From an LA Times op-ed:
Prison rape occupies a fairly odd space in our culture. It is, all at once, a cherished source of humor, a tacitly accepted form of punishment and a broadly understood human rights abuse. We pass legislation called the Prison Rape Elimination Act at the same time that we produce films meant to explore the funny side of inmate sexual brutality.
Occasionally, we even admit that prison rape is a quietly honored part of the punishment structure for criminals. When Enron’s Ken Lay was sentenced to jail, for instance, Bill Lockyer, then the attorney general of California, spoke dreamily of his desire “to personally escort Lay to an 8-by-10 cell that he could share with a tattooed dude who says, ‘Hi, my name is Spike, honey.’ ”
The culture is rife with similar comments. Although it would be unthinkable for the government today to institute corporal punishment in prisons, there is little or no outrage when the government interns prisoners in institutions where their fellow inmates will brutally violate them. We won’t touch you, but we can’t be held accountable for the behavior of Spike, now can we?
To quote myself: The prison rape epidemic is probably going to get worse. According to the Bureau of Justice Statistics’ projections, if our current rate of sending men to prison is maintained, then at some point in the future 15% of American men will have spent time in prison. (6% of white men, 17% of Latinos, and 32% of Black men. For comparison’s sake, the projections for women are 1%, 2% and 6%.)
If those projections are true (or even partly true), and if the prison rape epidemic continues unabated, the overall number of American rape victims will vastly increase over the coming decades. This is true even if rape prevalence outside of prison doesn’t change at all. This is one reason why it’s essential to support strong measures to combat prison rape; unfortunately, all that’s gotten through congress so far are weak half-measures.
Seems to me like it is at least as much a reason to, as the song says, “raze the prisons to the ground.” Prison rape should be fought all out, but not so that we can safely imprison 16% of our population without them fearing rape. Our entire system of criminal justice has become insane, we imprison people like no other country on earth, and that has to stop. Meanwhile, here in Oregon, the Democratic legislature put up a ballot measure to create harsher penalties for non-violent crime, in the hope that it can get more votes than the even worse ballot measure our resident psychopath, Kevin Mannix, is putting up. No one has any hope that we could actually stop this idiotic measure, even though Oregon is already among the states that spend more on prisons than on education.
I always detest this mentality among conservatives, because it’s stupid even for them. I mean, it’s not even decent from a “punish the criminals” mindset, since the worst scum in prison are probably the ones doing the raping.
One question that Klein doesn’t ask is, “Why is prison rape considered funny?”
I don’t think that the answer has anything to do with prison. When was the last time you heard a joke about a female prisoner being raped, or a male prisoner being raped by a woman? On the other hand, there’s plenty of humor to be found concerning men who mistakenly have sex with other men whilst outside of prison. I think the answer is plain old homophobia. A man who has gay sex, voluntary or not, is seen as having lost his masculinity. The joke is exactly the same joke as when a guy has to wear a dress because he lost a bet. Even the schadenfreude part is the same: how is “ha ha, now you’re going to get raped, that’ll teach you to break the law” any different from “ha ha, now you have to wear a dress, that’ll teach you to bet against me”? (Obviously the harm suffered is different, but the sentiment is the same.)
On a related topic, a couple months back someone (Maia? Mandolin? One of those M-people) mentioned that they wanted to do a post on prison abolition. I’d still like to see that post, as the topic is interesting but seems unworkable from my not-too-terribly-informed perspective. The wikipedia page is sorely lacking, and the prison-abolition page that I found that made the most sense was the one that acknowledged that abolition wasn’t actually his goal..
The man who voluntarily has gay sex in this situation – the prison rapist – is not the butt of the joke.
What results in the loss of masculinity is not having gay sex, which both have, but the inability of the victim to protect himself. The rapist, rather, proves his masculinity by emasculating another man.
@Bjartmarr
I’ve seen lots of jokes about female prison rape. Some of them are the “durrrr, lesbian sex is hawt” but others are just the straight-up female version of the typical male prison rape joke – laughing at some poor sob getting their comeuppance with a cellmate ten times their size.
I think the reason that the female version is the exception is not the rule has nothing to do with homophobia and is more to do with (1) thanks to the hard work of feminists for the past few decades, sexualized violence against women is rarely cool to joke about (male victim-advocacy has some catching up to do), and (2) there are a hell of a lot more men in prison than women.
