Hidden Victims: Rampant Sexual Violence in the U.S. Prison System
PHILADELPHIA,PA- One of the biggest problems with a system that locks human beings in little cages and behind huge walls is that those people aren't treated like human beings. They become in the eyes of society and of their captors' animals. This disregard for their humanity can only lead to their being tortured. The U.S. prison system has many forms in which this torture takes place. Sexual victimization in the U.S. prison system is among the most brutal and least discussed forms of torture despite the lifelong ramifications for the victims and society.
The majority of victims not only don't report their assaults to authorities but don't even tell their families. Sexual victimization in the U.S. prison system often goes unreported for a variety of reason many of which are particular to institutional life. When incidents of sexual violence come to light the victims are assumed to be lying and when they are believed the policies in place ensure victims are punished for the crime of being a victim, often their punishment is worse than that of the perpetrators. Victims are often moved to protective custody, which is similar to solitary confinement, those not placed in protective custody may be left on the same cell block as their attacker or their associates.
Victims are often re-victimized by other inmates for having reported a rape. When they report their attacker they are labeled a “snitch” or a “rat” once labeled they are more likely to be targeted, almost without recourse until placed in protective custody. The climate of silence, the apathy of correctional officers, policies that either keep victims in harm's way or punish them further for being victims and the tendency of investigators to disbelieve victims are some of the contributing factors in the under-reporting of sexual victimization in these populations. “I tried to report the assault to the block Sargent but he refused to believe me or take any statements from those who backed me up, instead he said faggots like me, like sucking dick, so he didn't see the problem and walked away,” the victim is identified as S.H. for their protection. An estimated that 80,600 inmates are sexually victimized every year, an average of 3.6 percent of inmates. According to the National Sexual Violence Resource Center, 63 percent of sexual assaults go unreported.
If the same estimates hold true for incarcerated victims, the figures would double for a single year. In more than half of the incidents reported corrections staff were the perpetrators, many of these labeled as consenting.
Inmates have little to no control over their lives, are deprived of many of the human interactions non-incarcerated people take for granted any relationship between staff and inmate is coercive and is sexual violence. The figures are based on the reportage of correction institutions and are for the adult prison population.
According to Human Rights Watch the numbers maybe as high as 22 percent of inmates having been sexually victimized. The harsh reality is the climate of fear, shame, dehumanization, and the desire of administrative staff to appear to provide a safe environment for their captives will continue to subvert any attempt to narrow down the hard numbers. Other subsets of the incarcerated population particularly children, the mentally disabled and Transgender communities have much higher rates of victimization than the rest of the prison population. An estimated 9.5 percent of children incarcerated in a juvenile detention facility reported experiencing one or more incidents of sexual victimization, over three-quarters of which were victimized by an adult staff member. Nearly, 1 in 5 of those who reported incidents of sexual victimization by a staff member reported eleven or more incidents. Of the juvenile facilities that responded 13 were considered to have a high rate of sexual victimization with rates that were 35 percent higher than the national average. Two facilities were singled out as having the highest rate of sexual victimization. The Paulding Regional Detention Center in Georgia and Circleville Juvenile Correctional Facility of Ohio had rates of sexual victimization over 30 percent at each of their facilities. More than three times the overall 9.5 percent nationally. Nearly 10 percent of all inmates with mental health problems reported inmate on inmate sexual victimization. The LGBTQ inmate community has among the highest rates of sexual victimization of all groups and of the various subsets of that community transgender inmates have the highest rate of victimization. Of those who identified as gay, lesbian or bisexual 12.2 percent reported being sexually victimized. The Transgender community by far has the highest rate of sexual victimization with 34.6 percent of state and federal inmates reporting sexual victimization and 34 percent of the jail population having reported being victimized. One Transgender woman who was housed in a male facility reported to Human Rights observers that she had been raped more than two thousand times during her incarceration for minor drug offenses. Another Transgender woman, Dee Farmer was transferred to a maximum security federal prison as part of her 20 year sentence for credit card fraud, “ within two weeks of being in General population, I was beaten and raped within an inch of my life,” her case was the only case of sexual violence to ever make it to the United States Supreme Court, where she won some measure of justice.
Prison overcrowding, poor supervision of inmates and corrections officers, inadequate training, lack of inmate programming such as work, education or training opportunities, poverty, racial tension and dehumanization are the driving factors in the high prevalence of sexual violence in the human storage system we call corrections. “Prison Rape happens for a number of reasons, often a weak inmate will prey on a weaker one to prove his toughness and prevent the same from happening to him,” an inmate identified as W.F. Told Human Rights Watch. “Another reason is that guards let it happen as a means of control, sacrifice the weak to the more vicious to maintain order by creating a hierarchy.” The policies and procedures, even when followed, make it all but impossible to eradicate sexual violence from the prison and jail systems that stretch across the United States. Breaking the prison system down into federal, state and local systems ensure that cohesive policies can not emerge. The only way to end this form of torture is to completely rethink how criminal justice is carried out in the United States, that reduces the rate of incarceration and the number of people currently incarcerated. In addition to alternatives to incarceration for nonviolent offenses, bail reform needs to be pushed to the head of the agenda. Beyond rethinking how we deal with corrections we also need to change how we view those who are incarcerated, with special attention given to incarcerated victims of sexual violence and violence more generally.
People who commit a crime don't give up the right to their humanity, it is stolen from them by those that put them in cages and those that hold keys to their gates. Until we start seeing these people as human beings, as neighbors, friends, as fathers, mothers, sons and daughters we will leave them open to the most monstrous of conditions and continue to believe that they deserve it. Every facility needs to have adequate numbers of staff who are fully trained and supervised in order to ensure that inmates are safe while they are in their custody. When incidents of sexual victimization do occur, staff need to be trained in how to help and protect the victim. Incarcerated victims of sexual violence need to be provided with all of the same services as their counterparts outside the prison environment, including investigators from local, state or federal special Victims Units, a victim advocate trained to deal with the specific circumstances found in the prison system and that legal environment.
Sadly this isn't likely to change until Congress makes it easier for people who are incarcerated, their family, Human Rights organizations and the Department of Justice to defend and enforce prisoners civil and human rights.
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