I thank the distinguished gentleman, the chairman of the subcommittee that I have the privilege of serving on, the Subcommittee on Crime and Terrorism on the House Judiciary Committee. I thank the…
I thank the distinguished gentleman, the chairman of the subcommittee that I have the privilege of serving on, the Subcommittee on Crime and Terrorism on the House Judiciary Committee.
I thank the full committee chairman, Mr. Conyers, the ranking member on the full committee and the ranking member on the subcommittee for having two important initiatives, and I speak to the underlying bill which addresses the question of death in custody, H.R. 3971.
I, too, want to applaud the fact that the existence of this legislation is a strong statement that, in spite of individuals being incarcerated in the criminal justice system, in the penal system, in the prison system, that there is a responsibility; one for the safety and security of those who are incarcerated, particularly, as well, that younger and younger individuals are going into our criminal justice system of which we hope to address as we look to these issues in the coming year, work that has already been done in this committee. We hope to see some of that legislation come to fruition.
I do want to speak specifically, Madam Speaker, to the concerns that I see in the State of Texas. And it may be symbolic of many States, particularly large States that have a very large penal system and a criminal justice system, if you will, or incarceration rate, and say that this legislation, in addition to reporting or requiring reporting of the deaths and suggesting the ineligibility for funds, which I think is an important statement, some instances of holding the particular jurisdictional head responsible for some of, in this instance, the deaths of individuals held in their particular facilities.
For example, about 3 weeks ago, in Houston, an individual was seen being neck-choked by a custodian in the Harris County jail in Harris County in Houston, Texas, and subsequently that inmate lost their life. This has been an increasing occurrence in the Harris County jail. And certainly there have been occurrences in the whole State system, but we have a county jail system which people are either held for trial or either they are actually serving their time there, and in the last decade we've had 106 deaths, plus, in the Harris County jail. Many of them have come about through the inability to secure medicine, to secure medical care. One instance is an individual in his own pool of blood, and the, if you will, caretaker, the guard, was asked to get relief and he said, What do you expect for me to do, get a Band-Aid?
So in some instances the deaths are caused because of such horrific occurrences, such egregious occurrences that
there seems to be a necessity for additional penalties. So I would rise to support this initiative, H.R. 3971, for the good work that it has already done, look forward to working with the chairperson of the subcommittee and the full committee Chair as we move toward the Senate to ensure that this bill, in and of itself, becomes law, because I think it's an important statement, but also it's a statement that saves lives.
It is so tragic to hear from wives and mothers, fathers of those incarcerated. These individuals have families. And I know that the existence or the presence that they have in the jail system means that there have been charges. Some of them in the local jails are being held for trial, so, therefore, they have not been convicted. We owe, as a civilized Nation, the kind of incarcerated presence that allows people to live, to be tried by the judicial system, but to allow them to live unless rendered another judgment by that system. So I think it is key that we look at whether or not the actions are egregious as we proceed to report on or receive reports made by our State Attorney General and others.
Madam Speaker, I rise today in strong support of H.R. 3971, the Death in Custody Reporting Act of 2007, introduced by my distinguished colleague from Virginia, Representative Bobby Scott. This important legislation will require that any State that receives certain criminal justice assistance grants will be accountable to report the treatment of inmates to both the Attorney General and to Congress.
How a government treats its detainees is a critical test for a nation's civility and maturity. How we treat detainees, especially the most vulnerable among them--detainees with medical conditions, be it pre-existing or one developed after they have been taken into custody-- is an important measure of how humane our entire justice system is.
In the mid-1980s researcher and activist scrutiny of the death rate in the Nation's jails and prisons began to emerge. The research focused on criticism of jail and prison conditions from the 1960s to the 1980s. Studies such as the ``National Study of Jail Suicides: Seven Years Later,'' by Lindsay M. Hayes and Joseph R. Rowan in 1988, that examined the death rate in jails and prisons found very little reporting of the circumstances surrounding the deaths of prisoners. In fact by 1986, only 25 States and the District of Columbia even had jail inspection units. Moreover, even the States that did report deaths differed on basic reporting standards. For example, jurisdictions differed on the definition of ``custody,'' which made it difficult to determine whether a prisoner had died during arrest, in a jail before trial, or post conviction.
The insufficient data and the lack of uniformity of the data collected made oversight of prisoner safety woefully inadequate. However, the study brought to light the potential that oversight had for improving conditions. The authors found that in the 1970s when there was little or no focus on deaths in custody, it had been unusual for a jail to be sued for negligence when a prisoner died in custody. But by the 1980s it was unusual for a jail not to be sued. The interest in oversight that emerged in the 1980s had shed light on conditions in state and local jails and began a rising tide of wrongful death litigation. The increasing litigation forced some measure of accountability and conditions somewhat improved. Moreover, activism and news of the litigation spurred media interest, which shed further light on conditions.
