Davis / 4 Senator Acosta

S.R.______

A BILL
To eliminate overcrowding in all of the prisons in the United States of America by creating federal guidelines for all
US prisons.
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Be it enacted by the Senate and House of Representatives of the United States of America in Congress assembled,
SECTION 1. SHORT TITLE
This act may be cited as the Prison Reformatory Act of 2015.
SECTION 2. FINDINGS
Congress hereby finds and declares that,
1) Overcrowding has been known to cause far more stressful situations and has prompted prison officials to react
inappropriately on occasion due to being forced to accommodate ill-advised numbers of prisoners.
2) Overcrowding causes health problems.
3) Overcrowding heightens the chances of fights breaking out.
4) 67 percent of inmates released from state prisons in 1994 committed at least one serious new crime within three
years.
5) They're so crowded that it's endangering the lives of inmates and corrections officers, BOP Director

Charles Samuels Jr. recently testified. To manage this population, the bureau is putting two or three bunks
in a cell, and converting television rooms and open bays into sleeping quarters
6) The already-taxed Bureau of Prisons network swelled to 39 percent above capacity through last September, and is
expected to surge to more than 45 percent above its limit in 2018.
7) Unless prison budgets grow, inmates will have less access to job training, education and drug treatment programs,
which could increase the likelihood that they'll commit crimes again after their release.
8) In 1992, there were eighteen cases of AIDS per 100,000 people in the United States; In prisons, the rate was 362
cases per 100,000 inmates.
9) A legal case in 1981 addressed overcrowding as potentially cruel and unusual punishment.
10) The suicide rate in these 29 prisons is approaching an average of one per week.
SECTION 3. STATUTORY LANGUAGE
A) This law shall eliminate all of the overcrowding that is going on in the prisons and help out the prisoners in
stabilizing them both physically and mentally.
B) This law shall be upheld and enforced by the Department of Justice.
C) If they dont follow through with this law then they will have to pay a fee of $25,000 for the first penal but if it
becomes recurring then they will have to pay $15,000 a month for however many times they break this law. This
money will be coming out of increasing the tax rate and using money off of that.
D) This law shall be enacted on January 1, 2016.