Ending the Hidden, Savage Routine of Prison Rape

Fyodor Dostoevsky once said, "The degree of civilization in a society can be judged by entering its prisons." Try it here in the U.S. But wear boots; it's a sewer.

You may know that our prisons are appalling. If you don't, you should; you're responsible. But even with what you think you know, you've certainly missed the disgusting secret of U.S. jails and prisons: rape. Rape is a method of control with the collusion, sometimes instigation, of guards. Men rape men; women are raped by guards, staff and other inmates. Rape, with the silent acceptance of wardens and staff, is the savage routine in our prisons. It is the initiation process for frightened "new fish;" it's the price of survival for the small, the weak, the defenseless, the gay. It is the fear that haunts the days and nights of those not yet turned out -- or turned into predators. Per the late U.S. Supreme Court Justice Harry Blackmun, its "horrors... border on the unimaginable."

Imagine it.

Those who object to it face denial, denial, and then denial. Stop Prisoner Rape, founded in 1980 to deal "with the problems of rape, sexual assault, un-consensual sexual slavery, and forced prostitution in the prison context," was formed by brave men who admitted their own victimization in order to save others from the same fate. After twenty years, they were finally able to open an office. Not until 2003 did they develop enough support to secure the passage of the Prison Rape Elimination Act (PREA), the first-ever federal law acknowledging this hidden sin.

Now, the National Prison Rape Elimination Commission meets periodically to "study the impact of prisoner rape." While they study, rape continues. And to this day those who decades ago had the courage to challenge rape in prison are tortured for their audacity. In a biting irony, the Commission recently met in New Orleans, Louisiana. At Angola, the Louisiana State Penitentiary known as "The Farm," two of the Angola Three have been in solitary confinement for 35 years for standing up to protect "new fish" from the long established practice of sexual dominance by veteran inmates.

The three, Robert King Wilkerson, Herman Wallace and Albert Woodfox, were sent to Angola in the late 1960s. Unwilling to submit to this depravity, they organized a chapter of the Black Panther Party -- said to be the first inside a prison -- in 1971, in an effort to end systematic rape and violence, desegregate the institution and offer help and hope to others. Their efforts so infuriated the authorities that they were separated from everyone else, tried on trumped-up charges, convicted and placed in solitary confinement in 1972. And there they remained, for decades. Robert Wilkerson was exonerated and released in 2001 after 29 years in solitary confinement. Herman Wallace, still in solitary, recently had his conviction reviewed by a state court commissioner who recommended it be overturned. Albert Woodfox lives in hope, alone for 35 years in solitary confinement.

As Dostoyevsky said, "A society should be judged not by how it treats its outstanding citizens but by how it treats its criminals." 35 years in solitary confinement for standing up against rape? Wear boots, it's a sewer.

Mike Farrell, President of the board of Death Penalty Focus, is the author of "Just Call Me Mike; A Journey to Actor and Activist."

Comments

[Diva27la]

I work with parolees. The ones who are severely brutalized when they are in prison-particularly those who have been raped and especially those who have been repeatedly raped, gang raped or sexually enslaved-have tremendous difficulty adjusting to outside life when they parole, no matter what their crime, background, or level of support on the outside. It is such an awful and emasculating experience that they can't talk about it with anybody, but it comes back to haunt them in nightmares and flashbacks. They shut down emotionally and the people who love them can't get through to them to comfort them because they have put up such a wall just to survive the experience. Even the ones who didn't have anger control problems before they went to prison are at best "touchy", startling very easily, and the rage inside that they can't talk about gets out one way or another eventually, hurting them and usually hurting someone they never intended to hurt as well. If they had a drug or alcohol problem before they went to prison, their chances of not going back to drinking or using just to numb out the pain of reliving those nightmares is pretty low without a lot of help [and a lot of awareness-which, judging from the comments here and elsewhere, isn't very high].

Encouraging brutalization and callousnous inside prisons doesn't do one damn positive thing. Sooner or later most inmates parole, and if they are leaving the gate full of horrendous bottled-up trauma and rage, we are ALL in trouble. The "Lock 'em up" attitude has left California with a $14 billion dollar deficit and a prison system 170% at capacity with at best a small decrease in overall crime that is probably due to other factors. Something has to change. Being "tough" isn't being on the side of the victim if the readily foreseeable net result is simply the creation of more victims.

