Posted on 07/28/2002 6:59:03 AM PDT by Temple Owl
Reprinted from NewsMax.com
Prison Rapes Spreading Deadly Diseases
NewsMax Wires Monday, July 29, 2002 WASHINGTON -- Prison rape has become such a common occurrence in federal and state prisons across the United States that it could have deadly consequences for the inmate population as well as the public at large, experts in the field told United Press International.
Congress plans to take a closer look at the issue next week because prison rape has been associated with the spread of potentially fatal diseases such as AIDS and tuberculosis.
"The AIDS incidence within prisons is alarmingly high," Pat Nolan, president of the non-profit group the Justice Fellowship of Reston, Va., which works to reform the criminal justice system, told United Press International.
He noted 95 percent of people in prison will eventually be released back into society, so if they contract AIDS or other diseases while incarcerated they will be a tremendous burden to society due to healthcare costs and the threat they pose for spreading disease.
Lara Stemple, executive director of the non-profit human rights group Stop Prisoner Rape, told UPI, "Rape and HIV in prison is eight to 10 times as high as in the general population." Her group views AIDS as an unadjudicated death sentence because people who receive only a short sentence for their crime but contract AIDS while in prison have essentially had their sentence extended to death.
She said the people most likely to be raped in prisons are nonviolent and first-time offenders and these are the most likely to be released back into the general population, which ultimately poses a disease risk to society.
In addition to AIDS, herpes and other sexually transmitted diseases have been spread in prisons and hepatitis C is an epidemic in certain prisons, Stemple said. Men as well as women run the risk of being raped while in prison, she said. One in five men have been sexually assaulted while in prison and one in ten have been raped.
Women's Rate As High As 27 Percent
Stemple said among women inmates, the rate of sexual abuse can be as high as 27 percent in some prisons. In addition, women have become pregnant while imprisoned, which often is an indication they have been raped by male guards, she said.
Although federal prison officials have been criticized for failing to address the issue, members of Congress have taken it quite seriously and last month bi-partisan legislation called the Prison Rape Reduction Act was introduced in both the Senate and the House. The Senate Judiciary Committee will hold a hearing on the Act next Wednesday.
Reducing the spread of disease is one goal of the act, said Sen. Edward Kennedy, D-Mass., who co-sponsored the legislation in the Senate with Sen. Jeff Sessions, R-Ala. Prison rape "threatens the rest of society, by increasing the spread of HIV and other diseases, and by making individuals, brutalized within prison, more likely to commit new crimes after they are released," Kennedy said.
Republican Rep. Frank Wolf and Democrat Rep. Bobby Scott of Virginia sponsored the legislation in the House.
The Rape Reduction Act would establish a national commission to set up standards for reducing and eliminating prison rape. Federal prisons would have to adopt these standards and state prisons could only opt out of them if their state legislature votes not to participate.
The Act would require the Justice Department to conduct an annual review of prison rape to determine prisons where the incidence is unusually high. States with prisons that fall in the worst third of rape incidence would have to go before a review panel and explain their situation.
Nolan said the legislation is very likely to pass because it has strong bi-partisan support across both branches of Congress and it is endorsed by several different organizations concerned with human rights. He believes it will be effective at reducing prison rape and rampant rates of HIV and other diseases in prison.
A major part of the problem is that prison officials condone rape among inmates, Nolan said. "There have been correctional officials who have tried to deal with this but in general the system pretends it doesn't exist," he said.
Rape As Punishment
Indeed, sometimes it is used by guards to control or punish inmates. Nolan related an account of a case in a California prison in which guards transferred an inmate who had kicked a female guard to the cell of a prisoner nicknamed "Booty bandit." The prisoner, who was twice the size of the offending inmate, beat and raped him for about a week until guards finally transferred him out of the cell, Nolan said.
"Correction officers turn a blind eye," Stemple said, adding she has heard accounts of officers watching rape on surveillance cameras or hearing screams in the night and not doing anything to help the victims.
The Federal Bureau of Prisons and the National Institute of Corrections declined to comment on this story.
Prison rape has be rampant for decades. It should be able to be controlled.
Prison rape has be rampant for decades. It should be able to be controlled.As the rapists can't exactly be punished by throwing them in prison (especially if they are facing life or a long term already), I'd suggest surgical castration as a penalty for rape committed in prison.
-Eric
This is not a complete fix. There are non-violent thieves that truly deserve prison. They should be protected as well and possibly with half the population gone with the end of the War on Drugs, it might be easier for the guards to do their job.
I'm not one for coddling criminals. Prison should be no picnic and nobody should want to go back after once having been there. But we should treat our prison inmates with some level of decency. We should not expose them to inhuman conditions. Every prisoner should have the right to serve out his sentence and pay his debt to society without having to worry about when he is going to get raped.
Granted, rape cannot be prevented 100% in prison. But once an inmate is caught committing a rape, he should be immediately removed from the general population for good. Eventually, the message will be delivered to the rest of the general population that rape will not be tolerated and those who commit it will be punished severely. This will result in a drastic decrease in prison rape. And not only will our prisons be a less stressful place for the inmates, but they will be a less stressful place for prison staff such as your husband.
Wrong on both accounts Sam. Some are known and some are not. Some areas are video taped, some are not. It could be stopped, if they had one officer to watch each inmate, instead of the current 1 to 300 ratio.
Sexual predators are kept on their own wing in English prisons under Section 42, which states that sexual predators will go into segregation for their own and other prisoners protection.
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.