Several years ago I wrote a short series of posts about our society's despicable tolerance of prison rape, and this editorial by Ezra Klein presents a good opportunity to raise the matter again: "There's nothing funny about prison rape".
These hearings are held annually. This year's transcripts aren't online yet, but in 2006 you could have heard a man named Clinton explain, "I had no choice but to enter into a relationship with another inmate in my dorm in order to keep the rest of them off of me. In exchange for his protection from other inmates, I had to be with him sexually any time he demanded it. It was so humiliating, and I often cried silently at night in my bed ... but dealing with one is better than having 10 or more men demanding sex from you at any given time."Clinton's testimony wasn't very funny, and it wasn't for entertainment. Nor was the 2001 report by Human Rights Watch, "No Escape," which included a letter from an inmate confessing that "I have no more feelings physically. I have been raped by up to five black men and two white men at a time. I've had knifes at my head and throat. I had fought and been beat so hard that I didn't ever think I'd see straight again."
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.
If we as a culture really want to subject our criminals to this sort of torture then let's do it explicitly, not with a wink and a nudge. I'm abstractly in favor of corporal punishment, but this sort of sexual abuse is clearly beyond the pale and should be loudly condemned and quickly eliminated.
I completely agree. Why does it continue? I can't imagine who would benefit from this, or who would give it a wink and a nudge.
Why do the liberals hold candlelight vigils over the execution of vicious murderers and rend their hair at the thought of our government pouring some water down a terrorist's nose to prevent future attacks, yet they reserve none of their moral outrage for this much larger and more cruel problem? They only seem to adopt moral causes on the basis of what will destabilize our government or harm our society. If they really wanted to improve the world, rather than destroy it, then this issue would be an easy place to start.
I've got no shortage of outrage about this, but outrage is cheap and ineffective. I don't see what's easy about fixing this problem, short of spending multiples of what we currently spend on prisons, and that would incur the right-wing outrage at spending so much on prisoner welfare. (not necessarily talking about you, but there are those on the right wing daily mail side of politics who view any humane treatment of prisoners as namby-pamby, let alone spending serious money on protecting them).
You're probably right, mauyr, that some resistance or at least inertia on this issue comes from the right.
I don't see how it would be that hard to fix, though. The public schools manage to oversee millions of schoolchildren every day without gang rape being common. If prisoner protection were a priority, I bet they could find a way.
Most school children are neither criminal nor sexually active. Most prisoners are both, so it's not the same thing. We'd need more guards, and/or blanket surveillance. And should we insist on no sex in prisons, even with consent? (I think that's pretty reasonable).
It wouldn't be hard to fix at all and with minimal cost. Why are prisoners unsupervised in a supposedly 100% controlled environment? Isn't this supposed to be why there are there...for complete isolation and removal from society? We didn't intend prisons to be fun, learning centers, or anything else but time away to think about your crime and to repent.
Unfortunately, the left has completely changed this concept into a rehabilitation center complete with TV, visitation, recreation, and general permissiveness that leads to crime inside. True, you can't completely shut down everything but you can do a lot to reduce this type of behavior just by locking down prisoners and increasing use of solitary for troublesome inmates. In fact, putting criminals in pseudo solitary or much more restricted access would reduce gang violence, rape, and all kinds of issues. Too bad nobody has the backbone to do it.
Lock them away, give them books to read, food to eat, and let them serve their term.
6Kings: keeping prisoners in isolation costs more. For example, in Pelican Bay prison it costs around $50000 a year to keep someone in solitary, compared to $23000 per year per inmate average. Perhaps it could be done much cheaper, but still I doubt the cost would be minimal.
Also extended periods of solitary confinement has serious psychological implications which would need to be addressed responsibly.
It makes sense that keeping someone alone would cost about twice as much as keeping them with a roommate.
I guess I'm not that sure about when/where these rapes occur. I was under the impression that prisoners are restrained and supervised 100% of the time, and that the rapes are happening with implicit approval of the guards.
I have the same impression, Michael. I mean, how much harder can it be to police a prison than to, say, police a junior high school?
They take murder very seriously in prison. And if you can rape someone, then you can just as easily murder them. So it must be a question of priority rather than capability.
There's obviously a lot less appetite for murder than there is for sex.
"There's obviously a lot less appetite for murder than there is for sex."
I disagree, mauyr. Prisons these days are practically run by gangs vying for status and control. Large numbers of men fear being disrespected far more than they desire sex, especially given the cultures in which many of those men grow up. In the ghetto, social status among men is everything, and sex is fairly easy to come by.
I also don't understand why we allow our prisons to be run by gangs. There should be rules that require benign socializing only, and violating them should cost you privileges.