Jon Ossoff

There must be a change.

If confirmed, will you commit to working with me to eliminate the backlog of military service records requests?

Veterans deserve timely access to their records.

I introduced last week the bipartisan Access for Veterans to Records Act to try to address this backlog.

I appreciate that commitment.

We have to get this right.

We are talking about a study whose purpose is to look at data about people dying in prisons and jails.

DOJ has ceased the publication of this data because the data is no longer of sufficient completeness, accuracy, and integrity to publish it.

It would bolster public confidence and trust in our judicial system.

It would provide openness in government.

Do you believe that is the kind of information that should be made public, transparently?

Is it fair to say, Professor, that, generally speaking, for each death there is more suffering, more illness perhaps poorly treated, and more folks inside in agony?

I think that the Subcommittee should help, in so far as we can, to honor and to remember Jonathan and Matthew.

The work of your Committee is vital, and academic researchers like myself stand ready to assist and to support as needed.

The fact that we do not get the information that we have tasked you with producing... until 6 or 8 years after a deadline, that has cost human lives.

Thank you, Ms. Henneberg. I appreciate your perspective on that State-local issue.

The Federal Government has unique authority to be able to collect this information from the jails in ways that members of the community cannot.

It would be much better if the Federal Government collected this level of information.

The crisis in America's prisons, jails, and detention centers is ongoing and unconscionable.

Do you think that is information that should be made public and transparent?

There is no excuse here that the data is not good enough.

It would bring a new level of accountability to our nation's correctional institutions.

This is about the Americans who are locked up, many of them pretrial detainees who have been convicted of no crime, who are dying every year, in many cases preventably.

We are now almost 6 years past the deadline.

Thank you, Ranking Member Johnson.