Prison rape hearings.. March 11-15,,,,,,,,DOJ

[Joanne98]

*Department of Justice Public Hearings:
Unique Opportunity for Public Scrutiny of Sexual Abuse in Detention*

Washington, D.C., March 10, 2008. Stop Prisoner Rape (SPR), an
international human rights organization, welcomes the upcoming public
hearings of the Department of Justice Review Panel on Prison Rape.
These
hearings constitute a unique opportunity to scrutinize publicly the
operations of state and federal prisons where inmates report especially

high rates of sexual violence, or no sexual abuse at all.

The first hearing will be held in Washington, D.C., on March 11-14,
2008, and the second one in Houston, Texas, on March 27-28, 2008.

The corrections officials who will testify at the Review Panel hearings

are drawn from prisons highlighted in a Bureau of Justice Statistics
(BJS) report from last December, “Sexual Victimization in State and
Federal Prisons Reported by Inmates, 2007.” The report, the first of
its
kind, was based on a nationwide survey asking inmates directly and
anonymously about their experiences behind bars. The BJS report found
that 4.5 percent (or 60,500) of the more than 1.3 million inmates held
at state and federal prisons had been sexually abused in the previous
year alone.

As stipulated by the Prison Rape Elimination Act (PREA), the two
prisons
with the lowest rates and the three prisons with the highest rates of
reported abuse in the BJS survey will be called to public hearings of
the Review Panel. However, because five of the ten prisons with the
highest rates of abuse were facilities run by the Texas Department of
Criminal Justice (TDCJ), the Review Panel will hold a separate hearing
in Houston, Texas, highlighting that state’s troubled prison system.

In Washington, D.C. the Review Panel will focus on three prisons with a

high incidence of sexual abuse: Charlotte Correctional Institution,
Florida Department of Corrections; Rockville Correctional Institution,
Indiana Department of Corrections; and Tecumseh State Correctional
Institution, Nebraska Department of Corrections. The Washington, D.C.
hearing will also highlight two prisons at which inmates reported no
sexual abuse: Ironwood State Prison, California Department of
Corrections and Rehabilitation; and Schuylkill Federal Corrections
Institution, Federal Bureau of Prisons. In Houston, the Review Panel
will focus on TDCJ’s Estelle, Clements, Coffield, Allred, and
Mountain
View Units, all of which were among the ten U.S. prisons with the
highest rates of abuse.

SPR has suggested questions to be asked of the corrections officials
who
will testify at the Review Panel hearings. In addition, at the Texas
hearing, SPR staff will present testimony from survivors of sexual
abuse
who are currently incarcerated at TDCJ facilities, highlighting
systemic
problems as well as devastating personal experiences.

For more information, or to schedule an interview with SPR staff or
with
a survivor of sexual abuse, please contact Melissa Rothstein at
202-580-6971 or 718-873-4036 (cell).