On June 8, after a year-long inquiry, the
Commission on Safety and Abuse in America's Prisons released Confronting Confinement, a report of the Commission's findings and recommendations.
Read about and download the report.
On any given day, 2.2 million people are
incarcerated in the United States, and over the course of a year, many
millions spend time in prison or jail. 750,000 men and women work in
correctional facilities. The annual cost: more than 60 billion dollars.
Yet within three years, 67 percent of former prisoners will be rearrested
and 52 percent will be re-incarcerated. At this moment, the effectiveness
of America's approach to corrections has the attention of policy makers at
all levels of government and in both political parties. The Commission and
its report, Confronting Confinement, make a unique contribution
to this timely national discussion by connecting the most serious problems
and abuses inside jails and prisons with the health and safety of our
communities.
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“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, M.D.
(R-OK), Chair of the U.S. 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
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