Prison rape and the government

In the NY Review of Books, David Kaiser and Lovisa Stannow take a disturbing look at the vastly under-reported and under-prosecuted phenomenon of rape and sexual assault within the US prison system, and what our government isn't doing to address the problem.

• [Philipshade]

  I’d be surprised if this brings many comments. Most people can’t be bothered to care.

  I was pretty surprised to see the subject was recently taken seriously on General Hospital, with one of the teenage leads being raped while in prison and a tag for RAINN at the end of the epi I caught.

• [milkman]

  If the government stopped rape, it would make them pretty hypocritical. I’m just poking at your funny bone, I’m quite alarmed.

• [Anonymous]

  Over half of all prisoners in the US are there on non-violent charges.

  They lose their job, their car, their house and even their future job prospects.

  Once a person does time in prison, they are much more likely than the average population to maintain gang affiliations and commit violent crimes.

  Compare the fate of a school kid who downloads movies to politically connected people like Geithner who when caught cheating on his taxes got a promotion to head of the Treasury. Or McCain who was caught taking bribes to impede the GAO investigation of the S&Ls. He did no time, ran for president and people voted for him! The list goes on and on.

  The large government contractors that supply and operate prisons for profit have purposely turned US prisons into factories for criminals.

• [AbleBakerCharlie]

  The degree to which American culture is cavalier towards prison rape is really just one little facet of a broader cognitive wasteland- namely, the horribly confused relationship Americans have towards criminal justice in general. Whether it’s the empirically demonstrable increase in recidivism from “harder time,” or three-strikes laws, or the terrifying incidence of false confessions, or incredible overcrowding, or the inappropriate use of sex-offender registries, the public seems hell-bent on continuing to treat the police and prisons as a magic vacuum cleaner that vacuums up social problems to a mysterious no-place, instead of one instrument among many aimed at keeping a culture happy and functional- a culture that includes the reprehensibly large number locked away.

• [Tor1193]

  When the State of Texas first started applying DNA testing around 2000 a case out of Austin, the capitol of Texas, got overturned after about 12 years. The state of Texas accused 2 workers at a Pizza Hut of raping, killing and robbing their manager, and actually by luck, the Innocence Project decided to help.

  Texas, like the majority of states, requires NO actual evidence of rape, a conviction in Texas can actually hold up solely based on “testimony” from the accuser. Contrary to the crypto-fascist propaganda that spews out of the bowels of “cop” tv shows, films or books innocent people continually get convicted.

  The reasons the case mentioned above got overturned happened because of a confluence of events that donot normally get applied to the supposedly 15% of actually innocent people that get convicted. Now you read this far and wondered what this gots to do with rape against prisoners, you see one of the accused got raped and murdered while in prison, because the other prisoners “knew” he was a rapist.

  Just the fact that the Dept. of Justice admits that about 15% of the people in prison didnot actually commit the crime that gets them put in prison seems unjust. The majority of people in prison come from poor families, this becomes the reason so much ennui comes from the middle class, the media and the government concerning prison rape because prison rarely happens to white, middle class or bankers who steal billions from the public.

  Prison rape victims usually fall into a certain category: young, small in stature and mentally ill. Actually prison reform seems more like a band-aid, the problem appears the meme that cops, judges, and government officials exist on a higher plane than the rest of us, above reproach. History demonstates that ALL governments become more statist, more despotic, more 1984, the approach we take in dealing with the excesses of government, in this case the state taking a blind eye to prisoner rape, will determine how much longer the canary will stay alive in the coalmine.

• [benher]

  How can a system with such low standards for basic human rights be considered capable of rehabilitating those found guilty for crimes considered by a given society to be inhumane?

  Prisoners, believe it or not are still human beings that deserve basic human rights. Even those guilty murderers and rapists. To provide any less than that is beneath us and undermines what the goal of such a ‘system’ should be.

  The whole “Rape ‘em all, let society sort ‘em out” modus operandi of the US prison system should be dropping a lot more jaws than it does.

• [Anonymous]

  “America is famous for expanding the set of acts that create liability”

  Yes, but prisons are de facto exempt from liability. Legally, prisoners are required to bring up complaints through internal procedures, and can only use the court system after exhausting the administrative options. That ensures that the prisons can retaliate against the prisoners.

  America has long since abandoned the idea that power should be tempered with accountability.

• [kjulig]

  The one thing I could never wrap my head around is that in the US it seems to be perfectly acceptable to make jokes about prison rape and to wish that somebody be raped in prison (“Bubba” and all that).

  In a culture like that, why should the government be expected to see anything wrong with the situation as it is?

  • [zyodei]

    Yeah, I sometimes pipe up on various internet message boards about that.

    “bubba,” “don’t drop the soap,” etc..these are jokes about VICIOUS, SERIAL ANAL GANGRAPE. Going on regularly for weeks, months, years, until the person is totally destroyed.

    I know just one person who as regularly raped in prison (he was in for an absurd crime, an 18 year old having a 16 year old girlfriend in Indiana), and years later he is..well, a shell of a human being.

    Is there any type of institution in the world other than government that could devise a place as totally evil as a U.S. prison?

    • [Ugly Canuck]

      Any local lord, baron, gangster or potentate: your “libertarian” paradise” would turn every able strongman into his own judge, jury and excutioner within their own little kingdoms.

