A high-level commision has been appointed to study U.S. prison conditions. This is welcome news.

A high-level commission yesterday began a year-long examination of violence, sexual abuse, overcrowding and inhumane treatment in U.S. prisons, in an investigation provoked in part by reports of misconduct by U.S. corrections officers assigned to serve in military detention centers overseas.

The privately organized commission, which has attracted interest in its work from the Justice Department and key lawmakers, is headed by former attorney general Nicholas deB. Katzenbach and John J. Gibbons, a former federal appeals court judge. Its aim is to recommend prison reforms from local to federal levels after holding at least four public hearings around the country.

Why is it needed? Check out these stats:

• More than 34,000 assaults were committed by prisoners against other inmates in a 12-month period covering parts of 1999 and 2000;
• The number of prisoner assaults against staff in that period was 27 percent higher than the previous 12 months.
• More than a million people were sexually assaulted in prisons over the past two decades.
• Eleven inmates died in restraint chairs in the 1990s.
• Corrections officers have reduced life expectancies and higher rates of alcoholism than other law enforcement officers.