House passes prison reform bill requiring updated security cameras to fight corruption

The House on Wednesday has passed a bipartisan bill to fight crime, corruption and abuse in federal prisons. 

The Prison Camera Reform Act, sponsored by Sen. Jon Ossoff (D-Ga.), will require the Federal Bureau of Prisons (BOP) to upgrade outdated security camera systems. 

As part of the law, BOP’s director will be required to submit a plan that includes increasing the number of cameras in prisons, locating and addressing blind spots in prisons and poor video quality from current systems. The plan also must identify and prioritize which facilities need upgrades, beginning with high-security prisons. BOP will also be required to report on the progress of implementation of the plan within one year of submitting it to Congress.

Currently, there are 122 BOP facilities throughout the country, with nearly 38,000 employees and more than 150,000 people in BOP’s custody.

The act passed in the Senate last year and is now on its way to President Biden’s desk. Ossoff introduced the bill last year with Senate Judiciary Chairman Dick Durbin (D-Ill.) and the committee’s ranking member, Sen. Chuck Grassley (R-Iowa).

The bill’s passage comes after Ossoff, chairman of the bipartisan Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations, released an 8-month investigation into sexual abuse of women in federal prisons. 

During that hearing, the Department of Justice’s inspector general, Michael Horowitz, testified that outdated and broken prison cameras have “hindered” investigation and prosecution of cases involving sexual and physical assault and medical neglect.x

But other investigations this year by the Senate’s Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations, which Ossoff chairs, also found women in detention centers were being forced into unnecessary gynecological procedures, sometimes without their consent, and that the DOJ has been underreporting the number for deaths of people in its custody. 

“I’ve led multiple investigations of crime and corruption in Federal prisons. Broken prison camera systems are enabling corruption, misconduct, and abuse,” Ossoff said in a statement. “That’s why I brought Republicans and Democrats together to pass my Prison Camera Reform Act, which has passed Congress and is on its way to the President’s desk.”