Bipartisan senators introduce bill to increase federal prison oversight

A group of bipartisan senators has introduced legislation to increase oversight at federal prisons.

The Federal Prisons Accountability Act of 2023 would require the president to seek Senate advice and consent when appointing the Bureau of Prisons (BOP) director. In addition, the BOP director’s tenure would be limited to a single, 10-year term, according to a release from Sen. Chuck Grassley (R-Iowa).

Grassley said making the BOP director a Senate confirmed position would “bring badly needed transparency and accountability to the federal prison system.”

“The Director of the Bureau of Prisons leads thousands of employees and expends a massive budget. It’s a big job with even bigger consequences should mismanagement or abuse weasel its way into the system,” Grassley said.

Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) said the employees of the Bureau of Prisons “deserve” the oversight the bill would provide.

“The thousands of Americans — and hundreds of Kentuckians — employed by the Bureau of Prisons deserve Senate oversight and an added layer of protection from harm,” McConnell said.

Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) heads to a luncheon July 13.

The BOP director is appointed now by the attorney general, without Senate consideration or confirmation, and the bureau has come under heavy criticism in recent years.

Former Director Michael Carvajal resigned from the position in January 2022. Calls for his removal increased after an Associated Press report found that more than 100 BOP employees had been convicted or sentenced for crimes committed since 2019.

The report highlighted several other issues, including the rapid spread of COVID-19 inside federal prisons, escapes, deaths, staffing issues and poor emergency response times.

A month after Carvajal’s resignation, Sens. Jon Ossoff (D-Ga.) and Mike Braun (R-Ind.) launched the bipartisan Senate Prison Policy Working Group to investigate the prison system, with the intent of finding bipartisan solutions to strengthen oversight and improve communication.

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Following a 10-month investigation that revealed rampant sexual abuse of female prisoners and a failure to prevent recurring sexual abuse, Ossoff introduced the Federal Prison Oversight Act. The bill would have required the Justice Department’s inspector general to conduct inspections of the BOP’s 122 correctional facilities, provide recommendations to problems and assign each facility a risk score, but the bill never went any further than being introduced.

Seven months later, in April of this year, a revised version of the Federal Prison Oversight Act was introduced, building on the previous bill. It would have, among other actions, created a hotline for prisoners to report misconduct. The bill was read twice and referred to the Senate Judiciary Committee, but no further actions were taken.

Now, three months later, the latest effort to reform federal prisons would subject the BOP director to the same congressional scrutiny as other law enforcement agency chiefs such as the director of the FBI, which McConnell said is necessary.

“The Director of the Bureau of Prisons oversees more than 34,000 employees and a multi-billion dollar budget, and should be subject to Senate review and confirmation as well,” McConnell said.

Grassley introduced the bill with McConnell, along with Sens. Kyrsten Sinema (I-Ariz.), Rand Paul (R-Ky.), Mike Lee (R-Utah), John Cornyn (R-Texas), Marco Rubio (R-Fla.) and Marsha Blackburn (R-Tenn.) as well as Braun and Ossoff.