On September 16, the Foreign Prison Conditions Improvement Act of 2010 (S.3798, H.R.6153) was introduced by Senators Patrick Leahy and Sam Brownback, and Congressmen Bill Delahunt and Joseph Pitts.  This bill was to authorize appropriations of United States assistance to help eliminate conditions in foreign prisons and other detention facilities that do not meet minimum humane standards of health, sanitation, and safety.

In many countries prisoners are subjected to poor prison conditions often leading to sickness, human rights violations, and death.  Prisoners are unjustly imprisoned, have no right to legal counsel, cannot contact family members, are subjected to torture and mistreatment as a coercive form of interrogation, lack sufficient food and water and lack sanitary living conditions and medical care.  Prisons are often overcrowded, with women, children, and remand prisoners often housed along with convicts, men and adults.

The Foreign Prison Conditions Improvement Act aims to help ensure that the U.S. government does not support such mistreatment of prisoners and detainees by ensuring that U.S. foreign assistance does not fund these prisons. The Act would enable the U.S. government to take steps towards helping governments improve prison conditions and particularly, would fund governments that are addressing prison conditions in their countries, thus providing incentives to address justice reform.

 

To read the full text of the bills:

S.3798 - Foreign Prison Conditions Improvement Act of 2010

http://www.opencongress.org/bill/111-s3798/show​

www.govtrack.us/congress/bill.xpd?bill=s11​

1-3798 

H.R.6153 - Foreign Prison Conditions Improvement Act of 2010

http://www.opencongress.org/bill/111-h6153/show​

www.govtrack.us/congress/bill.xpd?bill=​

h111-6153

 

These are excerpts from the bill itself:

SEC. 2. FINDINGS.

Congress makes the following findings:

(1) Millions of incarcerated people in the world suffer inhumane conditions in prisons and other detention facilities that are overcrowded, unsanitary, and unsafe to the point of endangering their lives.

(2) According to a 2009 International Centre for Prison Studies report, there are an estimated 9,800,000 people held in penal institutions in the world, with prison populations increasing in 71 percent of the over 200 countries surveyed.

(3) Rates of malnutrition, disease, and death among prisoners and other detainees far exceed those of the general population, and medical treatment for serious illness or injury is, in many instances, non-existent or grossly inadequate.

(4) These conditions are compounded by severe overcrowding in prisons and other detention facilities. Excessive pre-trial detention and dysfunctional justice systems frequently result in prisoners and other detainees spending years in such conditions before their cases are adjudicated. In some countries, such facilities are filled to capacity many times over resulting in conditions so cramped that individual prisoners cannot move without all doing so en masse.

(5) Amnesty International’s 2009 State of the World’s Human Rights Report documented widespread inhumane prison conditions, including overcrowding, inadequate food and water, no access to hygiene products or medical care, juveniles detained with adults, and denial of visits from family.

(6) Some governments fail to provide even the most rudimentary sanitation in prisons and other detention facilities, putting prisoners and other detainees at even greater risk of easily preventable and often life-threatening diseases. Toilets are few or non-existent and human waste repositories often are located among the general prison population, forcing prisoners to eat, sleep, and live in grossly unsanitary conditions.

(7) According to a 2009 report by the United Nations Economic and Social Council’s Commission on Crime Prevention and Criminal Justice, former prisoners are likely to spread diseases contracted in prison to the local population.

(8) Some governments fail to permit prisoners and other detainees reasonable exercise of religious worship or contact with family members or other visitors.

(9) According to the United States Commission on International Religious Freedom’s 2009 Annual Report, religious prisoners have been confined to overcrowded cells, exposed to extreme temperature fluctuations, denied adequate food and medical care, and denied access to clergy and religious literature.

(10) Inhumane conditions in prisons and other detention facilities often exist in countries where resources for law enforcement are limited and only a small fraction of such resources are made available for the operation and maintenance of prisons and other detention facilities. Inadequate, misplaced, or lost prison records often result in prisoners and detainees being incarcerated indefinitely because of never being tried or otherwise adjudicated, and being held long after their sentences have expired thereby further swelling prison populations. Allocating the relatively modest resources necessary to provide for the basic human needs of prisoners and other detainees and to remediate the inhumane conditions under which such prisoners are held is often a low priority.

