Strengthening the Prison Rape Elimination Act

Update: On June 16, JFFA passed in the Senate; read JDI’s release here. 

Here’s how the bill will help make our prisons safer:

Create a Deadline for PREA Compliance

Every year, governors must report to the federal government about whether their state is in compliance with the national PREA standards — concrete, commonsense measures to prevent and respond sexual abuse in detention. Since 2014, the first year that states were required to report on their progress, most governors have given the federal government an assurance that they intend to comply fully with PREA.

For many states, an assurance was the most appropriate action, because PREA was still relatively new. However, as JDI and others pointed out, a governor could submit assurances year after year, indefinitely — meaning they didn’t ever have to be in full compliance, as long as they claimed to be working on it. The JFAA fixes this by giving governors a firm deadline: they have six years from JFAA’s passage to implement the PREA standards fully.

Increase Transparency

Currently, states have few PREA reporting requirements besides whether they or not they are complying with the standards. Under JFAA, states will have to share information about what, specifically, they are doing to end sexual abuse in their facilities, and any barriers they are facing in complying fully with PREA.

Under PREA, detention facilities are required to undergo PREA audits, conducted by outside experts, to assess their progress in putting the standards in place. Crucially, JFAA calls for the federal government to set up an online clearinghouse for all PREA audit reports of individual, state run facilities. By gathering the audit reports and posting them in one location, all of us — including advocates, journalists, prisoner rape survivors, and members of the public — will be able to track PREA’s progress at a national level.

Protect Funding for Rape Crisis Centers

Under PREA, the main tool for holding states accountable for complying with the standards is a financial penalty. If a state rejects PREA, it loses five percent of federal grant money; states that give an assurance must divert that same amount to achieving PREA compliance.

Until now, the federal government has considered federal funding for rape crisis centers to be subject to the penalty — meaning that, if a state governor rejected PREA, funding for community-based rape crisis centers could be withheld. Rape crisis centers not only rely on this funding to deliver services in the community, but also inside prisons and jails, through programs made possible by PREA itself. JFAA will fix this by explicitly exempting all Violence Against Women Act (VAWA) funding from the penalty.