Careful, Daran, your comment is downright feminist. Especially in the implicit acknowledgement that “emasculating” someone is robbing them of power.
I see prison rape as just one aspect of the general problem of abuse that occurs in prisons. As long as people who are outside of prisons don’t care what happens to those inside (or even think that they SHOULD be abused as part of their punishment), then rape and other abuses will continue. Now, how to convinced people that the 15% of American men in prison are not inhuman monsters to whom one can do anything with impunity?
Incidently, the US has more prisoners, both per capita and total than any other country in the world, including China (source: Economist, print). What gives? Does the US really have so many more people who behave in a criminal manner or are we punishing people excessively for minor offenses?
I don’t care whether my comments are feminist or not. I say what I think, regardless of what labels other people choose to pin on me.
I’ve gotten to know Daisy of Our Descent quite well, since she became a regular commenter at FCB, and I have yet to find a substantive difference between her views and mine on gender issues. Yet she is a feminist in good standing with the rest of the blogospheric movement, while I get vilified. Why is that?
The victims of prison rape are powerless to start with.
I don’t care whether my comments are feminist or not. I say what I think, regardless of what labels other people choose to pin on me.
Good. But don’t worry too much, I’m always annoying people by labelling them in ways that I find consistent with their positions, even if not with their self-images. For example, Robert is pro-choice because, even though he hates abortion and is disgusted by it, he doesn’t want to illegalize it. Plus I probably should have put a sarcasm tag on.
The victims of prison rape are powerless to start with.
Pretty much, but since the rapists are often prisoners themselves the rape tends to take away any residual power they do have: they not only have to watch out for the guards, but for the other prisoners as well.
Please, nobody answer that question. Or if you want it discussed (Daran or anyone else), please take it to an open thread. Thanks.
I’m not sure but I think it was Maia who wanted to write on prison issues including abolition.
I think with male rape victims in prison, most often it’s other prisoners. For women in prison, there’s more rapes by guards and other employees including in juvenile facilities. They had a major investigation of a youth authority facility for girls and teenaged women in my state involving correctional officers who sexually abused, harassed and raped female inmates among other things.
As for jokes about raping women in prison (or in custody), I heard one that a woman who was arrested by police after being dragged so her jeans were pulled down exposing her underwear. A male officer allegedly joked to her boyfriend that he was going to “fuck your girlfriend tonight”. They complained about the incident but you know how these things go, unfortunately.
Not to mention from another standpoint, involving the fact that most prison inmates are released back into society after completing their sentences or on parole. The impact of prison abuse on the communities they are released in (which are most often, poorer ones) is not often discussed as a reason for prison abolition or reform. And it’s not something that those who think that prison inmates deserve abuse think of either.
Dianne, prisoners are good labor sources and according to the 13th Amendment, they’re a free one. I went to high school in a small city with and surrounded by about 13 penal institutions of various types, a number which since then has only grown. The city was asked by the state capitol as a reward for its suppport of that city as a capitol, which it wanted, a university or a prison? The small city chose a prison, for the free labor which built many of its roads and streets.
Dianne, prisoners are good labor sources and according to the 13th Amendment, they’re a free one.
Well, yes, I always have wondered if the prison industrial complex wasn’t a way of sneaking slavery back into the society. Seems to be working if so.
Well, that seems to have killed that conversation.
@Dianne – no surprise really… there’s not much to debate besides “yeah, you’re right”. Ideas get explored much better through dissent, and despite the relatively diverse viewpoints on this blog, I don’t think anybody has the kind of spiteful, vengeful personality it would take to justify any kind of punitive prison torture, including rape.
I am easily the most pro-prison person who comments here (at least without getting banned first time out) and I find prison rape horrifying. Something should be done, I just don’t know what.
Something should be done
Ideas about things that could be done…(off the top of my head and I can’t promise that all of them are good ideas).
1. Decrease the number of people in prison. Fewer prisoners, less prison rape. The obvious way to do this is to repeal some of the more ridiculous drug laws mandating long sentences for minor drug offenses. There are probably other laws that could be changed, that’s just the one that occurred to me first. The US has more prisoners per capita (and total) than any other country in the world, including Cuba, Iran, and China. I find it hard to believe that we have that many more dangerous, violent people that must be locked away from the public compared to the rest of the world. So get some of the ones that don’t belong there out.