[americanwhocares]

Thank you Mike, this subject is long overdue for Americans to consider. Prison is punishment, crimes committed in prison are crimes that need to be prosecuted, not winked at by the idiots in government that run the prison system. Under the Bush Junta, America has become a third world country and the stupid leadership in the Congress (Pelosi and Reid) refuse to impeach the moronic clown who is pretending to be president. I hold little hope out for America at this point. We are all (except the rich) going to swirl around the toilet bowl and be flushed away. Maybe it is due!

[flacon]

So you think this all started and will end with the Bush administration? Think again my friend. Talk to a prison guard about the perils his job. Prisoners are there for a reason. Unless you're willing to have individual solitary cells, the strong will prey on the weak.

Temporary loss of libido, chemically induced, on one's first day of incarceration is the only practical answer. How many of you would OK such a move? Would the ACLU lay down? Let's hear some reaction.

[XCITIZEN]

Without the American culture of prison rape, Abu Ghraib would have NEVER happened. American prison guards, American contractors - they are the ones who instigated Abu Ghraib. We truly are living in a Barbaric Era and America is the so-called Leader.

As a gay man, my eyes were truly opened watching the devastation of AIDS to my community and the utter indifference of the US Government to the suffering and death of thousands of its citizens. That was my wake-up moment, at a very early age.

Truly, I am at a loss for words about what to say about this. How many young men are in prisons across this country, being raped and abused, being permanently damaged psychologically, because of the heinous War On Drugs? America is a barbaric country.

[Obamamo]

Welcome to America!

[todayslies]

I'm shocked that the comments here aren't universally supportive of Farrell, and universaly condemning of how U.S. prisons allow prison rape to flourish. And this on The Huffington Post, of all places.

[Mort]

PS, after my daughter was abused, first by the criminal and then by the system, the guy who molested a dozen little girls got less than a month in jail. The only real justice was when he got gang raped there. Now, should we feel sorry for him, or for the dozen girls that he scarred for life?

[americanwhocares]

So two wrongs make a right in your view. Pathetic.

[ThePhantom]

If your story is true ( completely mpossible to tell ) the sentance the molester got was unjust, far far too light.

But rape is not justified.

He should have gone to prison for ten years and not been raped.

[S1m0n]

You're politer than I am: I'm calling bullshit on this fantasy.

[GnitenGoodLk]

The thing is, when he gets out, he's going to be worse, more violent, and ISN'T going to stop. It's not a solution and it's not justice. Real justice is bringing back life in prison for all sex offenders (like in Nevada)

I really like that one. Alone, solitary, for life.

[Mort]

We put them in prison to protect law abiding citizens. How should we keep them from abusing each other? Actually, Sheriff Joe's tent city has a much lower rate of problems than any other prison. Maybe there's wisdom in actually punishing criminals instead of just housing them!

[wolfgangmo]

Actually the only one saying that there are less problems in Sheriff Joe's "tent city" is Sheriff Joe. Everyone else pretty much thinks it is a huge problem waiting to happen.

[rbryanh]

¦"you've certainly missed the disgusting secret of U.S. jails and prisons: rape."

Not if you have cable TV or access to the entertainment media - Hollywood used "Oz" to turn prison rape into entertainment for the masses. There's no end to the ways American culture finds to profit from incarcerating a higher percentage of our population than any other developed nation in the world.

[Blazhay]

Some people might find this offensive, but I have a theory that the reason we see a high incidence of rape is that people in jail have a lot of time on their hands to chill. I think if we do what's done in some other countries, we will definitely see a decrease in rapes. There ought to be jail time that comes with hard labor for the dangerous murderers and predators. When hard labor is employed, people are forced to be productive sun up to sun down. By the time they're done working, they're too tired to rape anyone.

Also, since I don't belief in capital punishment, life with hard labor should be reserved for the most heinous criminals. I believe it'll be a strong deterrent for would be murderers. The knowledge that you don't just get electrocuted or injected and die within 45 seconds, but you're subject to a lifetime of hard gruelling, stone quarry work is enough to disuade any would be criminal. A lot of people in death row already hate life on the outside and so they don't care about being executed. It's a different case when they know it's not over once they get into jail.....

[TellingTruth2Kooks]

I think that Lobotomies would work better for the Treatment of the Chronic Criminal Mind, and if you are a Serial Sexual Predator, then you must be disarmed, (Or another part of your anatomy), in order to protect the rest of Society from you.

