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August
1, 2003
Steve
J.B.
Prison Bitch
July
31, 2003
Ray
McGovern
The Prostitution of Intelligence
Brian
Cloughley
Wolfowitz's Operative Statement
Sheldon
Hull
The RIAA's Jihad:
The Devil's Music (Industry)
Elaine
Cassel
The Next Time You Crack a Lawyer Joke, Think of These Attorneys
Sheldon
Rampton
and John Stauber
True Lies: Propaganda and Bush's
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Hammond
Guthrie
Speculation Blues
Website
of the Day
Army of One?
July
30, 2003
David
Lindorff
Poindexter the Terror Bookie
Marjorie
Cohn
Why Iraq and Afghanistan? It's About
the Oil
Elaine
Cassel
How Ashcroft Coerces Guilty Pleas
in Terror Cases
Zvi
Bar'el
The Hidden Costs of the Iraq War
Lisa Walsh
Thomas
Killing Mustafa Hussein: Death of a Child, Birth of a Legend?
Sean
Carter
Pat Robertson's Prayer Jihad: God, Sodomy and the Supremes
ND Jayaprakash
India and Ariel Sharon
Steve
Perry
Bush's Top 40 Lies
Standard
Schaefer
Correction about Bloomberg and Outscourcing
Website
of the Day
Bring Them Home Now!
Congratulations
to CounterPuncher Gilad Atzmon! BBC Names EXILE Top Jazz CD
July
29, 2003
Jeffrey
St. Clair
"Journalist Spotted! Journalist
Dead!" Guatemala Bleeds; US Press Yawns
Thomas
J. Nagy
The Belligerent Dr. Pipes
Kurt Nimmo
Tom Delay Goes to Jerusalem
Chris
Floyd
Dead Reckoning: Bush Warriors Sign Off on War Crimes
Robert
Fisk
Another Botched Raid; Another Massacre
Jason Leopold
Did Chalabi Help Write Bush's State of the Union Address?
Conn Hallinan
Food Bully: Bush's Biotech Shock and Awe Campaign
Dan
Bacher
Sacramento's War on Free Speech
Ray
McGovern
Cheney Chicanery
Website
of the Day
Julie Hilden Caught on Tape
July 26 / 27, 2003
Alexander
Cockburn
NYT's Screws Up Again; Uday and
Qusay Deaths Bad for Bush; Gen. Hitchens at the Front
Gary
Leupp
Faith-Based Intelligence
Saul Landau
A Report from Syria
Stan
Goff
Bring 'Em On Home, Now!
Jeffrey
St. Clair
Book Cooking at Boeing
Andrew
Cockburn
The Sons Are Dead; Now the Blood Feud
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Jason Leopold
CIA Points the Finger at the Pentagon's Office of Special Plans
Robert
Fisk
The Power of Death
Joanne
Mariner
Monsieur Moussaoui
Standard
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Joblessness and the Invisible Hand
M. Shahid
Alam
The Global Economy Since 1800: a Short History
Harry
Browne
Northern Ireland: the Other Faltering Peace Process
Fidel Castro
Moncada, 50 Years Later
Lula
Democracy Requires Social Justice
Edward
S. Herman
Refuting Brad DeLong's Smear Job on Noam Chomsky
Ron Jacobs
Guided by a Great Feeling of Love: a Review of Gordon's The Company
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Julie
Hilden
A Photographer, an Offer and Cameron Diaz's Topless Photos
Adam Engel
Man Talk
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Keeney, Witherup, Short, Nimba, Guthrie and Albert
July
25, 2003
Francis
A. Boyle
Impeaching Bush
David
Krieger
15 Questions
Harvey
Wasserman
Pat Robertson's Supreme Fatwah
Steve Dunifer
Seize the Airwaves!
Dan
Bacher
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Kurt Nimmo
Bread, Circuses, Uday and Qusay
Steve
Perry
Bush's Wars Weblog
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Elaine
Cassel
Civil Liberties
Watch
Michel
Guerrin
Embedded Photographer Says: "I
Saw Marines Kill Civilians"
Uzma
Aslam Khan
The Unbearably Grim Aftermath of War:
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Paul de Rooij
Arrogant
Propaganda
Gore Vidal
The
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Francis Boyle
Impeach
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Stop
Prison Rape Edition
August 1, 2003
Time
to End the Silence
Stopping Prison
Rape
By JOANNE MARINER
Back in 1824, the Reverend Louis Dwight traveled
down the East Coast and through the South, visiting prisons.
Reporting back, he agitated for reform, so troubled was he by
the abuses he had uncovered.
"I have found melancholy testimony to establish one general
fact, viz., that boys are prostituted to the lust of old convicts,"
Dwight described. "Nature and humanity cry aloud for redemption
from this dreadful degradation."
A modern prison visitor would find that
little has changed. Prisoners--especially the young, the small,
the boyish, and the weak--still enjoy scant protection from violent
and degrading sexual abuse. In most prisons, prevention measures
are few and the effective punishment of rape, sexual assault
and other abuses is rare.
The Prison Rape Elimination
Act of 2003
In theory, this sad state of affairs
should not exist. The Supreme Court, in a landmark 1994 decision,
stated unequivocally that allowing rape to occur in prison violates
the Constitution.
Still, the Court's ringing words on the
topic did not, by themselves, bring about the needed reforms.
To the contrary, the legal standard that the Court applied, by
requiring prisoners to prove that prison officials had "actual
knowledge" of the risk of rape, created a perverse incentive
for officials to remain unaware of the problem.
Now, the wall of ignorance and silence
that surrounds prison rape is starting to crack. Last Friday,
the House of Representatives, by a unanimous vote, passed the
Prison Rape Elimination Act of 2003. The Senate passed the bill
 unanimously on the previous
Monday, and it now goes to President Bush for signature.
