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.
Nor do I - it seems preferable to a death sentance by AIDS that prisoners currently get.
I agree 100%. The punishment for your crime is the time the jury or judge gives you. Rape should never be condoned no matter what.
Yes -- so it's time to bring the usual root cause into this thread: Attorneys
Sure, if Soviet Russia is the model we want to emulate.
Your tunnel vision is showing a bit, FRiend....if you want to bother thinking about it.
Wouldn’t that stop white collar crime?
It’s the wrong question to ask during gay pride month when homosexuals are learning to exert their sexuality.
It is cruel and unusual punishment to permit inmates to be raped by perverts in prision. Yet it is politically incorrect to tell homosexual predators to keep it in their pants while in prision. What is a libertarian to do?
As a conservative, I would say ban sex in prisions. But that would be considered hate by libertarians. Choices... Social liberalism and real justice never met each other.
These are unionized Abu Ghraibs.
NY Times will never cover them.
I like your snark.
Don't forget; in America, we're all criminals now. Every one of us has broken the law at some point.
Considering the things you can go to jail of, no. No, jail is not supposed to be a death sentence unless you were sentenced to death. Almost all of our prisoners in jail, and a sizable majority of those in prison have committed relatively minor offenses and are serving sentences less that five years. So no, it shouldn't be thought of as a Soviet style hell hole where you're lucky to get out alive.
They wouldn’t dare go against all those homos in prison. An interesting take is that since prisons are notoriously butt pounders it goes to say that homos are criminals by nature as they seem to dominate the prisons.
Correct
The statistics aren't surprising, but still ambiguous. Though male on male rape is implied, the article (and the statistics) aren't clear. Where are the cross-tabs on male guard on female inmate incidents, versus male inmates on male inmates, for example. Are there any prisons in states where such cruel and "unusual" punishments are rare, and why?
Saying Holder is not showing leadership is not telling us much about who's opposing working reforms, if there are any.
This article didn't give much useful information. There's many categories of detail to fill in before race enters the equation, though that subject is unavoidable, I suppose.
Is this really defended on spending grounds? There's a "healthy" prison industry, out there, with their own slick magazines aimed at everyone from state legislators to wardens to guards.
Notable is the way our present-day prison orthodoxy began as a method of reform, albeit rehabilitation over "punishment." Naturally far behind the curtain of most social awareness, so to speak, like all social institutions the prison orthodoxy has followed the natural course from "reason for being" functions to "self continuity" functions.
We're overdue for a revolution in this area. If neglected too long, those who side with rehabilitation over punishment will own the vocabulary of reform, again.
Those numbers look surprisingly low to me. I am thinking if someone has made a ‘love connection,’ they aren’t gonna just settle for 3-5 times a year. Also the amount of people who have been raped in prison seems lower than I suspected. Prison is both boring and anxiety provoking. I would think sexual ‘conquest,’ or battery would be high on the list of entertainment and acting out options.
Keep everyone in solitary. Problem solved.
I'd rather see a group of male relavtives of a victim beat the ship out of him than allow gang rape in prison....
Not true - some prisons are cutting out HBO and Cinemax... that will keep criminals thinking twice about committing a crime.
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