2. Take accusations of rape more seriously, especially accusations of rape by guards. Maybe have an independent group to investigate accusations, possibly allow accusations to be anonymous or the identities of the accusers not revealed until/unless the case went to a grand jury to decrease the risk of retribution.
3. Improve conditions in prison in general.
4. Dump the whole private, for-profit prison thing. Prisons shouldn’t be profitable and if they are then something is very wrong.
Thoughts, anyone?
1. Decrease the number of people in prison. Fewer prisoners, less prison rape. The obvious way to do this is to repeal some of the more ridiculous drug laws mandating long sentences for minor drug offenses.
Possibly. My suspicion is that most of those people would be in for something else. In any event, this is a bit like reducing heterosexual rape by putting more men in prison – more men in prison = less heterosexual rape because they aren’t out in the general mixed-sex population. We’d just be trading one pathology for another.
2. Take accusations of rape more seriously, especially accusations of rape by guards.
We could do this, but of course, it would end up…putting more people in prison.
3. Improve conditions in prison in general.
I’ve seen no evidence that bad conditions are what motivate prison rape. Rather, sexual frustration and issues of power and control seem to be the motivating factors.
4. Dump the whole private, for-profit prison thing. Prisons shouldn’t be profitable and if they are then something is very wrong.
I’ve seen no evidence that for-profit prisons are any worse (or better) at controlling prison rape than purely state-run institutions.
I suspect that there’s a lot more prison rape because the culture of corrections officers encourages it. That culture might be changeable, but the people who would be the ones to change it are also people who won’t go work for the prison system.
My suspicion is that most of those people would be in for something else.
I seriously doubt it. Some yes, most, no. Again, the US has many, many more people in prison than any other country. Either we’re imprisoning people for minor offenses that other countries don’t worry much about, in which case many could be safely released, or we’re a bunch of violent criminals, far worse than any other country, in which case I’m going to go crawl under the bed now.
I’m not sure if this is what Dianne meant or not, but I’d say Dianne’s point isn’t just about motive — it’s about if the prison conditions facilitate rape or not. For instance, a prison designed to not have blind areas (corners, cooridors or rooms that are out of sight of guards) and that has single-person bedrooms will, all else held equal, have a lower prevalence of rape than a prison with a lot of blind areas and rows of bunks in a big common room.
I don’t know of any evidence, but in theory, for-profit prisons are rationally motivated to skimp on everything that doesn’t add to their profit margin. For-profit prisons are less likely to hire double shifts of guards (so that guards are never alone with prisoners — especially in female prisons, many rapists are guards), less likely to spend the money on good security systems and monitoring, less likely to spend the money on individual bedrooms, etc..
And if a for-profit prison was willing to spend money on those things, it would presumably be underbid by a competitor who was willing to skimp on those things.
That doesn’t mean we have to eliminate for-profit prisons; but it does mean that if we go that route, we have to regulate and monitor them much better than we do now. (Of course, we also need monitoring for publicly run prisons; independent monitoring agencies with teeth are a major way we could approach reducing prison rape, imo. But it’s also something that will probably never happen, because it means spending more money — independent watchdogs cost more than asking the prisons to monitor themselves does.)
One of the main problems with prison violence (including rape) is deterrence: how you punish people who are already in prison. This is especially an issue once people have advanced to the highest punishment levels (federal supermax, for example, where the “that’ll teach you” stuff is really frightening. It is not an easy problem to solve deterrence, which is why Amp’s prevention suggestinos seem like better places to start.
How ‘bout OPTIONAL for-profit prisons – that is, prisons that a prisoner can opt into in lieu of staying in a government prison? Kinda like private schools: the overall conditions would have to be more appealing than the government institution or else no one would opt to go there. In this case, government might need to guard against excessive lenience, not excessive brutality.
To quote from a previous post about prison rape:
That’s a really interesting idea, N.R..
One thing I worry about is that it might lead to a “selection” effect, in which the easiest-to-handle prisoners would all get skimmed off by private prisons, which would turn down difficult prisoners. This would make the publicly-run prisons more expensive per prisoner.
