In Speech On Senate Floor, Durbin Previews Senate Judiciary Committee Hearing On Preventing Deaths Of Incarcerated Individuals In Federal Prisons

Floor Speech

“In December of 2021, Bobby Everson was killed while he was in the care and custody of the Federal Bureau of Prisons, allegedly by his cell mate. At the time of his death, he was housed at the federal prison in Thomson, Illinois, in the Special Management Unit, a unit notorious for poor management, harsh conditions, even before the Bureau of Prisons moved it to Thomson from USP Lewisburg in 2018.
The Inspector General found things that are truly disturbing about our American prison system… like the failure to comply with policy [and] understaffing ha[ve] increased the risk and contributed to more and more deaths that are preventable. A prison sentence should not be a death sentence in America.
We know that the overuse of solitary confinement causes lasting, irreparable mental harm to incarcerated people. That is why I will soon reintroduce the Solitary Confinement Reform Act, legislation that will greatly limit the use of solitary confinement in our nation’s prison system. Depriving incarcerated adults of basic human rights and endangering their lives is no way to achieve justice. [The] Bureau of Prisons must do more to create safer and more humane conditions.

As Chair of the Judiciary Committee, I have established a practice of holding annual oversight hearings for the Bureau of Prisons. Tomorrow, we will hear from Bureau of Prisons Director Colette Peters and DOJ IG Horowitz to discuss the IG report and examine what led to these deadly failures.

The goal of our criminal justice system must be to rehabilitate offenders and prepare them to successfully reenter society. It is long past time for BOP to achieve this goal, and it will only do so through transparency, accountability, and reform."

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