(11) The United States Government currently provides significant amounts of assistance to countries whose governments operate prisons and other detention facilities that, because of their inhumane conditions, seriously jeopardize the lives of prisoners and other detainees held under their authority.

(12) The Department of State’s 2009 Country Reports on Human Rights Practices reported prison conditions as poor, inhumane, or life threatening in more than 100 countries, all of which receive United States assistance.

(13) The United States Government should use its influence and resources to help ensure that governments that receive United States assistance do not operate prisons and other detention facilities under inhumane conditions. The United States Government also should assist countries that are making significant efforts to eliminate inhumane conditions in prisons and other detention facilities.

SEC. 4. ACTIONS TO HELP ELIMINATE INHUMANE CONDITIONS IN FOREIGN PRISONS AND OTHER DETENTION FACILITIES.

(b) Assistance for Governments Making Significant Efforts To Eliminate Inhumane Conditions in Prisons and Other Detention Facilities-

(1) IN GENERAL- The Secretary of State and the Administrator of the United States Agency for International Development should furnish assistance for the purpose of helping to eliminate inhumane conditions in prisons and other detention facilities to countries whose governments do not meet minimum standards for the elimination of inhumane conditions in prisons and other detention facilities but are making significant efforts to comply.

(2) INAPPLICABILITY OF FOREIGN ASSISTANCE ACT PROHIBITION- The prohibitions under section 660 of the Foreign Assistance Act of 1961 (22 U.S.C. 2420) shall not be applicable to assistance furnished to carry out the provisions of paragraph (1).

(3) GRANT FUNDS- Grants made under this subsection shall be designated and used exclusively to help eliminate inhumane conditions in the country receiving the grant, but may not include the construction of new prisons. Funds made available under this section shall be subject to the regular notification procedures of the Committees on Appropriations of the Senate and the House of Representatives.

(c) Negotiations With Governments Not Making Significant Efforts To Eliminate Inhumane Conditions in Prisons and Other Detention Facilities-

(1) NEGOTIATIONS- In the case of a government receiving United States assistance that is listed in the report submitted under subsection (a)(1)(B) as not making significant efforts to eliminate inhumane conditions in prisons and other detention facilities, the Secretary of State shall, not later than 90 days after the date such report is submitted, enter into negotiations with such government to achieve the purposes of this Act.

(2) ACTIONS REGARDING ASSISTANCE AND VISAS-

(A) ASSISTANCE- The Secretary of State and the Administrator of the United States Agency for International Development may restructure, reprogram, or reduce United States assistance for a government described in paragraph (1) to achieve the purposes of this Act.

(B) VISAS- The Secretary of State may issue or deny visas for travel to the United States by officials of a government described in paragraph (1) to achieve the purposes of this Act.

(3) REPORT- Not later than 180 days after the beginning of the negotiations required under paragraph (1), the Secretary shall submit to the appropriate congressional committees a report describing the actions taken or agreed to be taken, if any, during such negotiations by the government of that country that constitute significant efforts to eliminate inhumane conditions in prisons and other detention facilities and the actions taken, or that will be taken, by the United States pursuant to paragraph (2) regarding assistance and visas. If the Secretary determines that United States assistance to such government should not be restructured, reprogrammed, or reduced, or that visas should be issued or denied to officials of such government, the report shall contain a detailed explanation for that decision.

SEC. 5. TRAINING FOR FOREIGN SERVICE OFFICERS.

Section 708 of the Foreign Service Act of 1980 (22 U.S.C. 4028) is amended by adding at the end the following new subsection:

‘(d) The Secretary of State, with the assistance of other relevant officials, shall establish as part of the standard training provided for chiefs of mission, deputy chiefs of mission, and other officers of the Service who are or will be involved in the assessment of conditions in foreign prisons and other detention facilities or the drafting of the annual Country Reports on Human Rights Practices, instruction on matters related to conditions in such prisons and other detention facilities and the substance of the Foreign Prison Conditions Improvement Act of 2010.’.

SEC. 6. NEW POSITION TO MONITOR FOREIGN PRISON CONDITIONS.

The Secretary of State shall establish, within the Bureau of Democracy, Human Rights, and Labor, a new full-time equivalent Deputy Assistant Secretary level position which shall have responsibility for advancing the purposes of this Act.