34 U.S.C. § 30303 — National prison rape statistics, data, and research

(a) Annual comprehensive statistical review. Each year, the Bureau of Justice Statistics — called "the Bureau" here — must run a full statistical review of how often prison rape happens and what effects it has. This review must identify common traits of (A) both victims and people who commit prison rape, and (B) prisons and prison systems with high rates of prison rape. In doing this, the Bureau must consider: how to define rape for the review; how to collect information about staff sexually assaulting inmates; how to gather information beyond what inmates report themselves; how to adjust the data to account for differences among prisons, as required later in subsection (c)(3); how to sort prisons into categories, as required in (c)(4); and whether a smaller preliminary study should be done first to shape the review's methods. The Bureau must ask for input from state correction departments, county and city jails, juvenile facilities, former inmates, victim advocates, researchers, and other experts. The review must be based on a random or other scientifically sound sample covering at least 10 percent of all federal, state, and county prisons, plus a representative sample of city prisons — with at least one prison chosen from every state. Which facilities get picked is decided as late as possible before the surveys happen and is kept secret from prison officials beforehand; being picked one year does not rule out being picked again later. To do the review, the Bureau must survey current and former inmates from the sampled prisons and use other methods as needed, while keeping each survey participant's identity confidential (except as allowed under paragraph (7)). Any federal, state, or local official or facility administrator asked to take part under (a)(4) or (5) must participate and let the Bureau reach inmates in their custody. Nothing in this section — including the confidentiality rule in (5) — stops the Bureau from reporting child abuse or neglect information to the proper officials when state law requires prompt reporting of it. (b) Review Panel on Prison Rape. A Review Panel on Prison Rape is created inside the Department of Justice to help the Bureau. It has 3 members, appointed by the Attorney General after consulting the Secretary of Health and Human Services, chosen for their knowledge or expertise in the topics the Panel studies. Each year, the Panel must hold public hearings on the 3 prisons with the highest rates of prison rape and the 2 with the lowest rates, in each category of prison described later in (c)(4); it must hold a separate hearing on the 3 federal or state prisons with the highest rates. These hearings aim to gather evidence on what victims and perpetrators have in common, what high-rate prisons have in common, and what successful, low-rate prisons have in common. The Panel must ask for public testimony from federal, state, and local officials — including the warden or director of each prison and the head of its prison system — and their representative organizations. The Panel may also ask for testimony from prison rape victims, victim organizations, and other relevant people or groups. The Panel may subpoena witnesses and documents; if someone refuses to comply, the Attorney General may ask a federal court to enforce the subpoena. (c) Reports. By June 30 each year, the Attorney General must send Congress and the Secretary of Health and Human Services a report on what the Bureau and the Panel did on prison rape the year before. The report must include: statistical, social, and psychological data on prison rape's effects; statistical data on how often it happens, broken down by federal, state, prison-system, and individual-prison level; a ranked list of the sampled institutions by category (see (c)(4)) showing how much prison rape each has; a list of sampled institutions that appear to be successfully preventing prison rape; and a list of any sampled prisons that refused to cooperate with the survey. In preparing this, the Attorney General must adjust the data using accepted statistical methods to account for differences among prisons that have nothing to do with detecting, preventing, reducing, or punishing prison rape, or that a state or prison can't control — things like a prison's mission, security level, size, or which government runs it — so the comparison between prisons is fair. The Attorney General must explain every such adjustment in the report. The report must sort prisons into three categories: one covering all federal and state prisons, and two more that the Attorney General defines to compare similar types of institutions. (d) Contracts and grants. To carry out its duties under this section, the Attorney General may give research grants through the National Institute of Justice, and may contract with or give grants to any other entity the Attorney General thinks is appropriate. (e) Authorization of appropriations. Congress authorized $15,000,000 for each fiscal year from 2004 through 2010 to carry out this section.