Posted on 06/25/2011 3:41:56 PM PDT by The Magical Mischief Tour
In 1984 the photographer Tom Cahill smashed a plate-glass door in a fit of fury at the San Francisco Chronicle. He had just unsuccessfully attempted to get the paper’s reporters to write about rape in America’s jails and prisons. Cahill was a desperate man at the time, tormented by flashbacks and nightmares, his personal and professional life in ruins.
Cahill’s story began in 1968, when he was arrested in Texas during a peaceful antiwar protest. An Air Force vet who opposed the Vietnam War, he did not prove popular among jail staff in the heavily military town of San Antonio. Before placing him in an overcrowded communal cell, he says, the guards spread word that he was a child molester. Cahill remembers with a shudder how one of the staff members shouted “fresh meat” before leaving. After 24 hours of beatings and gang rape, his life was shattered.
More than four decades later, sexual violence behind bars is still widespread in the United States. But thanks to Cahill and other courageous survivors, the ongoing crisis is no longer shrouded in silence.
The U.S. Department of Justice recently released its first-ever estimate of the number of inmates who are sexually abused in America each year. According to the department’s data, which are based on nationwide surveys of prison and jail inmates as well as young people in juvenile detention centers, at least 216,600 inmates were victimized in 2008 alone. Contrary to popular belief, most of the perpetrators were not other prisoners but staff members—corrections officials whose job it is to keep inmates safe. On average, each victim was abused between three and five times over the course of the year. The vast majority were too fearful of reprisals to seek help or file a formal complaint.
Sexual violence is not an inevitable part of prison life. On the contrary, it is highly preventable. Corrections officials who are committed to running safe facilities train their staff thoroughly. They make sure that inmates who are especially vulnerable to abuse—such as small, mentally ill, and gay or transgender detainees—are not housed with likely perpetrators. And they hold those who commit sexual assaults accountable, even if they are colleagues.
But many corrections administrators are reluctant to make sexual abuse prevention a top priority, preferring to maintain the status quo rather than acknowledge the role their own employees play. Others are actually fighting reform efforts, claiming, in spite of the evidence, that sexual violence is rare.
This resistance is reflected in the slow implementation of the Prison Rape Elimination Act, which Congress unanimously passed in 2003. The law mandated binding national standards to help end sexual abuse in detention. But almost eight years later, the Justice Department has yet to promulgate final standards.
Attorney General Eric Holder has not shown leadership on this issue. In 2009 Holder essentially rejected standards recommended by a bipartisan commission that spent years studying the problem of prisoner rape, claiming that the recommendations—which included limits on cross-gender supervision and the loosening of deadlines for survivors to file formal grievances—would have been too expensive.
It’s easy to feel numbed by the Justice Department’s estimate that almost 600 prisoners are sexually victimized each day. But behind that number are real people like Jan Lastocy. While serving time for attempted embezzlement in a Michigan prison in 1998, Lastocy was raped. Not once, not twice, but several times a week for seven months. The rapist was an officer who supervised her at a prison warehouse. Lastocy was so afraid of him that she did not even dare to tell her husband of 30 years, John, what was going on. Later John said, “Jan did a stupid thing, and she went to prison for it. But no one should have to pay the price that she did.”
Jan and John Lastocy’s lives were devastated by prisoner rape. Holder should listen to and learn from them rather than bowing to corrections officials trying to maintain the status quo.
Leftist premise-laden mental rape, is what this article is.
Gosh I sure wonder why reporters at the San Francisco didn’t want to write about jail-rape being bad...
Gosh it’s so mysterious...
Just guessing here, but the wildly PC government may view stopping men from having sex (they wouldn’t call it “rape rape”) as a violation of the rapist’s civil rights. Also, if blacks are raping more than whites or whites are more the victim, being the prison minority, then stopping mostly blacks might be racist.
I know the above sounds ridiculous, but my experience with PC in the workplace portrays similar thinking.
Prisoners don’t vote, so politicians don’t need to listen to their concerns.
The general public believes, with good reason, that those convicted of crimes are inadequately punished for their crimes so the tolerance of prison rapes ensures many convicts really pay for their crimes.
Ultimately, it’s helping the US become a less just and more violent society because many of those prisoners come out much more violent than they were going in and it’s infecting all of US society.
My grandparents hailed from eastern europe (Russia to be exact). According to her, Russian jail was pretty much a death sentence. This kept all the other people in line. Isn’t that how jail is supposed to be thought of?
LOL!
Rape is probably the only thing left in prison to make prison undesirable enough to make want to be criminals think twice about committing a crime in the first place!
For what it is worth my opinion on this is that people who break the law do not have many rights
However they should have the right not to be raped in prison.
Prison has too much freedom, too many opportunities fo such things kepp the animals locked up, let the trustee’s have a bit of freedom.
Prison officials know which prisoners are the ones who do these things, keep them in their cages.
Several FReeper posts on this thread seem to agree. It sounds more like Taliban justice than American justice.
If you brought back horse whippings and hangings, you wouldn’t have to send as many people to prison.
Now, that’s some old fashioned American justice.
The reason I would not commit a crime worthy of prison time would be first, it would be wrong to commit the crime and second, being in prison takes away your freedom. That should be the main deterrent...the loss of freedom. Being raped in prison should be considered cruel and unusual, at least in the America I grew up in.
If that’s how jail is supposed to be, fine.
But is it really necessary to give some guy who committed some vandilism on a Saturday night drinking spree or some guy who committed some minor acts of fraud or some guy who was caught with a couple of joints in his ocket for the fifth time the same death sentence as some bruiser convict who was convicted of killing three people because he was bored?
The quakers had a solution for this 200 yrs ago.
The prison design was an inside room, and and outside cage - barred - with free access between them.
If you were sentenced to a year, they opened the door, tossed you in, and closed the door.
Door remained closed for the next year.
No rape.
Not at all surprising.
Prisoners VOTE IN SOME JURISDICTIONSS and there are strong endeavors among the Progressive, Liberal Democrats segments to invest them with a “right”, convicts as well as convicted felons, with voting rights.
From what I have read most prison rape is black on white... Thus politically incorrect to report on. Same as it is politically incorrect to identify black perpetrators of black on white crimes that would have Sharpton & Jesse howling in outrage if the reverse were true
Was that the secret about their crime-free societies?
(/sarc)
You can be thrown into prison and sodomised even if you are as innocent as a lamb. You just need the authorities to make a mistake. Thankfully, we all know that they are always right.
I wouldn’t have a problem with that.
The same people who rail about the corruption of our police and prosecuters think prison rape is hilarious.
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.