prison-rape

[roger]

A cause I feel very passionate about is ending sexual violence in jails and prisons.

 

One out of ten prison inmates gets raped. One out of five are victims of forced sexual acts such as oral sex.

 

It IS preventable.

 

There must be a public outcry.

 

Unless the victims were criminals, the public would never allow it.

 

Is it OKAY to allow one who has done evil to be violently attacked and violated? Perhaps there are those who would consider it JUSTICE.

 

That's an abomination.

[Marblehead]

I respect your kind and concerned words.

 

It ain't gonna' happen.

 

Why?

 

Because it happen regularly outside of prison as well.

 

There will not be a public outcry.

[Karl]

No, it's isn't acceptable for anyone in or out of prison to be raped. The state has a duty of care to those it imprisons. As MH said, it happens outside prison as well. That the state can't protect right within the walls of a high security institution pretty much tells us all we need to know about its ability and will to protect the rights of people outside prison. So, use it as an example and contrast it.

[Chang]

Unfortunately the main punishment of prison is not incarceration. It is the people you are incarcerated with.

[doc benway]

A cause I feel very passionate about is ending sexual violence in jails and prisons.

 

One out of ten prison inmates gets raped. One out of five are victims of forced sexual acts such as oral sex.

 

It IS preventable.

 

There must be a public outcry.

 

Unless the victims were criminals, the public would never allow it.

 

Is it OKAY to allow one who has done evil to be violently attacked and violated? Perhaps there are those who would consider it JUSTICE.

 

That's an abomination.

 

It is especially horrific insofar as prisons in the US have been privatized and the entire system is profiteering from the sacrifice of human rights, dignity, and safety. Certainly there are criminals who require severe punishment but the vast majority of those incarcerated are serving time for non-violent crimes. Committing them to incarceration is indeed a rape sentence in many cases. It's a very sad commentary on Western freedom when the "leader" of the free world incarcerates more of its citizens than any other country. 

[liminal_luke]

I don´t have any statistics handy, but I´ll bet a disproportionate proportion of prisoners have been raped and molested before they ever get to prison. Being sexually abused makes it more likely that a person will become a criminal; being imprisoned for criminal acts makes it more likely that a person will be sexually abused.

[thelerner]

how to solve it..?

here's what I got.

 

Money- more guards, more cameras, maybe microphones that automatically detect 'safe words', add psychologists.

Less people- stop imprisoning people for minor drug offenses also if they can't make bail for minor offenses.

Stick- have and encourage anonymous reporting and easy testing.  Punish severely, longer terms, losing privileges, for repeat offenders solitary confinement. 

Carrot- allow safe sex times as reward for good behavior.

 

Shaming- you rape, you wear pink or I'm a rapist.. something like that.

[MooNiNite]

A cause I feel very passionate about is ending sexual violence in jails and prisons.

 

One out of ten prison inmates gets raped. One out of five are victims of forced sexual acts such as oral sex.

 

It IS preventable.

 

There must be a public outcry.

 

Unless the victims were criminals, the public would never allow it.

 

Is it OKAY to allow one who has done evil to be violently attacked and violated? Perhaps there are those who would consider it JUSTICE.

 

That's an abomination.

 

IT is actually heartbreaking to say this, but prison could have been like this since the beginning of time. Almost like natures way of destroying the ego. IDK but sometimes the world functions as it does with a purpose. IDKK

 

that being said,..

IM WITH YOU THOUGH! 

[Jetsun]

The impression I get, (mostly from TV mind) is that this issue is far worse in the USA than anywhere else, I could be wrong though. I know a few people who have been to prison in the UK and they said they never felt any threat of rape.

[mindtooloud]

Why would the people running the prison care if the people being prisoned are being sexually abused? The owners of the prisons are just in it for the money.

 

We need to change the whole prison system from its root, thats if the idea of a prison should even exist.

[Aeran]

The irony that America is on the tail end of a massive moral panic about a mostly fictitious epidemic of rape on College campuses, while totally ignoring the widely acknowledged actual epidemic of rape in their prison system, should not be lost on anyone.

 

The difference is in the demographics, and the demographics are why there isn't going to be a public outcry about the prison rape problem in America anytime soon.

 

 

The impression I get, (mostly from TV mind) is that this issue is far worse in the USA than anywhere else, I could be wrong though. I know a few people who have been to prison in the UK and they said they never felt any threat of rape. 

