In preparation for the conference ―Opening Up a Closed World: What Constitutes Effective Prison Oversight?,‖ held at the University of Texas in 2006, graduate students in my seminar on ―Prisons and Human Rights‖ embarked on a major group effort to compile and review the literature dealing with independent oversight of prisons and to develop an annotated bibliography of this material.

This essay explains what is meant by the term “oversight” and frames it as an umbrella concept encompassing many distinct functions, including regulation, audit, accreditation, investigation, legal, reporting, and inspection/monitoring. The piece calls for a robust system of correctional oversight that is multi-faceted and multi-layered.