“Prison rape occupies a fairly odd space in our culture,” writes Ezra Klein, bringing to the fore a subject that is often ignored. “It is, all at once, a cherished source of humor, a tacitly accepted form of punishment and a broadly understood human rights abuse.”
We are justifiably outraged by the human rights abuses occurring in foreign lands. So why aren’t we more outraged by the atrocities here in our own country? Our reactions to the problem tend to range from smirking indifference to embarrassed silence. Yet rape and other forms of sexual assault are becoming endemic to our prison system.
In 2004 the corrections industry estimated that 12,000 rapes occurred per year—more than the annual number of reported rapes in Los Angeles, Chicago, and New York combined. In a 2007 survey by the U.S. Department of Justice, though, more than 60,000 inmates claimed to have been sexually victimized by other inmates during the previous 12 months.
First-time and non-violent offenders are often targeted by prison gangs for sexual servitude. Once an inmate is forced into sexually submissive role, becomes a ‘punk”, the gangs treat him as chattel. While prison guards turn a blind eye, the gangs use these men as sexual slaves.
Although the majority of these inmates are eventually returned back into the general public, their sentence could turn into a death penalty. HIV, tuberculosis, and hepatitis C are up to 10 times more prevalent in correctional institutions than in the outside population. The repeated abuse these inmates receive makes it almost inevitable that they will be exposed to one of these fatal diseases.
In contrast, when women are raped or assaulted in prison, it is usually by correctional employees. According to Lara Stemple, executive director of Stop Prisoner Rape, in some prisons up to 27 percent of female inmates are sexually abused. This also leads to a shockingly high rate of prison pregnancy which merely compounds the problems for the prisoners.
Ignoring the Epidemic of Prison Rape.