      A problem with Government requires a change in Government, nothing more or less.

      And conditions in prisons are the uniquely the Government’s problem: for it is responsible for them.
      And responsible for putting people in them , too.

      “Reducing Government” is never the solution to a problem arising from the lack of effective governance – which that of prison rape most certainly is.

      • [Marja]

        “”Reducing Government” is never the solution to a problem arising from the lack of effective governance – which that of prison rape most certainly is.”

        I think you’re confusing government with governance. Government, as an institution, tends to avoid governance from the people. Prison rape and false convictions are two examples of where the government avoids being governed; perpetual wars, torture, and drug wars are a few more.

    • [Anonymous]

      Well, lack of any institution, and any government, can make a chunk of the world like that all the time.

      Witness the libertarian paradise called Somalia (by the rest of the world), where might makes right and rape is probably punished just a little *more* than in US prisons, at least if a close relative is a warlord.

      In fact, it may surprise you to learn that effective government is a necessary component of what we call civilisation, out here in the rest of the western countries.

      If you’re not just looking for an echo chamber, you might try asking some Europeans what they *like* about their government.

• [Mister44]

  Working in a prison is shit work. I can’t see how a normal person could do it day after day. Given how prone humans are to promote or participate in abuse when given authority over others, it is surprising or a testament to training that things aren’t worse.

• [Skidds]

  Reform is probably way overdue. Prisoner warehousing for example is blatantly inhumane; If a dog kennel wouldn’t practice it out of fear that an aggressive dog could cause injuries to other animals then why would a prison.

• [Brainspore]

  “The scumbags get what they deserve” trolls in 3…2…

• [elix]

  All this rape is getting in the way of making helmets for US soldiers in Afghanistan.

• [Anonymous]

  It is the unwritten law of the land that a majority of people feel that anything that happens to these hardened criminals is their just deserts for having done something that landed them in jail.

  They ignore how the people the system chews up and spits out will more than likely become worse offenders than when they went in.

  It is the deep down need for vengeance that prisons fill, it is not justice.

  This is why there is never any money for prison reform, but they will support a bigger larger prison, but not in their backyard.

  Given the overhyped reporting of every crime, people want the dangerous ones kept away. Sadly dangerous includes some less than serious offenses. Well you had a bunch of pot, enjoy your stay with the rapist. That will win us the war on drugs! No one wants to get raped, and knowing they will be raped in prison will deter them.

  We need prisons, we do not need to pack them full and forget them until it is time to panic and try to keep them in longer because we created a better criminal we can’t keep away.

  There is no treatment, understanding, training. Just a warehouse where we spend huge amounts of money to end up with people who are worse than when they went in. So then we repeat the cycle and write stricter laws, stuff more people into the system and are amazed the system only produces worse people every time.

  They general public will show you “horror” at this on their face but inside, it is the smug voice of “thats what happens when you break the law.” Like the people who assume that if I am on the jury my job is to convict, he must be guilty if they brought me here.

• [Mister44]

  Just a point, but skin grafts and therapy I think exceed what I would call ‘basic’.

  In the future, all prisons will be run initially by remotely piloted robot drones, and eventually by AI gifted robots. Rape will disappear, although there may still be sex among robosexuals. There may also be cases of robots using the ambient heat of inmates to power unsanctioned mini beer fridges.

  This will eventually lead to VR prisons, where the inmate is laid in cradle that rotates similarly to a rotisserie chicken cooker to prevent bed sores. Inmates will then be plugged into a VR system where they will be sentenced to a scenario befitting their crime. This might include being forced to watch bad B-grade films for the pleasure of 2 mad scientists for being delinquent on their SubspaceFlix account, to simulating being digested in the Sarlaac for a thousand years for felony jetpack violations.

• [Ugly Canuck]

  Nice attempt at a threadjack…tell us, ought public authorities not to be held accountable for encouraging prison rape, or for simply not caring about the issue at all?

  After all, McDonald’s wasn’t at fault for that coffee, according to you, no matter what the Courts have to say.
  Therefore, prison rape is no problem at all, right?

  According to you, it’s all the prisoner/victim’s fault, just like it’s the customer’s fault.

  Oh i’m sorry you wanted to talk about the out-of-control lawyers, right?
  And not the depraved and cruel prison guards, and the willing taxpayers who pay them so well for their “labour”.

  http://www.avvo.com/legal-guides/ugc/the-truth-behind-the-mcdonalds-coffee-case

• [Ugly Canuck]

  Hey jerkwad that is a some nice threadjack….McDonald’s was found liable under the “unwritten” common law, not under some law written and passed by politicians.

  You seem to want to simply disband the Courts, from what I see, because they sometimes rule against the interests of large corporations.

  Perhaps you should keep your comments to the vicious situation under discussion, rather than using your ignorance of the law to derail the discussion.

  Why does American law and media and public opinion no longer care about prison rape?

  Why don’t you?
  At least, care enough not to try to change the topic….

  But it is nice to see somebody arguing that the Law ought not to be expanded to protect prisoners against rape: for that would be to “impose liability” on the guards and government, where none apparently exist at present, eh? Since prison rape is an actual factual problem in the USA – and nothing is done, and nobody cares.

  But you would not do anything, for that would “expand liability” on the part of the guards, eh?

  Maybe such would “expand justice”, as well.