 

The same is true in Australia - I'm not sure what it is about America that makes the problem so much worse there, except that there appears to be a much greater degree of intertwining of sex and violence in American culture than there is in most Western nations.

[redcairo]

Certainly there are criminals who require severe punishment but the vast majority of those incarcerated are serving time for non-violent crimes.

Prison is supposed to be about reform, while the person is kept away from innocents. Then when he is 'reformed' allegedly by the process of it, sometimes with some form of edu or training during, he is released. We refer to prison as punishment but prison is an inefficient and expensive way of going about it if merely making people miserable were the primary goal.

 

Unfortunately prison is not only not reforming, it is probably the single most criminalizing environment in the world.

 

And unfortunately prison is certainly torturous; I believe that forced incarceration especially with lousy people is totally destructive to an individual, not in a 'punished so they will be better' but in a 'damaged so they will be fundamentally worse' way.

 

There was a time when I believed in privitization of prisons. This is mostly because 'the government' as an entity is the most overpriced inefficient corrupt entity to hand any responsibility to, for just about anything, so private interests, I felt, could only make it better. But I forgot one absolutely key, critical element I shouldn't have, that promptly evidenced itself and is the reason why I've completely changed my mind.

 

That is: money is in the maximum quantity of consumers and in repeat consumers. Prisoners are the consumers of the prison 'services'. Their wallets, the payments, are taken care of by the government.

 

At that moment, every financial tie to companies with some part of prison 'services' became an enemy to the American people, because now they are vested in trying to make as many people into criminals as possible; making as many crimes into prison sentences (and longer sentences) as possible; and making as many prisoners into repeated offenders as possible; which also includes making as many parole elements as re-incarcerating as possible. All of these things are in fact the LAST things we want -- they are all things we as a country should be strenuously against. But the moment we made prisons a source of privatized corporate income, we put ALL of that income and power in a place where it is working against, not for, our people.

 

As just one of many seemingly small things: It was bad enough that the government destroys prisoner health by feeding them insane amounts of soy, even harder on men I bet, but if destroying health contributes to mental health problems and feeling crappy -- by jove, it does! -- then it contributes to poor behavior (longer incarceration), and higher recividism (more re-incarceration) for a variety of reasons. Give prisoners food that gives them ongoing growing consequences, without just poisoning them outright, it's a win, and if the food is cheap and your corp or directors also own stock in the various corps that supply the crappy unfood, even better -- win-win!

 

As a secondary but still serious issue: corporate growth is mitigated only by environment and funding source. Innately the nature of business corps is max profit. Normally if a corp is selling, the cap on their selling is the number of people willing to buy and their competition, a mathematical model of market divided by competitors, with varying shares to the latter. But because the government is the 'payer' in the prison model, and because there is no 'competition' (e.g. alternatives to prison, it is merely that the government gives 'the' contract), there isn't really any limit to this.

 

The point of leverage and power for 'making more money' is controlled greatly by what IS defined as crime, how serious a crime, the things I noted above that are leveraged for maximizing the quantity and duration of people incarcerated. The number of people from age 17 and up who have been literally imprisoned for things like having a joint in their pocket, or downloading a file of songs from the internet, is out of this world at this point. And then re-imprisoned for some incredibly trivial thing once they are 'out on parole.' We are allowing the corporations, leaning on politicians and a variety of legalized systems and organizations, to gradually increase the "imprisonability" of our population, and it might seem like a minor thing in any one city for example, but multiply that by a 300 million population in the USA and you have a helluva bell curve going on.

 

What we as a people need to force the government to do, is create a 'reward' system for corporations which benefits from prisoners actually exiting the system as BETTER people; staying OUT of prison. If that were the reward, then the entire prison experience would be different.

 

Unfortunately there would still be the issue of more prisoners = more profit, which is a disaster.

 

RC

[joeblast]

when I saw this thread, I thought of bill clinton

[thelerner]

hmnn, that's unexpected and damn brave of you to admit.

Politics really does make strange bedfellows. 

[Apech]

A cause I feel very passionate about is ending sexual violence in jails and prisons.

 

One out of ten prison inmates gets raped. One out of five are victims of forced sexual acts such as oral sex.

 

It IS preventable.

 

There must be a public outcry.

 

Unless the victims were criminals, the public would never allow it.

 

Is it OKAY to allow one who has done evil to be violently attacked and violated? Perhaps there are those who would consider it JUSTICE.

 

That's an abomination.

 

 

What's the date of your trial and do you need a good lawyer?