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Pat Nolan Testifies before Congress |
Good afternoon, Chairman Coburn and Senator Durbin.
I am Vice President of Prison Fellowship and President of their criminal justice reform arm, Justice Fellowship. In addition to serving on this commission, I also am Speaker Hastert's appointee to the Prison Rape Elimination Commission.
I bring a unique background to this work. I served for 15 years as a member of the California State Assembly, four of those as the Assembly Republican Leader. I was prosecuted for a campaign contribution I accepted, which turned out to be part of an FBI sting. I pleaded guilty to one count of racketeering, and served 29 months in a federal custody.
Pat Nolan's Testimony before the Senate Judiciary Subcommittee on Corrections and Rehabilitation on Behalf of the Commission on Safety and Abuse in America’s Prisons
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The best way to describe being imprisoned is that I felt like an amputee. I was cut off from my family, my friends, my work, my church and my community. Then, with my stumps still bleeding, I was tossed into a roiling cauldron of anger, bitterness, despair and often violence.
In prison, inmates are completely defenseless. They are deprived of the usual ways we protect ourselves. They do not choose where to live and sleep, they have no choice in their companions, they cannot avoid going in dark places, and they are prohibited from arming themselves for self-defense.
Because prisoners are deprived of the ability to defend themselves, the government has the responsibility to protect them from violence and harm. No sentence, no matter how terrible the crime, includes being threatened, beaten, or raped while in the custody of the government.
Sadly, many prisons fail in their responsibility to protect their inmates and staff from violence. At the Commission's hearings around the country, we heard many accounts of violence and abuse behind bars. These were reports not just from prisoners and their families, but line officers and administrators, as well. On the other hand, we also heard accounts of many facilities where prisoners and staff are safe and healthy. Plainly, there are practices and policies that make for safer prisons.
The clear consensus among the experts is that to prevent violence in prison we must:
- Reduce crowding.
- Increase access to meaningful programs and activities.
- Encourage a climate of mutual respect between staff and inmates.
- Increase the transparency of the institutions by increasing accessibility to outside agencies and volunteers.
- Identify at-risk prisoners and potential predators, and classify them accordingly.
- Make better use of surveillance technology.
- Strengthen family relationships by: placing inmates close to their families, encouraging family visits, and lowering the cost of phone calls.
How do we hold administrators of institutions plagued by violence accountable for adopting these reforms that are proven to make prisons so much safer? One important way Congress can help is to develop a uniform system for collecting data on violence in prison. Currently, there is no way to track the number of assaults by prisoners on other prisoners, by prisoners against staff, or the use of excessive force by corrections officers. This prevents us from comparing levels of violence in different facilities and systems around the country, or tracking trends over time. For instance, in the year 2000, one state with 36,000 prisoners reported just 17 assaults. Three states reported zero assaults among prisoners statewide. Zero. These numbers just are not credible. I'm confronting the same a problem in my role as a Commissioner on the Prison Rape Elimination Commission.
Without accurate numbers we cannot hold prison administrators accountable for the safety of their staff and inmates. We end up fighting over anecdotes - pitting good stories against bad ones. More importantly, it means that successful corrections leaders are not recognized and rewarded, and that dangerous institutions do not receive the attention and reform they so desperately need.
Corrections administrators need accurate information to monitor safety, and the public needs it to hold them accountable.
Thank you.
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