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Prison Rape: Getting From Punchline to Serious Crime
Sexual abuse should not be an inevitable feature of incarceration.
Passed by unanimous congressional consent, PREA establishes a standard that rape in prison—just like rape on the outside—is unacceptable*. For the first time prisons, jails and immigration and juvenile detention facilities are required to track incidences of prison rape; provide resources to help protect prisoners; and extend recourse to survivors. With national standards finalized last year, many facilities are only just now starting their first on-site audits. Going forward, at least every three years, inspectors will look for things like whether staff has been trained to help prevent sexual assault or if prisoners have been informed of how to report incidents.
The takeaway: “PREA acknowledges that prison rape is a problem,” says editor Alex Friedmann, who follows PREA developments closely for Prison Legal News’ 9,000 subscribers, 70 percent of whom are incarcerated. “You can’t brush it under the carpet anymore. You can’t say that prisoners deserve it.”
Stigma makes tracking sexual assault inside prison walls difficult.
Roughly 200,000 men, women and children reported being sexually abused in detention facilities in 2011, the most recent year for which the Bureau of Justice Statistics (BJS) has anonymously self-reported data from inmates. For prisons, whites reported inmate-on-inmate sexual victimization at twice the rate of blacks. Black and Hispanic inmates reported higher rates of staff sexual misconduct. Persons of two or more races reported by far the highest rates for both inmate-on-inmate (4 percent) and staff sexual misconduct (3.9 percent). And of the more than 600 correctional facilities surveyed that year, the Oglala Sioux facility in Pine Ridge, S.D. reported the highest rate of staff sexual misconduct (10.8 percent)*. (The national average for prisons and jails is 2.4 percent and 1.8 percent, respectively).
Despite the above, however, the true incidence of sexual violence for all inmates is likely higher, Chris Daley, deputy executive director of Just Detention International, says. “We just don’t have a good method of estimating how much higher.”
Friedmann points out that the stigmas bounding rape and sexual assault victims to silence on the outside are exacerbated behind prison walls. “If anything [the pressure to not report is] more exacerbated in prison where any sign of weakness sets you up for further abuse,” Friedmann says. “And, if you’re being abused by a staff member you may face retaliation, too.”
Passed by unanimous congressional consent, PREA establishes a standard that rape in prison—just like rape on the outside—is unacceptable*. For the first time prisons, jails and immigration and juvenile detention facilities are required to track incidences of prison rape; provide resources to help protect prisoners; and extend recourse to survivors. With national standards finalized last year, many facilities are only just now starting their first on-site audits. Going forward, at least every three years, inspectors will look for things like whether staff has been trained to help prevent sexual assault or if prisoners have been informed of how to report incidents.
The takeaway: “PREA acknowledges that prison rape is a problem,” says editor Alex Friedmann, who follows PREA developments closely for Prison Legal News’ 9,000 subscribers, 70 percent of whom are incarcerated. “You can’t brush it under the carpet anymore. You can’t say that prisoners deserve it.”
Stigma makes tracking sexual assault inside prison walls difficult.
Roughly 200,000 men, women and children reported being sexually abused in detention facilities in 2011, the most recent year for which the Bureau of Justice Statistics (BJS) has anonymously self-reported data from inmates. For prisons, whites reported inmate-on-inmate sexual victimization at twice the rate of blacks. Black and Hispanic inmates reported higher rates of staff sexual misconduct. Persons of two or more races reported by far the highest rates for both inmate-on-inmate (4 percent) and staff sexual misconduct (3.9 percent). And of the more than 600 correctional facilities surveyed that year, the Oglala Sioux facility in Pine Ridge, S.D. reported the highest rate of staff sexual misconduct (10.8 percent)*. (The national average for prisons and jails is 2.4 percent and 1.8 percent, respectively).
Despite the above, however, the true incidence of sexual violence for all inmates is likely higher, Chris Daley, deputy executive director of Just Detention International, says. “We just don’t have a good method of estimating how much higher.”
Friedmann points out that the stigmas bounding rape and sexual assault victims to silence on the outside are exacerbated behind prison walls. “If anything [the pressure to not report is] more exacerbated in prison where any sign of weakness sets you up for further abuse,” Friedmann says. “And, if you’re being abused by a staff member you may face retaliation, too.”
http://colorlines.com/archives/2014/04/prison_rape_getting_from_punchline_to_serious_crime.html
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