The new law signals a unprecedented official
willingness to acknowledge the tragic consequences of prison
rape. By creating a Justice Department review panel to address
the problem, as well as a national commission to establish standards,
the law will force corrections authorities to begin to take rape
seriously. That, as much as the law's substantive innovations,
will be a huge step forward.
Official Denials
The hostility with which some prison
authorities reacted to the draft legislation suggests the extent
of the official unwillingness to acknowledge the problem of prison
rape. According to Reginald Wilkinson, head of the Ohio Department
of Rehabilitation and Correction -- which is, ironically, one
of only two state prison systems to retain the now old-fashioned
concept of rehabilitation in its name, if not in its practices
-- the idea that prison rape is common is "a flat-out lie."
Wilkinson is far from a marginal figure
in the corrections world. The former head of the American Correctional
Association, the prison industry's standard-setting body, he
is now the president of the Association of State Correctional
Administrators.
When Wilkinson asserts, as he did in
a December 2002 letter to the editor of the Cincinnati Enquirer,
that "sexual assault in prison is highly exaggerated,"
one can assume that he is articulating a widely-shared view.
And, in fact, when Human Rights Watch surveyed state corrections
authorities in all fifty states as to the prevalence of prison
rape, nearly all of them responded that they knew of only a handful
of rape or sexual assault cases annually.
Roughly half of all states said that
they did not even compile statistical information about sexual
abuse in prison, given the rarity of reported cases. Prison officials
in New Mexico, for example, responding to a 1997 request for
information, said that they had "no recorded incidents over
the past few years."
Independent Studies
Yet independent studies contradict these
reassuring official claims. The most recent study, published
in December 2000, concluded that 21 percent of the inmates in
seven midwestern prison facilities had experienced at least one
episode of pressured or forced sexual contact since being incarcerated,
and nearly one in ten had been raped.
Wilkinson dismisses such studies as "disingenuous"
because they are based on "self reporting" by prisoners.
(As opposed to the reliable, objective reporting of prison administrators,
I suppose.)
But, as Wilkinson may or may not be aware,
even prison guards tend to report high incidences of rape. An
internal survey of guards in a southern state (given Human Rights
Watch on the condition that the state not be identified) found
that line officers -- those charged with the direct supervision
of inmates -- estimated that roughly one-fifth of all prisoners
were being coerced into participation in inmate-on-inmate sex.
Similarly, a 1988 study of line officers
in the Texas prison system reported that only 9 percent of officers
agreed that rape in prison was a "rare" occurrence,
while 87 percent disagreed. These findings are all the more notable
when one considers that the question was limited to instances
of "rape" -- not sexual abuse in general -- a term
that many people interpret narrowly (typically believing that
rape only occurs where physical force is used).
A Prisoner's View
A veteran of the Ohio prison system recently
contacted me, describing his own prison experiences. Unsurprisingly,
his view of the prison system differed considerably from Wilkinson's.
This ex-prisoner, who I'll call R.B.,
said that because of his youth, small stature, and non-violent
nature, he was targeted for sexual abuse immediately.
R.B. didn't know how to react to the
harassment. "I didn't know," he said, "that the
only response that might have saved me from what I was headed
for would have been for me to start fighting physically with
anyone who questioned my manhood."
With no protection from guards, R.B.
was raped by two inmates. This initial rape led to a series of
sexually abusive relationships--relationships that he endured
as an alternative to repeated rapes. But, he explained, "I
never told on anyone and I think that in the end I got along
better because of my silence. I've known others who got much
worse than me."
While R.B.'s silence may have helped
him--no prisoner wants to be labeled a "snitch"--it
also protected the prison system. It allowed prison authorities
to claim that rape was rare, an unusual occurrence, an aberration.
It allowed them to pretend that the abuse was not the predictable
result of their negligence.
It is high time for this silence to end.
Indeed, as the Reverend Dwight would tell us, it's more than
a century overdue.
Joanne Mariner
is a human rights attorney and regular CounterPunch contributor.
She is the author of No
Escape: Male Rape in US Prisons published by Human Rights
Watch. Her previous articles on prison rape may be found in the
FindLaw archive. She can be reached at: mariner@counterpunch.org
See Also:
Prison
Bitch
by Steve J.B.
Trivializing
Prison Rape
Who Moved My Soap?
by Alex Coolman
Resource:
Stop
Prisoner Rape
Weekend Edition Features for July 26 / 28, 2003
Alexander
Cockburn
NYT's Screws Up Again; Uday and
Qusay Deaths Bad for Bush; Gen. Hitchens at the Front
Gary
Leupp
Faith-Based Intelligence
Saul Landau
A Report from Syria
Stan
Goff
Bring 'Em On Home, Now!
Jeffrey
St. Clair
Book Cooking at Boeing
Andrew
Cockburn
The Sons Are Dead; Now the Blood Feud
Begins
Jason Leopold
CIA Points the Finger at the Pentagon's Office of Special Plans
Robert
Fisk
The Power of Death
Joanne
Mariner
Monsieur Moussaoui
M. Shahid
Alam
The Global Economy Since 1800: a Short History
Harry
Browne
Northern Ireland: the Other Faltering Peace Process
Fidel Castro
Moncada, 50 Years Later
Lula
Democracy Requires Social Justice
Edward
S. Herman
Refuting Brad DeLong's Smear Job on Noam Chomsky
Ron Jacobs
Guided by a Great Feeling of Love: a Review of Gordon's The Company
You Keep
Julie
Hilden
A Photographer, an Offer and Cameron Diaz's Topless Photos
Adam Engel
Man Talk
Poets'
Basement
Keeney, Witherup, Short, Nimba, Guthrie and Albert
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