Posted on 11/27/2004 6:30:49 PM PST by neverdem
EDITORIAL OBSERVER
Thirteen million Americans have been convicted of felonies and spent time in prison. The prison system now releases an astonishing 650,000 people each year - more than the population of Boston or Washington. In city after city, newly released felons return to a handful of neighborhoods where many households have some prison connection.
The so-called prison ZIP codes have more in common than large populations of felons or children who grow up visiting their mothers and fathers in jail. These neighborhoods are also public health disaster areas and epicenters of blood borne diseases like hepatitis C and AIDS. Infection rates in these areas are many times higher than in neighborhoods short distances away.
No one can say how many infections begin in prison. But the proportion could be high given the enormous concentrations of disease behind bars and the risky behaviors that inmates commonly practice. They carve tattoos in themselves using contaminated tools borrowed from other inmates.
They inject themselves with drugs using dirty syringes.
The most common source of infection could easily be risky, unprotected sex, which, despite denials by prison officials, is clearly a regular occurrence behind bars. A recent study of male inmates in several prisons, for example, found that more than 40 percent had participated in sexual encounters with another man. Most of these inmates, by the way, viewed themselves as heterosexual and planned to resume sex with women once they got out of prison.
Prison systems in Canada and Europe have tried to cut down infection by making condoms available to inmates. Prompted by research showing that sterile syringes slow the spread of AIDS among intravenous drug users, several countries have actually moved programs that supply clean needles right into the prisons.
Public health officials who favor needle exchanges in the United States are fully aware that this country has just emerged from a presidential election that witnessed heightened activism by conservative Christians. Indeed, even nonreligious Americans would prefer to see prisons shut off the flow of illegal drugs and provide addicts with treatment instead of syringes.
The condom issue, however, seems somehow less explosive. But as of now, condoms are banned or unavailable in 48 of 50 state prison systems, on the theory that distributing them would condone illicit sex. When confronted with public health data from abroad, American prison officials have blithely suggested that all the fuss is overblown - because there is little sex to speak of in jail.
Congress seemed comfortable with this fiction until 2001, when the Human Rights Watch organization issued a grisly report titled "No Escape: Male Rape in U.S. Prisons." The study suggested that rape accompanied by horrific violence was a regular aspect of American prison life. Based partly on the accounts of more than 200 prisoners in nearly 40 states, the report told of prison officials who stood by while sexual predators raped fellow inmates and sometimes sold them - as sex slaves - to gangs and other inmates.
The study led directly to the Prison Rape Elimination Act of 2003, which sailed through Congress and was signed into law by President Bush. The law, which requires the Justice Department to collect data on prison rape and develop a national strategy for combating it, provided a much needed mechanism for weeding out sexual predators behind bars.
But this law is, at its heart, a public health law. It provides for grants that could be used to underwrite public health initiatives - including sorely needed studies of disease transmission in the criminal justice system. The law has already resulted in fruitful discussions about expanding disease testing and prevention behind bars.
Lawmakers find it easy to discuss prison sex in the context of rape because everyone agrees that sexual assault is horrible and needs to be rooted out. The conversation about consensual sex among inmates will be trickier to handle. Even so, the law will inevitably force prison officials to confront all the varieties of sexual contact that public health researchers have known about for a long time.
The commission created by Congress to oversee the new law is just getting started. But it has already brought some honesty to the historically dishonest conversation about sexual behavior in prison. Commission members who have spent time in the public health world, for example, are well aware that people who participate in sex behind bars do so for a variety of reasons. Some barter their bodies - and risk disease - in exchange for protection from marauding gangs. Others perform sex acts in exchange for necessities like soap, food and access to telephone calls.
Not all sex in prison, however, can be attributed to rape or bartering. Recent research suggests that some of it is consensual among lonely inmates who experience same-sex encounters for the first time - and for many of them, the only time - while in prison.
The new law is pushing some states to create new strategies for dealing with sexual assault in prison. But common sense tells us that sex among inmates will not disappear even if rape and coercion are taken out of the equation. That said, prison officials need to revisit rules that outlaw condoms behind bars. These rules aid the spread of diseases that flourish in prison - and then make the leap to the world outside.
But that would make it a choice...not a genetic issue.
Here's an idea.
Lock them in their own cell. Do a shakedown inspection every day. Do not allow uninspected anything...to include mail, phone calls, time in the stall.
Take away their freedom in jail.
No unsupervised anything.
They can view themselves however they want, but they're faggots.
LOL!
I wonder how many times these diseases were transmitted in conjugal visits?
What'd Martha Stewart do now???
and beyond the conjugal??
Amazing that this is allowed when it would be so easy to control.
I thought it was called "prison."
Are you willing to double your taxes to pay for that?
Heck, now they prolly let 'em git married an play house!!!
I wouldn't double them, I'd cut them in half, minimum.
Locked in there, they wouldn't be worried about college progams and weight rooms. Neither would I.
No exercise, and we'd feed them fat and sugary carbs.
Anyone who wants rape to be a part of the punishment for a crime should campaign to change the law. There are those who take pleasure in talking about homosexual activity in prison when they would express disgust at other homosexual activity. Closet homosexuals?
The truth is, if you are white and incarcerated there is a fairly high chance that you will be someone's girlfriend with or without consent. If the writer of the article was honest he would have addressed the epidemic racism by blacks against whites.
IMO many should not be in prison to begin with. I've seen parents put in jail for months who get behind on child support. To me, that's stupid. If we emptied our jails of the non violent and illegals (making sure they couldn't get back)it would be easier to control this IMO.
Further lamestream media attempts to normalize homosexual behavior.
Finally someone states the obvious. I read a report saying 20 percent of inmates experience rape. 80 percent of the inmates in most prisons are black. Do the math. If you're white and go to prison, you're toast. I'm not the criminal type, but if I ever end up getting sentenced, I'll off myself. I know the prisons won't do their job of protecting me (or anyone else) from rape. How expensive would it be to have every cell and shower/work/eating area loaded with cheap cameras monitored 24/7? Oh, wait...that would be violating the prisoners privacy rights. Hell, I'd be on camera world-wide if it involves my safety.
Why don't they just pass out condoms?
Speaking as a former Parole Officer I can tell you pretty categorically, they're not. At least not the predators who rape. You've got to be HUMAN first. They don't qualify and never will. Worse, when they make parole and are released into an unsuspecting and vulnerable society, you get crime sprees and dead victims.
The prey have no choice, especially the young ones. Ever see the HBO tv series called OZ? That's pretty accurate. So much so, in fact that after a few episodes, it turned my stomach so much I quit watching.
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