; sense of Congress (a) Findings Congress finds the following: (1) In recent years it has become clear that programs funded by the Edward Byrne Memorial Justice Assistance Grant program (referred to in this Act as the Byrne grants program ) have perpetuated racial disparities, corruption in law enforcement, and the commission of civil rights abuses across the country. This is especially the case when it comes to the program’s funding of hundreds of regional antidrug task forces because the grants for these antidrug task forces have been dispensed to State governments with very little Federal oversight and have been prone to misuse and corruption. (2) Numerous Government Accountability Office reports have found that the Department of Justice has inadequately monitored grants provided under the Byrne grants program. A 2001 General Accounting Office report found that one-third of the grants did not contain required monitoring plans. Seventy percent of files on such grants did not contain required progress reports. Forty-one percent of such files did not contain financial reports covering the full grant period. A 2002 report by the Heritage Foundation reported that there is virtually no evidence that the Byrne grants program has been successful in reducing crime and that the program lacks adequate measures of performance . (3) A 2002 report by the American Civil Liberties Union of Texas identified 17 recent scandals involving antidrug task forces in Texas that receive funds under the Byrne grants program. Such scandals include cases of the falsification of government records, witness tampering, fabricating evidence, false imprisonment, stealing drugs from evidence lockers, selling drugs to children, large-scale racial profiling, sexual harassment, and other abuses of official capacity. Recent scandals in other States include the misuse of millions of dollars in Byrne grants program money in Kentucky and Massachusetts, wrongful convictions based on police perjury in Missouri, and negotiations with drug offenders to