Sexual torture in America's prisons

[Joanne98]

The town I grew up in, Addison, Maine, has around 1200 residents. If I were to tell you that in an average year, around 53 of those residents were horribly raped, how would you react? Would you wonder what law enforcement was doing? Would you demand that effort be put forward to stop this victimization at any cost, that no amount of money was too much to invest to make sure that nobody has to live under that constant threat of violence on American soil? Or would you shrug your shoulders and say they probably deserved it?

popecrunch's diary :: ::
The Department of Justice recently released a study on prison rape (located here: http://bjs.ojp.usdoj.gov/... ) indicating that 4.4% of the respondents to the poll had reported being raped or otherwise sexually victimized within the 12 months preceding the study. In 2009, 2,297,400 men, women, and juveniles were held in prisons, jails, and detention centers (source: http://www.kcl.ac.uk/... ). That means that judging by the numbers released by the DoJ, 101,086 inmates are victimized every year, or one about every five minutes, every hour of every day. In the time it took you to catch up with The Simpsons on television, six people - six American citizens - were horribly and violently sexually victimized.

And nobody seems to want to do anything about it.

It's very easy to dismiss prison rape as a consequence of crime - after all, everybody knows rape happens in prison all the time, so if you don't want to get raped, you shouldn't break laws. It's easy to see the victims as Other, as less-than-human because after all, they wouldn't BE in prison if they weren't already bad people, right?

The United States of America imprisons more of its own citizens per capita than any other nation on the planet: 748 per 100,000, or 0.748%. Out of the 217 countries that I could find statistics for, that's more than the bottom 21 combined. It's more than China and the Russian Federation combined. It's more than Iran, Taiwan, and the UAE put together. Surely we as a nation aren't so sinful that each and every one of those 2,297,400 people deserve to be put in a place where there's a good chance they're going to be raped? In fact, the vast majority of those in prisons or jails - about three quarters - are there for nonviolent offenses, like tax evasion, three-strikes convictions for marijuana possession, and having too many traffic tickets. Hardly the sort of crimes for which brutal rape is anything resembling a fair trade, not that there is such a thing.

http://www.dailykos.com/storyonly/2010/8/31/897795/-sexual-torture-in-americas-prisons

[Name removed]

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2. that's beyond disgusting

especially given that there are most certainly innocent people behind bars.

our criminal justice system should be about restricting liberty, not about driving people to suicide or murder.

yes, you'll find plenty of barbarians who support that but as has been noted elsewhere, some things ought not be put up to a vote. if driving someone to suicide isn't a violation of the 8th amendment, i don't know what is.

[Sherman A1]

3. Agreed & Well Said

What an absolutely horrible and completely absurd concept. :argh:

[dotymed]

4. I agree.

I also agree 100% with Joannes OP. Does anyone have the numbers for SS related suicides? Economy related suicides?
From "land of the free" (lol) to torturous police state. I would say "post-Reagan", but remembering the lack of rights of women and "people of color"
since the beginning of America, that would be incorrect.
I do wonder what "conservatives", in the quiet middle of the night,"frankness" that sometimes overcomes us all, think about this?

[Soylent Brice]

5. 1 every 5 minutes.

no words.

K&R