In 1995, after conducting a 1-year investigation, the Asbury Park Press of New Jersey ran a series of award-winning editorials that brought the seriousness of the lack of reporting to the Nation's attention. Among the examples the Asbury Park Press highlighted was the story of Elmer Johnson of Charleston, MO. Mr. Johnson died in a jail cell after he was arrested for ``failing to obey a police officer.'' The coroner ruled Mr. Johnson's death a suicide but evidence to the contrary raised doubts. The editorials went on to detail abuses including racism, overzealous police interrogations, coverups and general police incompetence, which prompted congressional action.
Congress has a responsibility to investigate this issue and call for reforms in order to ensure that dignity and respect for all human beings in our immigration detention system is preserved.
Following successive bills being introduced by Representative Scott of Virginia and Representative Hutchinson of Arkansas in several Congresses, the Death in Custody Reporting Act of 2000 was passed. The law required States receiving grants to comply with reporting requirements established by the Attorney General. Since the enactment of the act, the Bureau of Justice Statistics, BJS, has compiled a number of statistics detailing not only the circumstances of prisoner deaths but the rates of deaths in prisons vs. jails and the rates of deaths based on the sizes of the various facilities.
With the detailed statistical data, policy makers, both State and Federal, can make informed policy judgments about the treatment of prisoners, leading to great success in lowering the prisoner death rate. In fact, since the focus on deaths in custody emerged in the mid- 1980s, the latest BJS report, dated August 2005, shows a 64 percent decline in suicides and a 93 percent decline in the homicide rate, which suggests that oversight measures such as the Deaths in Custody Reporting Act play an important role in ensuring the safety and security of prisoners who are in the custody of State facilities.
However, no actual study has been conducted to ascertain whether there is indeed a cause and effect between the oversight and decreasing death rate, and H.R. 2908 contained no provision to fund such a study. Therefore, to ascertain whether the cause and effect exists and how to make the most effective use of the statistical data, my good friend and colleague, Chairman Scott and Ranking Member Forbes have introduced H.R. 3971, the Death in Custody Act of 2007, of which I am a proud cosponsor.
This revised legislation is imperative to ensuring that there is justice within our justice system. H.R. 3971 includes all aspects of H.R. 2908 but also authorizes $500,000 for a study to determine whether the strengthened oversight has in fact led to or at least assisted the decreasing death rate among prisoners. H.R. 3971 is thus an improvement over H.R. 2908 in that with analysis accompanying the statistical data, we can make yet further informed decisions about policy and oversight.
Congress has a responsibility to investigate this issue and call for reforms in order to ensure that dignity and respect for all human beings in our immigration detention system is preserved. This legislation will hold States responsible to report to the Attorney General on a quarterly basis regarding the death of any person who is under arrest or is in the process of being arrested, en route to incarceration, or incarcerated in State or local facilities. It furthermore imposes penalties on States that fail to comply with such reporting requirements and consequently will ensure that both the Attorney General and the Congress stay informed on the deaths of any and all persons in custody.
I hope that all of my colleagues will join me in supporting the Death in Custody Act of 2007. Passage of H.R. 3971 would be the start of a long overdue process to eliminate unnecessary mistreatment of prisoners.
Might I just quickly acknowledge H.R. 3992, with the indulgence of the Speaker, to applaud the, hoping, passage of this legislation that deals with mental health. And let me just say one small point about the mental health circumstance, and that is that the crisis of mental health is seen across America. There are so many circumstances where individuals suffering from severe schizophrenia and others are caught in the criminal justice system, or unfortunately are called to the home and confront the law enforcement system as opposed to the mental health system, and that is before, of course, these individuals are incarcerated. This has to do with offenders who are suffering from mental illness, but I wanted to at least speak to the point that those who don't get to the system because they are confronted through the police system and unfortunately will lose their lives. What do elderly persons do when a son or daughter is suffering from mental illness and, unfortunately, has a breakdown in the house and reacts violently? It is to call the police.
And so in addition to this very fine bill that deals with improving mental health services for offenders so that when they come out they are ready to adjust to the society in which they return, we also want to look forward to the idea of providing resources for training of law enforcement that we've discussed extensively in our subcommittee on crime to help these people be advisedly trained to deal with this.
I cite as an example the desire by our local jurisdiction to, or the request being made by our local jurisdiction, to pay an extra incentive fee for those police officers that would take mental health training so that they could be on a team, a task force to be called out when that would occur. Unfortunately, the overall response by the city government was not enough money. I think we should have enough money to save lives and, hopefully, innovative legislation like H.R. 3992 sets the pace for those new and innovative ideas on addressing the question of mental illness among offenders who are incarcerated, but also that we address many of
the other questions that hopefully we'll have the opportunity to address.
