The Minister in charge of police and upholding rape culture

I haven’t written about, and don’t feel capable of writing about, the earthquake in Christchurch. I am too close, and too far away (I am OK, everyone I know is OK). Other people have written about the experience powerfully eloquently, and when I don’t have anything to say, I try to stay silent. But I felt for a non-New Zealand audience, I had to acknowledge the context with which I am writing in, and the reason that looting is an issue.

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From the Herald:

Police Minister Judith Collins said the actions of looters was akin to “people who rob the dead”.

She expected to see the judiciary throw the book at looters.

“I hope they go to jail for a long time – with a cellmate.”

Judith Collins introduced widespread double-bunking; she championed it in the media. When people who had actually done research suggested that it would lead to more prison rape and violence, she shrugged those statements off.

And now she’s telling us that, for her, abuse and violence between inmates is a feature of double-bunking, not a bug. She is not explicit, but we live in a culture where threats of rape in prison are common enough that she doesn’t need to finish the thought by telling us that the cellmate is large and called Bubba. By signalling that she thinks looters should be subject to rape and violence from their cell mates, she has acknowledged that her policy of introducing cellmates is responsible for increased rape and violence.

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One of the most fundamental ideas of rape culture is that sometimes consent doesn’t matter. And if you suggest that, about anyone, ever, then you are legitimising it as an area of contention and debate,

So when the Police Minister implies that looters should be raped, the ideas she’s promoting about prison are appalling, but they don’t just affect prisoners. What she says is part of the same culture that tells us not to drink, to go out at night, to dress that way. It’s the same culture that says if we’re in a relationship with him, or drunk, or flirted, or were in a war zone, or were asleep, or had sex with other people then our consent doesn’t matter. It’s the same culture that has been reinforced in every rape case I’ve ever written about. When someone ignores our consent and violates, it’s that same culture which will find a reason, any reason, that we caused it and deserved it.

We can’t dismiss comments about prison rape as somehow being different from other comments about rape. Like prison, prison rape is part of society, not removed from it.

This entry posted in Prisoner rape, Prisons and Justice and Police, Rape, intimate violence, & related issues. Bookmark the permalink. 

8 Responses to The Minister in charge of police and upholding rape culture

  1. 1
    RonF says:

    Here in the U.S. you’ll often see that people who normally would vociferously deplore rape seem to shrug off rape in prison. I’ll tell them “People who are sentenced to prison were sentenced to be incarcerated, not raped.” But that doesn’t seem to matter to a great many people.

  2. 2
    Elusis says:

    That’s a perfectly disgusting remark.

    Any time there’s a news story on someone committing a crime on the SF Chronicle’s website, the commenters immediately start in with the “well he’ll get what’s coming to him in prison, hur hur.” I’ve reported dozens of these comments to moderation as “obscene/offensive” and remarked that “rape isn’t funny” but they never get removed. Not even when the offender is a teenager.

  3. 3
    figleaf says:

    Nicely said, Maia!

    Few things identify rape culture quite like the assumption that it will be the new, the young, the white, the middle-class, the petty-criminals, or the white-collar criminals who will become the victims of prison rape when inmates are “doubled up” unsupervised in cells.

    Similarly, few things identify rape culture quite like the assumption that if assertions like Collins’s are true then the prison system rewards, encourages, coddles, or even tacitly recruits those who really are prison rapists by providing them with more victims.

    And finally, few things identify rape culture quite like the general failure of progressives to push back on the previous two assumptions.

    While rates of rape and sexual assault seem to be in decline in the general population, prison rape remains a huge reservoir not only of future perpetrators but of current ones! And of current victims. Thanks so much for bringing this up and for making the connection so clearly.

    figleaf

  4. 4
    RonF says:

    While rates of rape and sexual assault seem to be in decline in the general population, prison rape remains a huge reservoir not only of future perpetrators but of current ones!

    I’ve heard that there’s a strong correlation that children who are abused tend to grow up to be abusers. Is there any correlation that people who are not rapists who go to prison become rapists when they get out? And whether or not they were raped when they went to prison?

  5. 5
    Silenced is foo says:

    My point on this one is just to ask people point-blank: “Do you think convicts should be raped?”

    If they should be raped (and no, they shouldn’t), then it should be part of the sentence. Not just letting the strong prisoners rape the weak ones – I imagine that the guy doing the raping in prison is probably the one most deserving of a regular ass-pounding, if one absolutely *must* be doled out.

    If you want to see felons raped, man-up (person-up?) and legislate that. Sentence the guy to three years of hard labour and twice-weekly half-hour sessions with the Steely Dan in the quad. Don’t just wuss out and let some murderous biker apply this sexual punishment however he sees fit.

  6. 6
    Lynet says:

    Silenced, I just did exactly that, since my family is in Christchurch and I’m a New Zealand citizen. I emailed Judith Collins, referencing the article, and saying that I was disgusted by looters, but outraged by the reference to prison rape in her comments. She has since responded with

    Dear Ms ____

    I have never made any such suggestion around sexual abuse and I am frankly appalled that anyone would seek to accuse me of it.

    Yours faithfully
    Judith Collins

    I’ve written back, asking for clarification as to whether the Herald misquoted her, or whether she just didn’t mean what it looked like she meant. I don’t know if she’ll respond again, but I hope she’ll at least refrain from saying that sort of thing in future.

  7. 7
    Grace Annam says:

    I’ve heard that there’s a strong correlation that children who are abused tend to grow up to be abusers.

    This assertion is often made of child sexual assault, and it can be very damaging to survivors of child sexual assault. There is no significant correlation between being sexually assaulted as a child and growing up to be a child sexual assaulter. There is a significant correlation between being a child molester and having been sexually assaulted as a child. This apparent contradiction can be resolved by understanding that each assaulter assaults an average of over 100 children, and a bit of basic statistics understanding.

    Recently, I heard a sergeant assert in a room full of cops that being molested meant you would grow up to be a child molester. I pointed out that it was the reverse, and he said, “Yeah, same thing.” Any cop who listened in class knows that roughly 1 in 4 people has experienced child sexual assault. It clearly did not occur to him that it was likely that several of the people in the room were child sexual assault victims, and he had just stated that they were child molesters. Which is a pretty crappy thing to say to a person who has experienced it.

    I don’t know if the same thing is true of physical and emotional abuse. Perhaps it is less true in those cases and there is more of a correlation. But I don’t know, and I would be very careful to advance that proposition, considering the effect it can have on victims who are not, themselves, abusers.

    As to your questions, I do not know the answer. I suspect that, for those inmates inclined to abuse others, showing them effective techniques for doing that will lead to them adopting those techniques. This will be especially true when the point of the assault is power and not orgasm, which is much more the case in adult sexual assault than it is in child sexual assault. And it’s also especially true when you realize what many statisticians have historically not understood: you can commit sexual assault with an implement, or your hands. You don’t need an erect penis.

    Grace

  8. 8
    Grace Annam says:

    Here in the U.S. you’ll often see that people who normally would vociferously deplore rape seem to shrug off rape in prison. I’ll tell them “People who are sentenced to prison were sentenced to be incarcerated, not raped.” But that doesn’t seem to matter to a great many people.

    I agree with all of that. Broadly, people write convicts off, and don’t give a damn if they experience a punishment which manifestly does not fit the crime. I can’t think of a crime for which I would sentence a human being to rape, and that includes such crimes as genocide. Some things are beyond the pale.

    But, actually doing something about it takes effort, and requires a nuanced understanding and analysis of cost/benefit of different approaches, and demands that we think deeply about matters we find repugnant and stressful to contemplate. It’s easier by far to pass by on the other side.

    Grace