American Penitentiary Reform Act

In the Senate of the United States

July 1st, 2016

Senators Maxwell, Florrick and Conti introduced the following resolution, which was honorably presented to the Senate of the United States to reform the federal criminal justice system of the U.S. and better rehabilitate, rather than punish, inmates.

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Resolved by the U.S. Senate of the United States of America, that the following article is proposed as federal law under the jurisdiction of the Untied States of America, enforceable by Executive action.

Be it enacted by the Senate and House of Representatives of the United States of America in Congress assembled, that:

Section 1: ‘Prison’ is defined as any federal correctional facility registered under the Federal Bureau of Prisons. ‘Rehabilitation’ is defined as the prevention of criminal recidivism by the administration of physiological treatments and correctional, non-confrontational techniques. ‘Solitary Confinement’ is defined as a punishment enacted on an inmate, which entails isolation from human contact excluding prison staff personnel and subcontracted personnel, for 22 hours to 24 hours a day with sentencing ranging from a singular day to multiple years.

Section 2: Bans the usage of solitary confinement in any prison in the United States and territories.

Section 3: Establishes individual, state-pertaining, nonpartisan State Prison General Oversight Boards, or SPGOB, for every state in the United States of America; Territory Prison General Oversight Boards, or TPGOB, in every organized territory of the United States of America. The SPGOB of a state and the TPGOB of an organized territory shall have the federal authority to—

(1)	Provide grants to public prisons, based on a fund quantity allotted by the state’s or organized territory’s legislature, which have been deemed to adhere to a quota that at minimum the prison must provide upwards of 12 separate correctional programs, and at minimum half are strictly rehabilitation-based in nature and practice,
(2)	Report to the Federal Bureau of Prisons regarding a particular prison or prison administrator, whom they deem to either contain or negligently allow to manifest an environment where inmates’ lives are posed to an imminent, deadly threat.
(3)	File suit against a particular prison administrator, whose prison by which they preside over has been seen to harbor an environment where over five inmates are killed and/or fifteen inmates are severely injured, in accordance to a signed Affidavit from a medical practitioner whom has been employed or is employed by the prison administrator.
(4)	Restrict or increase federal funding by a maximum of 20%, with more requiring approval from the Attorney General of the United States and the Federal Bureau of Prisons, to individual prisons whom operate less than ten, staffed correctional programs for inmates,  or no rehabilitation-centered programs for inmates.