There is a prison in Texas where 15.7% of the inmates were raped in the preceding year alone. Think about that for a second. One in six inmates were raped either by other inmates or those charged with guarding them -- which in that prison alone means there were 470 victims of sexual violence in a 12-month period. In any country that likes to think of itself as a beacon of freedom, this is outrageous and must be stopped.
While the % is not quite as significant at other prisons around the country, it is still disgracefully high, especially for those who are violated in the most dehumanizing way possible. This includes over 100,000 men, women and yes -- CHILDREN -- a fact that should be every bit as shocking, embarrassing and downright sickening as those photos from Abu Ghraib.
Well, now seems like the perfect time to do something about this. It is currently Sexual Assault Awareness month, and we are approaching the end of a deadline (June 2010) for the Attorney General to act on recommendations mandated by the Prison Rape Elimination Act (PREA), passed in 2003. You want bipartisanship in Washington? I give you a bill that was unanimously passed, co-sponsored by Sens. Teddy Kennedy and Jeff Sessions, and signed into law by George W. Bush. Its standards were created by a bipartisan federal commission upon consultation with corrections officials, criminal justice experts, advocates and prison-rape survivors.
So what can you do to make sure the Obama Administration enacts these common-sense solutions, such as weeding out known predators, ensuring the especially vulnerable receive additional monitoring and increasing the overall transparency of our corrections system by providing independent audits of our prisons? You can quite literally make your voice heard.
How? By adding your public comment to the rising tide of those who realize that whether your issue is improving public health, creating a more just and moral society or saving taxpayer money (think litigation), ensuring Attorney General Holder codifies the federal regulations mandated by the PREA, forthwith, should be a top priority.
Martin Luther King, Jr. once said that "In the End, we will remember not the words of our enemies, but the silence of our friends." In the era of interactive media, you needn't be part of the elite to make your voice heard. Every one of us has a weapon in our very own progressive arsenal, our ability to raise our voices quite publicly. So speak up, and become a part of a campaign to further ensure we live in the America we want and deserve.
**I am proud to be a media consultant for Just Dentention International
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Gotta protect those far right cornholes!
What they fail to realize is that not everyone is in prison for violent crimes. Drug offenders, people who commit property crimes, are placed in the same population with violent career offenders. Do those non-violent offenders really deserve to be raped? Do they really deserve to be subjected to violent attack just because we've placed them behind bars? Do violent criminals, for that matter, deserve this treatment? What of those who are falsely imprisoned? If we want to hold up our claims of being a civil people who expect reasonable punishment for transgressions, then we must do everything we can to stop prison rape.
Speaking as a law enforcement officer, I have no problem with people who've been sentenced to prison if they've gone through the justice system, and have been convicted through due process. But I also believe that we must be civil in our punishment. Many of these convicted will someday rejoin society. We need to make sure they are prepared to be productive again, to help them avoid going back. Dealing with the internal nightmare of rape will not help this process.
The above title indicates the reality of the chances of changing prisoner life or their code...!
P.S. I hated every minute of the eight years locked up. I know why it happened, I know that I didn't deserve it, and I absorbed it instead of letting it absorb me.
Glad to hear from you, hope everything is well...! P.S. I fanned you a while back.
I would agree that we should stop putting so many people in jail for non-violent crimes
Also, we must not allow the guards to prey on prisoners
I have associates who practice criminal law. I am very sure that the above statistic is about 1/3 of the actual rape rates.
It is not….. this is really too simplistic an approach….a better solution starts with doing a complete review of the prison system…. Why do we put folks in prison today? To pay a debt to society…. There is no distinction to the nature of the crime (violent vs nonviolent)…. Our system is ‘one size fits all’…. The non-violent are mixed with the violent thus prison rape…..on top of that each state has separate set of rules…. In CA if you have shoplifted three times you go away for life….in the same prison as the mass murderer or rapist…..
Although we call it a ‘Correctional Facility’…. There is nothing ‘correcting’ about them..and you are not paying any type of debt back to society and infact just costing society more for your incarceration…. It is nothing more than a ‘controlled zoo’….. and many guards are often one step from being on the other side of the ‘fence’……
I would suggest we start by redefining who we actually ‘lock up’ ....as a start to prison reform....
I read that prison guards are responsible for many if not most of the rapes. That is truly disgusting. As a woman, I know for sure that I would never, ever date a prison guard.
it can't be stopped
prisoners enjoy a higher level of safety than women
and no it didn't happen to me or mine
but it could have.
If I were a younger person I would go to law school just to fight this in court. To me it reeks as the largest class action lawsuit just waiting to happen in the history of our country. And I have no vested interest, just a retired teacher who spent some time working in a youth detention center.
Sadly, I've seen the many of these "prisoners" when they first crossed that line, from regular kid to "criminal" wearing the "scrubs" and prison jewelry. I've watched the way the system and society turned its back on many of them, often for crimes no more serious than being abandoned or beaten by parents or not attending school. But I've also seen teens that have killed without blinking or understanding.
Nevertheless, rape is a crime - like a death sentence is. And if it is to be meted out, it must be done so at the hands of a judge and jury so that someone is held accountable.
And as for your remark about rape on the high seas, while I have no doubt that it occurred in the 19th century before steam power, and all centuries prior, the speed at which modern vessels move about the globe makes your theory seem a little anachronistic. There are no longer any really long voyages, as compared to our distant past.
Oh wait, they did that. That's what this article was about. Now they just need to actually follow through.