The Congressional Record is a unique source of public documentation. It started in 1873, documenting nearly all the major and minor policies being discussed and debated.
“PRISON RAPE ELIMINATION ACT OF 2003” mentioning the U.S. Dept. of Justice was published in the Senate section on pages S9703 on July 22, 2003.
The publication is reproduced in full below:
PRISON RAPE ELIMINATION ACT OF 2003
Mr. KENNEDY. Mr. President, I commend the Senate for the bipartisan cooperation in approving the Prison Rape Elimination Act.
I especially commend my lead Republican co-sponsor, Senator Sessions and his dedicated staff, Andrea Sander, William Smith, and Ed Haden. It has been a privilege to work with Senator Sessions and the two lead sponsors of this legislation in the House, Congressmen Frank Wolf and Bobby Scott.
I commend as well the extraordinary coalition of churches, civil rights groups, and concerned citizens who made this achievement possible. The coalition includes Amnesty International, Human Rights Watch, the Justice Policy Institute, the NAACP, the National Association of Evangelicals, the National Council for La Raza, Prison Fellowship, Salvation Army, the Sentencing Project, the Southern Baptist Convention, and the Youth Law Center.
The coalition has been ably led by Michael Horowitz, a senior fellow at the Hudson Institute. I also commend Mariam Bell from Prison Fellowship and the Wilberforce Forum, Vincent Schiraldi from the Justice Policy Institute, Lara Stemple from Stop Prison Rape, and John Kaneb, the courageous citizen of Massachusetts whose unyielding effort and commitment to human rights has been invaluable to this legislation.
It has taken us nearly a century to get here. It was Winston Churchill who said in 1910 that the ``mood and temper of the public in regard to the treatment of crime and criminals is one of the most unfailing tests of the civilization of any country.''
Today, in 2003, we know that hundreds of thousands of inmates in our Nation--hundreds of thousands, not only convicted prisoners but pretrial detainees and immigration detainees as well--are victims of sexual assault each year. Of the 2 million prisoners in the United States, it is conservatively estimated that 1 in every 10 has been raped. According to a 1996 study, 22 percent of prisoners in Nebraska had been pressured or forced to have sex against their will. Human Rights Watch has reported ``shockingly high rates of sexual abuse'' in U.S. prisons.
Prison rape has devastating physical and psychological effects on its victims. It also has serious consequences for communities. Six hundred thousand inmates are released from prison or detention each year, and their brutalization clearly increases the likelihood that they will commit new crimes after they are released.
Infection rates for HIV, other sexually transmitted diseases, tuberculosis, and hepatitis are far greater for prisoners than for the population as a whole. Prison rape undermines the public health by contributing to the spread of these diseases, and often giving potential death sentences to its victims because of AIDS.
In 1994, the Supreme Court ruled that ``being violently assaulted in prison is simply not part of the penalty that criminal offenders pay for their offenses against society.'' Federal, State, and local government officials have a duty under the Constitution to prevent prison violence. Too often, however, officials fail to take obvious steps to protect vulnerable inmates.
The Prison Rape Elimination Act has been carefully drafted to address the crisis of prison rape, while still respecting the primary role of States and local governments in administering their prisons and jails. The act directs the Department of Justice to conduct an annual statistical analysis of the frequency and effects of prison rape. It establishes a special panel to conduct hearings on prison systems, specific prisons, and specific jails where the incidence of rape is extraordinarily high. It also directs the Attorney General to provide information, assistance, and training for Federal, State, and local authorities on the prevention, investigation, and punishment of prison rape. It authorizes $40 million in grants to strengthen the ability of State and local officials to prevent these abuses.
Finally, the act establishes a commission that will conduct hearings in the next 2 years and recommend national correctional standards on issues such as staff training, inmate classification, investigation of rape complaints, trauma care for rape victims, and disease prevention.
These standards should apply as soon as possible to the Federal Bureau of Prisons. Prison accreditation organizations that receive Federal funding will be required to adopt the standards. Each State must certify either that it has adopted and is in full compliance with the national standards, or that the State will use 5 percent of prison-
related Federal grants to come into compliance with the standards. States that fail to make a certification will have their grants reduced by 5 percent.
The Prison Rape Elimination Act is an important first step. We know that prison education programs reduce recidivism and facilitate the reentry of prisoners into society. Pell grant eligibility should be restored to prisoners who are scheduled for release. Because the high incidence of HIV and hepatitis B and C in prisoners threatens the health of many others, medical testing and treatment for infected prisoners should be expanded and improved. Congress should also repeal the provisions of the Prison Litigation Reform Act that prevent inmates who have been abused from raising their claims in court.
I commend our Senate and House colleagues for their strong support of the Prison Rape Elimination Act, and I look forward to its enactment.
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