The Prison Rape Elimination Act of 2003 passed congress last month and is fairly certain to be signed by President Bush. (An earlier version of the bill had a less stirring, but no doubt more realistic, name – the Prison Rape Reduction Act). To some extent, the bill – which allocates $60 million annually to research and discussion of the prison rape problem – is a case of “too little, years late,'” Still, better than nothing. From the Washington Post:
“It’s been a long, strange battle, but I think everyone has come to understand that a prison sentence in the United States should not include rape as added punishment,” said Rep. Frank R. Wolf, (R-Va.), a House co-sponsor of the bill, along with Rep. Robert C. “Bobby” Scott (D-Va.).
The annual study, based on surveys from 10 percent of the nation’s 8,700 correctional institutions, including at least one in every state, will be analyzed by a commission. That panel, whose members have not been named, will establish national standards designed to prevent and prosecute prison rapes.
This will be (as far as I know) the first nationwide, representative study of prison rape. As such, it might add hugely to what we know about this problem. But will knowing more about exactly how many prison rapes happen each year really help prevent rapes, I wonder?
I’m curious as to what the panel’s recommendations will be. I’m not sure that prosecuting prison rapists will necessarily be effective – after all, in the end, all we’re doing is sending them back to prison, where they’ll rape again. But prevention is difficult. For instance, as this FindLaw article points out, the Supreme Court’s 1994 Farmer v. Brennon decision – which established that prisoners could sue prison administrations for allowing rapes to go on – had the unintended effect of encouraging wardens to turn a blind eye to rape (since if they didn’t know, they weren’t responsible).
My instinct is that the entire prison culture needs to be changed – and the way to do that is to hold the wardens of high-rape-incidence prisons responsible, regardless of what they claim to know. I don’t know if the political will exists for that solution, though..
I think that a big part of the problem is that many Americans don’t agree that “a prison sentence in the United States should not include rape as added punishment.” Many people believe that criminals should rot in hell and that whatever happens to them is their own fault.
I disagree with their logic, of course. Punishments should be meted out in open court in proportion to crimes committed. This is especially a problem because many victims of prison rape are incarcerated for nonviolent crimes. Obviously, I don’t have numbers to back this up, but I would guess that people in jail for nonviolent crimes are more likely to be raped, since they’re likely less violent than their violent offender peers. They’re also probably more likely to be skinny white guys, or at least, not as likely to have built up the strength to fight off a gang determined to rape them as, say, a person incarcerated for assault or forcible rape. That rape could be part of the sentence for coke possession or fraud is just sickening.
However, I’m sure that many people disagree with me. Most of them, I’m sure, think of prisoners primarily as rapists and murderers, when that’s not actually the case. I hope this study keeps track of rapes by the crimes for which the victims were incarcerated. Perhaps if most Americans could see how likely they or their loved ones would be to be violated if they ever went to jail for tax evasion or marijuana possession, they’d rethink the “prison rape is a joke” mentality that has become a national ethos.
I agree that prison rape is more embedded into the system, than something legislation can fix. I wouldn’t be surprised if the study concludes that they need to get rid of all prison staff, and prisoners shouldn’t take showers together like cattle. In other words, there’s probably some obvious solutions to preventing prison rape, but the existing system turns a blind eye.
I think that Amy P. hit pretty close to the truth as I see it. One of the biggest problems to overcome in the fight against prison rape is the attitude that prisoners lose all of their rights (as opposed to some of their rights) as soon as they commit a crime or crimes. Also, as Amy mentioned, there’s a misperception among the populace that the majority of prisoners are incarcerated for rape and other violent crimes. I’m not sure of the exact statistics (anyone who knows where I could find them is encouraged to post a link), but I’m pretty certain that the majority of prisoners are incarcerated for things like fraud, theft, and drug possession (that last is probably the biggest).
There is, however, one additional aspect of the situation that Amy didn’t mention. I believe that there’s a perception among many in the general population that prison rapes are inevitable and therefore not too much should be done about them. I’ve talked to a number of people who seem to think that there’s something in the nature of prisons and, most especially, in the prisoners that compels some of them to “go gay” and start raping their fellow inmates. This same attitude can be seen in regard to prison murder which many view as being so inevitable that it’s almost pointless to try to prevent it.
Interestingly enough, I’ve always found it curious that prison rapes aren’t mentioned more often as justification for the view that homosexual men are, if not necessarily violent rapists as a whole, certainly unable to control their raging hormones. The only conclusion I can reach is that many of the people who believe in this sort of wrong-headed homophobia also tend to be strongly religious. Religions tend to lump sinners (in this case, law-breakers) together as somehow subhuman. If a prisoner/sinner is being raped, then why raise a fuss because he is, afterall, only a prisoner.
it is an interesting fact about our culture that people expect the social contract to nourish and feed their all-to-human hunger for revenge and retribution, when in fact it exists to protect the welfare of society at large in both the short and long term. many people in this culture are more outraged and upset by stories of the criminal who went free than they are by stories of the innocent who went to jail. they see criminals as a nameless, faceless boogeyman, an “Other” who is the sole predator in their natural environment, whom they fear and from whom they viscerally crave protection. arguably certain political elements freely exploit these primal fears and motivations. taking the longer view, it is more in our interest to live in a society based at least on the notion, if not the practical realization, of rehabilitation rather than punishment/retribution, because demonstrably we will reap what we sow when incarcerated felons return to society. human beings’ innate tendency toward bloodthirstiness and self-righteousness can never be underestimated, as i think noir novelist jim thompson observed very cogently. i think there are a lot of people who wish we were more like the countries where you get your hand cut off for stealing a loaf of bread, perhaps more than any of us care to imagine.
If you haven’t heard of flash mobs, they are large groups of people that show up in a public place at a specific moment and perform synchronized actions for a short period of time, then quickly disperse. The intention of this is simply to have fun and make passersby stop and go, “Wait, what the hell was that?” If you would like to be part of the first known flash mob in Portland, please go to this site: http://groups.yahoo.com/group/PDXFM and join the group. You will receive further information by way of email through the group. Please send this message to everyone that you know.
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