Sec. 4. Oversight
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Chapter 301 of title 18, United States Code, is further amended by adding at the end the following: Not later than 90 days after the date of the enactment of this Act, the Attorney General, in consultation with the Assistant Attorney General for Civil Rights at the Department of Justice, Officer for Civil Rights and Civil Liberties at the Department of Homeland Security, and Director of the Office for Civil Rights at the Department of Health and Human Services, shall establish a community monitoring body that shall operate independently of the Attorney General and of any other unit or division within the Department of Justice and any other Federal agency.
The Attorney General, in consultation with the Assistant Attorney General for Civil Rights at the Department of Justice, Officer for Civil Rights and Civil Liberties at the Department of Homeland Security, and Director of the Office for Civil Rights at the Department of Health and Human Services, and after obtaining input and recommendations from community organizations that provide educational services and legal support to incarcerated persons or otherwise advocate for the rights of incarcerated people and an end to solitary confinement, shall appoint no less than 15 people to serve as members of the community monitoring body.
Each member of the community monitoring body shall be a person who has survived solitary confinement, has had loved ones in solitary confinement or lost loved ones because of solitary confinement, is a faith leader, medical or mental health professional, or is a civil rights or human rights advocate. All members shall have had some experience engaging in advocacy, service provision, or program operation aimed at enhancing the rights and treatment of people incarcerated. No less than half of all members shall be people who have been incarcerated or have had family members incarcerated.
Members of the community monitoring body shall be appointed for a term of 5 years, with the possibility of 1 reappointment by the Attorney General for a total of 10 years. Each member shall be reimbursed by the Department of Justice for their per diem expenses in connection with service on the community monitoring body. The community monitoring body shall have the ability to designate any person to assist the work of the community monitoring body. Notwithstanding any other provision of law, the community monitoring body and its designees shall have the ability to make unannounced visits to Federal agencies and Federal facilities, and have access to every area of every Federal facility and all nonclassified, nonprivileged data from every Federal agency.
The community monitoring body and its designees shall have the ability to conduct in-person interviews and correspond and communicate with incarcerated persons and Federal agency and Federal facility staff freely, privately, and confidentially, upon consent of the incarcerated person or staff. Administrators of each Federal agency and facility shall meet privately with the community monitoring body or its designees upon request. All people incarcerated in Federal facilities shall have the right and access to confidentially communicate with the community monitoring body and its designees, including while the community monitoring body or its designees are at a Federal facility and through free phone calls, free mail correspondence, and free email correspondence.
These communications shall be afforded the same levels of protection, confidentiality, and privilege as attorney-client correspondence. No person shall face any form of retaliation or adverse impact for having contact with, or being perceived to have had contact with, the community monitoring body or its designees. An incarcerated person shall not be required to raise a complaint with the community monitoring body before seeking other remedies in connection with that complaint.
The community monitoring body and its designees shall have the right to bring and use electronic equipment in any Federal facility, including video cameras, photographic cameras, audio recording devices, mobile telephones, computers, and tablets, for the purposes of recording, documentation, administration of surveys, and other related purposes. The community monitoring body and its designees shall have the right to receive, access, inspect, and copy all relevant non-classified, non-privileged information, records, and documents in the possession or control of any Federal facility, Federal agency, or employee of any Federal facility or Federal agency.
The community monitoring body and its designees shall receive any such records within 7 days of a request to the head of a Federal facility or Federal agency. Where the records requested by the community monitoring body or its designees pertain to a death of an incarcerated person, threats of bodily harm including sexual or physical assaults, or the denial of necessary medical treatment, the records shall be provided within 48 hours unless members of the community monitoring body or their designees consent to an extension of the deadline.
The community monitoring body may make periodic recommendations to any Federal agency or Federal facility, as well as to the President, Attorney General, Secretary of Homeland Security, Secretary of Health and Human Services, House Committee on the Judiciary, House Committee on Oversight and Accountability, Senate Committee on the Judiciary, Senate Committee on Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs, and other government entities. For any recommendations made by the community monitoring body to each Federal agency or Federal facility, such agency or facility shall report to the community monitoring body within 90 days whether it has designed and implemented a remedial action plan to address the recommendations, and transmit any such remedial action plan to the community monitoring body.
The community monitoring body may publish its findings and recommendations on its website. Representatives of the news media, public defenders, Legal Orientation Program representatives, elected Federal, State, and local representatives, and their designees, shall have the ability to— make unannounced visits to Federal agencies and Federal facilities and access every area of every Federal facility, except that access to enter the cell of a person incarcerated in the Federal facility shall only be granted with the consent of the person housed in that cell, and to enter a bathroom or shower area when such areas are unoccupied by people incarcerated in the Federal facility; receive in a timely manner, pursuant to the Freedom of Information Act ( 5 U.S.C. 552 ), or any successor thereto, all requested data from every Federal agency that has people in its care or custody; and correspond with and interview, with the ability to take notes and use electronic and other recording devices, incarcerated persons freely, privately, and confidentially upon their consent.
Nothing in this section shall be construed to modify, supersede, or otherwise affect the authority of any Inspector General to access all records, reports, audits, reviews, documents, papers, recommendations, or other materials, as authorized by law. . The table of contents for chapter 301 of title 18, United States Code, is amended by inserting after the item relating to section 4015 as added by section 3 the following: 4016. Oversight. .
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