If the Anger centers of the brain are removed, & only applied to people who are emotionally unstable and violent, then we should do all we can to protect ourselves from those who would harm us or our families.

Then we can work on Brain Modification for those addicted to drugs of various kinds.

[XCITIZEN]

My God, you belong in the pages of Orwell's 1984.

[appleknocker]

Why does Farrell think that prison rape is a "secret" that we've "certainly missed"? On the contrary, it's such common knowledge that sitcoms joke about it. And THAT really shows how far we are from being a civilized society.

[bmedich]

Did I miss something? Are all of our soldiers home and has George Bush been run out of the White House? Is that all taken care of? No?

Agendas like this - however well meaning and obviously the way things should be - are part of the reason why the anti-war movement and liberalism in general, have been so ineffective. Does everyone remember the marches and rallies in early 2003? It's seemed like preventing the war was somewhere near third on the list behind freeing Mumia and destroying the World Bank.

Focus.

[PaxMundis]

Typical obfuscation. It's not a simple either/or situation, where protesting one thing should be done at the expense of everything else. For one thing, many of the techniques used in Abu Ghraib and in Afghani prisons were exported from American prison "experts."

[bmedich]

HuffPost's Pick

I am in no way defending the conditions of US prisons or the horrors of Abu Gharib, and I admire Mike Farrell for taking on such a huge problem.

I just think the American people are easily overwhelmed by issues, causes and scandals (real or fabricated). A tenant of marketing that I've always stuck with (I know, marketing, yuck. But look how the Neo Cons marketed Iraq.) is the idea of selling one idea at a time, especially if the larger thing you're trying to sell has a lot other difficult ideas and challenges associated with it.

I feel that the American public - and the media - has been completely played, in terms of marketing ideas - most of them criminal - by the Republicans and their allies. In a recent MSNBC poll 13% of the respondents said that Obama is a Muslim. Now, that's completely false. Same with WMDs, Hussein's non-existent ties to Bin Laden, etc, etc.
These lies were repeated often enough that they are now the truth to many people.

The current administration has been more than happy to hide their evil machinations behind a contsant barrage of Paris, Natalie Halloway, American Idol, Extreme Home Makeovers, the national menace that is steroid abuse, ad nauseum. Doesn't it make your blood boil to see Congressmen grilling baseball players when there are so many other issues that should have their attention, as well as the attention of the American public?

I've drifted way off topic. and I'm sure these issues have been debated many times on HuffPost and hundreds of other blogs. Just letting of some steam.

Oh, and thanks for accusing me of obfuscation. Very cool.

[Americanabroad]

I agree. There seems to be a general sense of cold and smug anger, nastiness and callousness in America that has only grown since the 1980s. People who try to use their minds and hearts are ridiculed and made the butt of jokes on talk radio and public discourse.

The same qualities required to engage yourself with dealing humanly with a problem like prison rape, applied to an issue like 9/11 or Iraq, would have resulted in a saner public discussion and could have helped avoid the Iraq debaccle altogether.

There are no utopias, no panaceas, on either the left or the right. The only solution is the gradual improvement of the imperfect human condition, issue by issue, by engaging our hearts and minds: Spending 10 minutes a day watching the news, voting in elections, and then otherwise diverting ourselves in various sensory gratifications like American Idol (not that American Idol itself is a problem. There is place in life for entertainment) is not going to cut it if we want a just and prosperous society for as many as possible.

[Stillman]

I watched the scandal at Abu Ghraib in Iraq unfold with great sadness. Never once did I hear a single commentator confront the issue that Mike raises in this excellent post. Sexual humiliation is a way of thinking that is deeply ingrained in the American psyche. It goes all the way from the rape and torture mentioned in this article to a seemingly innocuous statement like "Obama will be the first female president." America's love affair with a disgustingly perverse form of macho male sexuality is tragic and despicable. Thanks for the courageous writing, Mike. Now, if you could just get Hawkeye Pierce to knock off that incessant womanizing....

[flatus]

Do we really want violent criminals to retain reproductive capability?

[itmaybetoolate]

I can honestly say that this is the first time a posting has brought tears to my eyes. Others have been close - but this one did it. Americans, as whole, have little or no compassion for those with whom Jesus most identified. Ironic, isn't it - you know, in a "christian" country.