On the other hand, maybe there should be a private option for non-violent prisoners. Another option is to have those prisons charge rent to prisoners, to defray costs; the problem with this is that it would lead to nicer prisons for people with money. Perhaps the rent could have a sliding scale?
Double-celling — that is, cellmates — should be eliminated.
I agree. Personally, the thing that sounds most horrifying about prison (well, apart from the rape and abuse possibilities…I mean of the things that are supposed to happen) is the total lack of privacy ever. Individual cells might help keep the prisoners from going crazy, might make them less likely to act out violently.
On the other hand, I worry that such an arrangement might actually lead to an increase in guard rape. No roommate, no witness, more plausible deniability. Does this seem like a problem to anyone else and does anyone have thoughts on how to solve the problem if so?
This may or may not help with prison rape, but another area where prisons could use some serious reform is in medical care, particularly care of mental health. Quite a number of people in prison are mentally ill and they rarely get proper treatment for their illness. This may make them more apt to act violently or sexually inappropriately. Also, could we PLEASE get all the incarcerated people with HIV on meds? HIV dementia is ugly and I don’t want to think about the possibility for spreading the infection.
Either we’re imprisoning people for minor offenses that other countries don’t worry much about, in which case many could be safely released, or we’re a bunch of violent criminals, far worse than any other country, in which case I’m going to go crawl under the bed now.
Or we’re rich enough to afford to incarcerate people for crimes that other, poorer, nations would like to incarcerate them for, but can’t afford to. Or our welfare net is built such that it is not easy to survive without working, and so folks who in (say) the UK would go on the dole instead are faced with the choice of crime or work and choose crime.
in which the easiest-to-handle prisoners would all get skimmed off by private prisons, which would turn down difficult prisoners. This would make the publicly-run prisons more expensive per prisoner.
This is only a problem if private prisons are paid a set fee per prisoner, regardless of that prisoner’s behavioral problems (or lack thereof). If the fee is proportional to the security level in which that prisoner must be housed, then I don’t see why skimming would occur, nor do I see why it would be a problem if it did.
Another option is to have those prisons charge rent to prisoners, to defray costs
The other problem with this is that I suspect that the vast majority of prisoners don’t have much money to start with. Those that do may need that money to get started after they are released, and taking it away is likely to increase recidivism. Even a tiny increase in recidivism would cost the state far more money than the paltry sum they might be able to recover by going after prisoners’ last few dollars.
Or we’re rich enough to afford to incarcerate people for crimes that other, poorer, nations would like to incarcerate them for, but can’t afford to. Or our welfare net is built such that it is not easy to survive without working, and so folks who in (say) the UK would go on the dole instead are faced with the choice of crime or work and choose crime.
I don’t believe this is true. The UK could easily afford to incarcerate more people; I just think that they’re smart enough not to. Apparently we’re not that smart.
To be sure, you’d want to consider the overall effect. But if the AVERAGE cost per prisoner in a public prison went up, but the TOTAL POPULATION in public prisons went down, you might still come out ahead.
I could easily imagine such a system leading to a multi-tiered system. Would that be a bad thing?
Would you prefer 1) a system that is uniformly over-crowded and awful for everyone, or 2) a system in which some people live in country-club conditions (on their own dime) and the rest merely get the benefit of more elbow room? Everyone would be better off under System 2, but some would be much better off than others. Which do you prefer?
(For our next exercise, well compare life in a communist system to life in a capitalist one….)
My chief concern is that private prisons would rapidly become run by organized crime. I bet that there’s plenty of corruption in government-run prisons, but we’d have to regulate private prisons like a casino in order to try to keep organized crime out of it; it would be a hugely tempting target. After all, didn’t the Medellín Cartel run one to house Pablo Escobar in Columbia?
Or we’re rich enough to afford to incarcerate people for crimes that other, poorer, nations would like to incarcerate them for, but can’t afford to.
Hate to break it to you, but the US is not the only first world country in the world. Any EU or Commonwealth country, Japan, Israel, or probably even most of eastern Europe and South America could afford to incarcerate more people, if for some reason a higher rate of incarceration were their goal. Also crime rates in the US are not remarkably low, so the high incarceration rate isn’t keeping crime down nor is it extremely high, as would be expected if the US were simply full of criminals. It’s kind of middling, maybe high for a first world country.