So it is my distinct pleasure to be able to rise to support the underlying bill, H.R. 3971, and as well the previous bill, H.R. 3992. And I thank the chairman for his leadership. And I think the criminal justice system will be better for the passage of these two initiatives.
Madam Speaker, I rise today in strong support of H.R. 3992, the Mentally III Offender Treatment and Crime Reduction Reauthorization and Improvement Act of 2007, introduced by my distinguished colleague from Virginia, Representative Robert Scott. This bipartisan legislation is designed to increase public safety by enabling coordination between the criminal justice and mental health care systems to increase treatment among this segment of the population.
The enormous growth in the national prison population has intensified the problems presented by the needs of mentally ill inmates. Frequently, mentally ill defendants are inappropriately placed into criminal or juvenile corrections facilities, and the harmful impact that this has on the individual and society is reflected in increased recidivism rates, wasted administrative costs, and superfluous overcrowding of corrections facilities, among other things. Among the utmost dilemmas involved in managing the mentally ill prisoners is that correctional staffing is seldom at an adequate level to supervise and care for these prisoners, and correctional officers in many state prisons have never received training in working with the mentally ill.
The Bureau of Justice reported that in 1998 over 280,000 individuals in jail or prison and approximately 550,000 of those on probation had a mental impairment. The mentally ill are disproportionately represented in jails and prisons. Five percent of all Americans have a serious mental illness, but 16 to 20 percent of incarcerated individuals have a mental impairment. Any individual who is enrolled in a juris doctorate program is familiar with two key terms in criminal law, Actus Reas and Mens Rea. Actus Reas is associated with the guilty act, while Mens Rea is associated with the guilty mind. Both elements are required to achieve a successful conviction in our criminal law system. Mental health offenders may have committed the physical, guilty act, but they are incapable of having the mind capacity to commit the crime. The act does not make a person guilty unless the mind is also guilty.
The prevalence of the mentally ill in the criminal justice system has been the subject of many recent studies. The U.S. Department of Justice, Bureau of Justice Statistics reported last July that at least 16 percent of the U.S. prison population is seriously mentally ill. The highest rate of reported serious mental illness is among white female inmates, at 29 percent. For white females age 24 or younger, this level rises to almost 40 percent. The American Jail Association estimates that 600,000 to 700,000 people suffering from serious mental illness are being booked into jail each year.
The National Alliance for the Mentally III reports that on any given day, at least 284,000 schizophrenic and manic depressive individuals and manic depressive individuals are incarcerated, while only 187,000 seriously mentally ill individuals are in mental health facilities. Additionally, there are approximately 547,800 seriously mentally ill people who are currently on probation. These statistics seem to indicate that the mentally ill are unjustifiably burdening the criminal justice system.
There is a dire need for resources that will provide vital resolutions to the crisis, expand diversion programs, community-based treatment, re-entry services, and improved treatment during incarceration. The reauthorization of the Mentally Ill Offender Treatment and Crime Reduction Act of 2004 recognizes that true partnerships between the mental health and criminal and juvenile corrections systems and between the Federal and State Governments are needed to meet these challenges. Indeed, this bill requires that Federal funds authorized under this program be supplemented with contributions from the States, local governments, and tribal organizations.
Madam Speaker, Congress has an obligation to legislate to protect the community from those who become aggressive or violent because of mental illness. We also have a responsibility to see that the offender receives the proper treatment for his or her illness. Far too often, mental illness goes undiagnosed, and many in our prison system would do better in alternative settings designed to handle their particular needs.
In Texas, past treatment of mentally ill offenders illustrates the need for legislation such as H.R. 3992. Senior U.S. District Judge William Wayne Justice, who is experienced in dealing with mentally ill prisoners in Texas, ruled in 1980 that the Texas prison system is unconstitutional and placed it under Federal control for 30 years. In Judge Justice's estimation, the Texas laws that apply to the mentally ill ``lack compassion and emphasize vengeance.'' KPFT news reported him as having said,
We have allowed the spirit of vengeance such unrivaled sway
in our dealings with those who commit crime that we have
ceased to consider properly whether we have taken adequate
account of the role that mental impairment may play in the
determination of moral responsibility. As a result, we punish
those who we cannot justly blame. Such result is not, I
believe worthy of a civil society.
This legislation in an important first step towards restructuring a system that has operated in a disjointed and unsympathetic manner for far too long. We must continue to make this legislation adequately effective to preserve the lives of defendants who are actually victims.
I am proud to support this legislation and I strongly urge my colleagues to join me in supporting this legislation and calling for the appropriate treatment and recognition of mentally ill offenders.
