and safety should be limited to only some correctional facilities and no reason why even the best institutions cannot make a larger contribution to public safety and public health."
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In Support of
Confronting Confinement
“For the vast majority of inmates prison is a temporary, not a final, destination. The experiences inmates have in prison — whether violent or redemptive — do not stay within prison walls, but spill over into the rest of society. Federal, state, and local governments must address the problems faced by their respective institutions and develop tangible and attainable solutions.”
—Senator Tom Coburn (R-OK), Chair, Senate Judiciary Subcommittee on Corrections and Rehabilitation
“Most of us in Congress and most Americans do not spend a lot of time thinking about the conditions of the prisons across our nation, but we should. We should, because, in the words of the Commission on Safety and Abuse in America’s Prisons, ‘What happens inside jails and prisons does not stay inside jails and prisons.’ And, as the Russian author Fyodor Dostoevsky once reflected, ‘The degree of civilization in a society can be judged by entering its prisons.’”
—Senator Richard J. Durbin (D-IL), Ranking Member of the U.S. Senate Judiciary Subcommittee on Corrections and Rehabilitation Subcommittee
“As a former prosecutor, I believe strongly in securing tough and appropriate prison sentences for people who break our laws. But it is also important that we do everything we can to ensure that, when these people get out of prison, they enter our communities as productive members of society, so we can start to reverse the dangerous cycles of recidivism and violence. The Commission on Safety and Abuse in America’s Prisons has today proposed a set of recommendations to make the country’s prisons operate more effectively for the good of the country’s prison employees, the prisoners who will be reentering society, and the cities and towns they will be rejoining.”
—Senator Patrick Leahy (D-VT), Ranking Member of the U.S. Senate Judiciary Committee and Member of the Subcommittee on Corrections and Rehabilitation
“The Commission’s report, released today, provides a valuable and candid look at the current state of our nation’s jails and prisons, identifying a variety of structural and administrative problems within our corrections system…[and] innovative yet viable recommendations for prison reform that Congress should seriously consider. The comprehensive findings and recommendations in this report are due in large part to the accomplished professionals who make up the Commission itself, and I commend them for their dedication.”
—Senator Russell D. Feingold (D-WI), Member of the U.S. Senate Judiciary Subcommittee on Corrections and Rehabilitation
“These are important issues for our constituents. I believe that county officials will find the Commission's work useful. I was particularly impressed by the Commission's recommendation for enhanced partnerships between states and local governments to reduce overcrowding in our jails and prisons, the focus on the public health crisis in corrections, and the pressing need to keep the non-violent mentally ill out of jail.”
—Donald Murray, Senior Legislative Director, National Association of Counties
“All of our prisons and jails must be places of hope and positive change, not despair and violence: hope for the prisoners, for the people who work in them, and for the safety and health of our communities. The work of the Commission on Safety and Abuse in America's Prisons goes a long way to addressing why violence, abuse, and hopelessness are features of life in many prisons and jails and offers wise and caring suggestions for a better way of doing things.”
—Heather Gonzales, Policy Analyst for the National Association of Evangelicals
“The Commission's work presents an opportunity for public discussion about issues that Corrections professionals have been working on for years. The Association of State Correctional Administrators pledges to work together with the American Correctional Association, National Sheriff's Association, American Jail Association, North American Association of Wardens and Superintendents and other vitally interested parties to pursue the safe, stable, disciplined, productive and organized correctional environments promoted by the Vera Commission.”
—Association of State Correctional Administrators
“This is the most important report on conditions in America's prisons and jails for decades. If the Commission's recommendations are implemented, prisons will be safer places, and so will the communities to which most prisoners ultimately return.”
—Elizabeth Alexander, Executive Director, National Prison Project of the American Civil Liberties Union
“The conclusions of Confronting Confinement make clear that the U.S. corrections system is facing a serious human rights crisis. In a society governed by the rule of law and a basic belief in human dignity, incarceration is supposed to mean loss of liberty, not violence and humiliation.”
—Lovisa Stannow, Co-Executive Director of Stop Prisoner Rape
“We applaud the Commission's attention to the treatment of Latino prisoners, the impact of incarceration on our communities, and the need to develop greater understanding of and respect for cultural difference in prisons and jails. The Commission's humane and public safety-minded recommendations are ones that the Latino community can embrace.”
—Janet Murguia, President and CEO, National Council of La Raza
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Download the report
Download a Summary
[English / Spanish / Portuguese]
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Highlights
Among 30 practical reforms, the Commission recommends:
- 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.
- Reducing the use of high-security segregation and ending the release of prisoners directly from these units to the streets, which contributes to recidivism.
- 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 help states and localities foster 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.
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