Or our welfare net is built such that it is not easy to survive without working, and so folks who in (say) the UK would go on the dole instead are faced with the choice of crime or work and choose crime.
Hey, hey, look everybody! Robert said a commie thing: he claimed that welfare keeps people from turning to crime. (Or work, but we’ll ignore that for the moment since it doesn’t fit in with the narrative.)
Hate to break it to you, but the US is not the only first world country in the world. Any EU or Commonwealth country, Japan, Israel, or probably even most of eastern Europe and South America could afford to incarcerate more people, if for some reason a higher rate of incarceration were their goal.
I’m sure they could. Similarly, they could finance moon shots or first-class military forces. Most entities can “afford” any unitary expenditure, simply by reorganizing their priorities. How easy it is to afford the unitary expenditure is entirely another matter. Sure, Columbia could maintain a US-level prison system; it would cause them a lot of pain somewhere else. Nearly every country in the top 20 GDP rankings (the ones that are in our general band – we’re #8) has a vast social welfare system, much better than ours – they are choosing welfare over prisons, would be my first-cut guess. The exceptions are places like Qatar, where the high GDP doesn’t really represent national wealth at a first-world level.
So what this issue boils down to is a political choice. Do we want a culture where we in essence pay economically nonfunctional people to live quietly without robbing those who are more productive, or do we want a culture where economic functionality is the default requirement and those who decline to accept “loser” status in the game (and the resultant relative poverty) turn to crime and are accordingly segregated and restrained?
There are legitimate tradeoffs and tragedies in each approach. In the US, we have decided by and large that we do not want a comfortable welfare system; there is some dissent from this conclusion but the dissenters lack the power or the will to change it. Tactics like decrying the size of our prison population are a backdoor effort at changing the social quasi-consensus; such tactics aren’t illegitimate but we should be clear about what’s really being argued.
I think I’ve probably derailed the topic enough, but thanks for the interesting discussion.
A couple of ideas being discussed here are a) will private prisons be better run than public ones and b) the incidence of incarceration in the U.S. is inflated because of imprisonment for minor drug offenses. But to do so seems to try to fit narrative to facts, rather the other way around. If the social sciences are actually to be called sciences, then the theories must fit the facts. I should think that some facts on these matters exist. Could someone more versed in the social sciences than I (of which there is no lack in this space) pull up some stats on this?
Do we want a culture where we in essence pay economically nonfunctional people to live quietly without robbing those who are more productive,
Those who do not strive to be productive yet expect to be supported by those who are are already thieves.
…and deserve to be raped?
Let’s remember what the topic is before we bloviate too much, Ron.
Sure, Columbia could maintain a US-level prison system; it would cause them a lot of pain somewhere else.
The US has a US-level prison system; it causes us a lot of pain somewhere else. I don’t see how this is in any way relevant.
Usually I’m at least somewhat pro capitalist, but when you phrase it like that i’d choose option 1 every time.
Seems like there is probably some middle ground. We’d have to make social support extremely high to eliminate every possible aspect of crime that was driven by spcial standing. taht’s probably not possible.
But OTOH, it’s also possible that we could, relatively cheaply, provide enough freebies to significantly reduce crime, without needing to give everyone a TV, filet mignon, and a new car.
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Usually I’m at least somewhat pro capitalist, but when you phrase it like that i’d choose option 1 every time.
Me too. I’m “pro-capitalist” in that I think that capitalism is an excellent system in some situations and can work reasonably–better than all known alternatives–in a number of other situations. But I’m skeptical of panaceas of any sort and therefore don’t think that capitalism/the free market is always the right answer to every question. Like this one, for example…
but OTOH, it’s also possible that we could, relatively cheaply, provide enough freebies to significantly reduce crime, without needing to give everyone a TV, filet mignon, and a new car.
In Denmark, the government pays unemployed people’s TV fees in order to try to prevent their getting isolated and falling out of the mainstream of society. I’m not sure if that argument is valid or that it’s the most cost effective thing to do, but just to point out that there may be a point to paying for “luxuries” as well as basic necessities.
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