ATLANTA — Senator Jon Ossoff and metro Atlanta civil rights leaders are explaining the impact of new legislation they say will hold federal prisons accountable.
It's called the Federal Prison Oversight Act. Ossoff said President Joe Biden signed it into law a few days ago.
Ossoff is breaking down what this legislation means. He said it requires routine and random inspections of all Department of Justice facilities. The inspections are to be made public. The facilities have to respond in 60 days.
There is also a confidential complaint hotline for inmates, their families, their attorneys, and corrections officers. This takes out the step of going through the chain of command.
The DOJ inspector general is expected to enforce changes.
11Alive's Tresia Bowles spoke with a Bremen man who served over 25 years in federal prison. He asked for his name not to be shared. Oftentimes, he felt no one was listening.
"Once you get in there, they don't care nothing about you," He said. "They forget all about you."
He shared some of the conditions he and others he still keeps in contact with are forced to deal with. He said it's gone from OK to worst.
"No A/C, the food—the food is terrible," He said. "We had a lot of black dust coming out the vents. It was real[ly] bad, people getting sick. They can't clean it because it's too old."
He said he believes the new legislation will help, but he hopes investigators talk to the inmates when they inspect to get the truth.
Ossoff said he investigated widespread human and civil rights abuse inside federal prisons. He discussed some of the things he discovered about the Atlanta Federal Penitentiary.
"Presumptively innocent pretrial detainees, on 23-hour lockdown, living in paper pajamas without access to hygiene products, with pests in their food," Ossoff said.
Ossoff didn't have an exact answer when asked how often prisons are expected to be "routinely" inspected. He said it varies. After an inspection, the facilities will be ranked low, medium, or high risk. Those deemed at high risk will be inspected the most. Ossoff said the timeline of the consequences also varies.
"It's also not a one-time easy fix that will suddenly solve all problems," Ossoff said. "The Bureau of Prisons, at a federal level, is a diseased bureaucracy."
Ossoff was joined by civil rights leaders in the community such as Ambassador Andrew J. Young, COO of The King Center Bonita Hampton Smith, Rev. James Woodall of Lindsay Street Baptist Church, Andrea Young, Executive Director with the ACLU, Executive Director of the Georgia Coalition for the Peoples’ Agenda, 1st Vice President of the Atlanta NAACP Dontaye Carter, President of the Atlanta-North Georgia Labor Council Sandra Williams, and Douglas Ammar with the Georgia Justice Project. They all said they see this legislation as positive and a step forward.