Sponsors (5)
Introduced July 28, 2025 by Edward John Markey · Last progress July 28, 2025
The bill substantially limits solitary confinement and expands protections, oversight, and alternatives for people in custody—improving health and accountability—while imposing meaningful upfront costs, administrative and legal burdens, and some short‑term operational and safety tradeoffs for correctional and immigration systems.
People in custody (including people with disabilities, youth, pregnant people, LGBTQ people, and racial/ethnic minorities) would face much less routine solitary confinement and gain substantially more out‑of‑cell time (minimum standards such as ~14 hours/day), reducing severe mental‑health harms, self‑harm, and deaths.
People with disabilities and people with mental‑health needs in federal custody would receive mandated individualized assessments, ADA accommodations, clearer definitions (e.g., 'acute psychiatric crisis'), and improved care coordination, reducing discriminatory placements and improving treatment decisions.
People in federal custody, taxpayers, and the public would gain greater transparency and independent oversight through data collection, quarterly public reports, confidential independent monitoring with unannounced visits, agency response requirements, and standardized confinement policies—strengthening accountability and exposing abuse or systemic problems.
Correctional staff, law enforcement, and people in custody could face short‑term safety and staffing risks because strict limits on solitary and broad prohibitions for many groups may reduce immediate ability to isolate truly dangerous individuals until effective alternatives are in place.
Taxpayers, federal, state, and local governments would likely face substantial upfront and ongoing costs (staffing, training, programming, facility redesign, and expanded medical/mental‑health services) to replace solitary and implement mandated alternatives and monitoring.
Federal agencies, state and local governments, and courts could face increased litigation, administrative burdens, and reporting/monitoring obligations (including tight rulemaking and compliance deadlines), straining capacity and possibly producing rushed or contested implementation.
Based on analysis of 11 sections of legislative text.
Ends routine solitary confinement in federal custody, sets minimum standards and oversight, creates enforcement remedies, and conditions some JAG grant funds on state/local compliance.
Ends routine solitary confinement in federal custody by banning most placements in restrictive housing except narrow, last-resort circumstances and setting minimum standards for conditions, care, reviews, data collection, training, and oversight. It requires the Bureau of Prisons and other federal agencies to write rules, creates an independent community monitoring body and Inspector General advisory requirements, conditions some federal JAG grant funding on state/local compliance, and provides enforcement tools including administrative remedies and civil damages for violations.