Political Quotes

“Mr. President, how did it come to pass that in a nation whose founding document guarantees due process and civil rights and prohibits cruel and unusual punishment, a Federal prison in Dublin, CA, would become so notorious for the endemic sexual abuse of female inmates by prison staff that it would be known as the rape club--rape club--sexual assault and abuse of Federal inmates by the warden, by the chaplain. Senator Johnson of Wisconsin and I led a bipartisan investigation of sexual assault in Federal prisons. We found that in two-thirds--two- thirds--of Federal prisons that housed female inmates, inmates had been sexually assaulted by members of prison staff. We found that at the U.S. penitentiary in Atlanta, in my home State of Georgia, for nearly a decade, unchecked corruption and civil rights abuses had been ongoing with the knowledge of the leadership of the Bureau of Prisons, and no effective action had been taken to address them. Pretrial detainees sleeping in paper pajamas were denied access to counsel, denied access to hygiene products, denied access to fresh air--pretrial, presumptively innocent Federal detainees. The human rights crisis behind bars in the United States is a stain on America's conscience. We just passed the most significant Federal prison reform legislation in many years, and now it is on the way to the desk of the President of the United States.…”