The standard.

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The problem is not that there are no rules

There are rules. Every corrections department has a policy manual. The Eighth Amendment has been interpreted for fifty years to require humane conditions. Accreditation bodies publish standards. None of it stopped what happened at Huron Valley.

The gap is not standards. The gap is independent eyes and automatic consequences. A rule that only the agency can check, and that costs the agency nothing to break, is not a rule. It is a preference. Everything below is built around that one sentence.

Three facts that shape the strategy

What we are actually working with

1. The people inside are outside the safety net that protects the people who work there. In an interpretation letter dated 16 December 1992, OSHA stated that the definition of "employer" excludes a state or its subdivisions, and that it therefore has no jurisdiction over inmates in correctional institutions, "either paid or nonpaid." Courts and agency practice have largely kept that line. The result is a building where the officer breathing the air has a federal agency behind them and the woman breathing the same air does not. Agency interpretation osha.gov · standard interpretation, 1992-12-16
2. Federal oversight now exists — and it stops at the federal door. The Federal Prison Oversight Act was signed on 25 July 2024 after a bipartisan push, and requires DOJ's Inspector General to conduct risk-based inspections of all 122 federal facilities — announced or unannounced, and more often for facilities that score worse. The Bureau of Prisons must respond with a corrective action plan, and the Act creates an independent ombudsman who can make unannounced visits and conduct unannounced interviews with staff and incarcerated people. It does not apply to state prisons or local jails — where the large majority of incarcerated people are held, and where Huron Valley is. Federal law S.1401, 118th Congress · Brennan Center explainer
3. The model already works in states. As of early 2025 roughly 19 states and the District of Columbia had some form of independent corrections oversight. Connecticut, Iowa, New Jersey, California, Nebraska, Washington, and Virginia have ombudsman or inspector general offices, several with statutory authority to inspect unannounced. FAMM has published model state legislation for an Office of the Independent Ombudsman built to sit outside the corrections department entirely. We are not inventing something. We are finishing something. Reported FAMM · model oversight legislation · NRCCO · Oversight 101

The document

A Minimum Habitability Standard for Places of Confinement

Plain language, so a legislator in any state can pick it up and file it. Seven articles. Nothing in here is ambitious. All of it is the floor.

Article I — Air

Every occupied space shall be free of visible mold growth and shall have functioning ventilation. Visible growth triggers testing by an independent laboratory within 7 days, remediation begun within 30 days, and relocation of anyone with a documented respiratory or immune condition until remediation is complete.

Article II — Water

Potable water at every occupied unit, tested quarterly for lead, bacteria, and contaminants, with results published. Any failed test triggers alternative supply within 24 hours.

Article III — Temperature

Occupied housing maintained within a defined safe range. Sustained excursion beyond it triggers a mandatory mitigation plan and, past a defined threshold, relocation.

Article IV — Sanitation

Working toilets, showers, and sinks at a defined ratio. Pest control on a published schedule. Cleaning supplies and protective equipment provided at no cost to anyone assigned to clean, including anyone assigned to remediate mold. No person in custody shall be assigned to remediate a hazard they reported.

Article V — Medical response

A written request for medical care receives a documented, timed response. Emergency symptoms receive same-day evaluation. Every request and every response is logged with a timestamp, and the log is auditable by the independent inspector.

Article VI — Testing and disclosure

Raw data is public by default. Every environmental test — lab reports, spore counts, species identification, photographs, sampling locations, chain of custody — published within 10 days of receipt. A summary is not a disclosure. This article exists because of the summary Michigan published in June 2026.

Article VII — Deaths in custody

Every death reported publicly within 72 hours: date, facility, age, and preliminary circumstances. Full cause of death and a timeline of care requested and care given published on completion of autopsy. Independent review of any death where the person had an open medical grievance.

The part that matters

Teeth. Six of them.

Articles I through VII are the easy half. Anyone will vote for a floor. The fight is here.

1. An independent inspector with the keys. Not inside the department, not appointed by it, not funded through it. Statutory authority to enter unannounced, to go anywhere in the facility, and to interview incarcerated people and staff privately — no officer present, no recording, no monitoring. That last clause is the whole ballgame. An interview an officer can hear is not an interview.
2. Risk-scored frequency. Facilities that fail get inspected more often, and keep getting inspected more often until they stop failing. Passing is how you get left alone.
3. Automatic triggers, not discretionary ones. A threshold exceeded starts a clock by operation of law: a corrective action plan due in a fixed number of days, escalation if it is missed. Nobody has to decide to care.
4. Consequences that reach the budget. Unremediated findings past deadline trigger withheld discretionary funds, mandatory legislative reporting, and, at the far end, court-supervised receivership over the failing function. A finding with no cost attached is a press release.
5. Real anti-retaliation protection. Protected status for anyone who reports — incarcerated, staff, or family — with a private right of action and a presumption of retaliation for adverse action taken within a defined window after a report. Right now a person in custody who reports retaliation must complain about staff to staff. Fix that or nothing else in this document functions.
6. A family-side channel that does not depend on the facility. People outside can report without their person inside touching a monitored system. That is what The Watch is for, and it is why The Watch is built to index by facility rather than by individual.

And the barrier nobody mentions

The exhaustion trap

Federal law requires a person in custody to exhaust the facility's own grievance process — correctly, and on the facility's deadlines — before they can sue over conditions. In practice that means the institution being complained about controls the paperwork, the deadlines, and often whether the form was ever received.

Any serious standard has to address this, and there is a narrow, winnable version of the ask: a grievance the facility fails to log, respond to, or date-stamp within the required window is deemed exhausted. That is not abolishing the rule. That is saying you cannot run out the clock on your own accountability.

How we get it passed

The sequence

1. Win Michigan first, publicly. Huron Valley is the proof of concept and the emotional case. A standard attached to a live crisis with names on it moves. A standard filed in the abstract dies in committee.
2. Draft it with counsel and with people who have been inside. Bill Olson on the legal architecture; Angela and the women from The Table on what the floor has to actually cover. A standard written only by lawyers will miss the thing that killed someone.
3. Recruit a bipartisan pair in every state. This already crosses party lines — the Federal Prison Oversight Act passed with Ossoff, Durbin, Braun, McBath, and Armstrong on it, and Michigan lawmakers crossed the aisle at the February hearing. Never file it with one party's name on it.
4. Bring the coalition that already exists. FAMM has model oversight legislation. The state protection and advocacy organizations have federal investigative authority. Corrections officers' unions care about the same air. Bring the officers in. They are breathing it too, and their support turns this from a prisoners' bill into a building-safety bill.
5. Publish the scorecard. Once the standard exists, grade every state against it, publicly, every year. A grade is what makes a legislator return the call the second time.
6. Then take it to the other places. Immigration detention, juvenile facilities, and county jails — which have the least oversight and the fastest turnover of anyone in the country.