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Sexual Violence On the Rise in US Prisons

Posted by Liliana Segura at 2:00 PM on August 17, 2007.


Liliana Segura: Last year there was a 21 percent jump in sexual violence in US prisons and in more than half the cases, the perpetrators were guards.
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More bad news out of the Justice Department. While the Bush administration reveled in its successful conviction of "dirty bomber"/torture victim Jose Padilla yesterday, the DOJ quietly released a report on sexual violence in American prisons. The findings in a nutshell: It's on the rise

According to the report, 6,528 cases of sexual violence were reported in 2006 (and those are just the reported cases), which is a 21 percent jump from 2004, the year such data started being officially collected. In more than half the cases, prison guards were the perpetrators.

It's hard to get people riled up about prison rape. Rampant though it may be, it's widely treated as little more than a cultural punchline; the subtext being that most prisoners probably deserve it. But with the US prison population the largest in the world, a spike in sexual violence behind prison walls means the cesspit that passes for our criminal justice system is getting even worse. And while feeble efforts have been made in recent years to legislate solutions, the root problem lies with outdated policies that have led to the prison boom--and the politics that keep them in place.

This past spring, for example, an LA-based human rights group called Stop Prisoner Rape (SPR) released a study linking the ineffectual (yet enduring) farce known as the War on Drugs with the rise in sexual violence in prisons. "The War on Drugs has had a profound impact," SPR's directors wrote earlier this year. "just not the impact that was intended."

"Of the 2.3 million people incarcerated in the U.S. today, more than 500,000 are imprisoned on drug charges, with hundreds of thousands more convicted of drug-motivated crimes.
...Studies show that as many as 20 percent of male prisoners have been pressured or coerced into sex, and 10 percent have been raped. While any detainee can become the victim of prisoner rape, people serving drug sentences, many of whom are young, unschooled in the ways of prison life, and non-violent, are among those at greatest risk.
With little or no institutional protection, prisoner rape survivors are left with physical injuries, are impregnated against their will, contract HIV and other sexually transmitted diseases, and suffer severe psychological harm."

Once upon a time, prisons functioned on the quaint ideal that jail time should be about rehabilitation. Few such pretensions exist anymore (although California did recently tack on the word to its Department of Corrections; an apparent attempt to re-brand the most overcrowded prison system in the country.) If Secret Prisons are to the War on Terror what US prisons are to the War on Drugs, whether it's rape or waterboarding, there are a lot of tortured prisoners out there. And unlike Jose Padilla, few people know their names.

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Tagged as: prison, justice system, padilla, prison system, sexual assault

Liliana Segura is a writer and activist living in New York


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Prison rape is not funny
Posted by: fanny666 on Aug 17, 2007 2:28 PM   
Current rating: 5    [1 = poor; 5 = excellent]
It always disturbs me that any hack stand-up comedian can get an easy laugh with a joke about "cell-mate Bubba has a crush on you" and that sort of thing. You can tell a lot about a society by how its members treat the least among them. Prison rape is not funny.

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» rape ... not funny Posted by: Dankhank
» Stop Prisoner Rape Posted by: fanny666
» RE: rape ... not funny Posted by: Landbaron
moral values
Posted by: schnoggi on Aug 18, 2007 4:56 AM   
Current rating: 5    [1 = poor; 5 = excellent]
such a typical example of what's acceptable to the sanctimonious people who perpetrate this ridiculous "moral war": once they have decided someone is guilty of some violation of public decency, then they can be treated with no decency whatsoever, and it's funny ha-ha. it's the same kind of mentality that justifies their using extreme terror to combat terrorism, and to destroy freedom in order to defend it.

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» RE: moral values Posted by: fanny666
That's astounding!
Posted by: Doubtom on Aug 18, 2007 8:27 AM   
Current rating: 4    [1 = poor; 5 = excellent]
How could a bunch of control freaks in charge of a growing group of captives result in sexual abuse? I'm shocked! Shocked I tell you!

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» RE: That's astounding! Posted by: rinthy
Dead on the fence.
Posted by: lc on Aug 19, 2007 5:30 AM   
Current rating: 5    [1 = poor; 5 = excellent]
I spent 2 years in fed prison for importing smoking pipes from India. There was the story of an 18 year old boy sent to prison on drug charges who was raped in prison, told the guards who never did anything, and was raped several more times before he tried to climb the fence and escape. He was shot on the fence and died in prison. This is a very sick country and society.
IM
Belteshazzar

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» RE: Dead on the fence. Posted by: appleton14
I'll give you a cigarette if you can do 40 pushups.
Posted by: Landbaron on Aug 19, 2007 5:36 PM   
Current rating: 1    [1 = poor; 5 = excellent]
Then when they finish, beat'em up and 'have your way. Who cares, stay out of jail!!

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I'll give you a ciggy if you don't cry like a baby landbaron...
Posted by: bobjbax on Aug 19, 2007 8:11 PM   
Current rating: 5    [1 = poor; 5 = excellent]
Hi Sweetykins

Sounds like that's "your way" too landbaron. Birds of a feather. Until you are on the receiving end. You can put lipstick on a pig alright.. and most of your fellow rectal tissue gris hogs are a lot bigger than you are, and they'll want lipstick on your lips too, you'll accommodate real quick you big bad brave mr sick. Talk is cheap.. from the cheap. You love a uniform don't you landbaron.. kind of 'corrects your mind' huh?

Thankfully, most of our fellow citizens in there are good people, so only a few are hazards to their fellows. But hazard enough. The SCREWS though.. horridly endless. The Corpsetocracy's Prison Industrial Complex.. a million good paying jobs for the many FASCISTS who love them. And in their sick way, like you landbaron, the bodies of those they have complete control over. SEXUALLY TWISTED, IMPOSED RUTHLESSLY AND CRUELLY. Like you.

The prisons I was 'corrected' in typically had a ratio of total screws and functionaries of about one to every two prisoners. There were half as many of them as there were US. Since the SCREWS account for more than half of the incidents of sexual torture reported.. that tells a deeper statistical story about them doesn't it? You must realize the extreme danger to any prisoner who reports a SCREW. Most don't. Of those few tortures brought forward, few are successfully reported and of the incidents pressed by the slight and pitiful means accorded US, most of them are mineshafted. Not in the statistics either. What does that tell you about the landbarons and SCREWS.. the real numbers of the horrors they inflict upon US citizens. To Correct Our Minds.

Yep.. Real Constitutional Justice is coming just ahead.. or all is lost. Your own GULAG for you landbaron for your human crimes.. like you just convicted yourself of here in your comment with your own flapping lips. I can't wait till your 'pals' get em flapping in a new way.. with nice red lipstick. Good things come to those who wait.. eh? ciggy?

I was imprisoned for a marijuana thought crime, just the means really. Like so many other of US in there. Kangaroo courted, looted, callously forgotten, impugned, defiled.. your own children people. What's wrong with you? The landbarons got yer tongue? A couple of real close hair raising encounters with the SCREWS or the small population of thuggery they employed.. but I escaped with my ass as the saying goes. Thankfully my lips too remained sealed to their advances.. but not about these crimes.

They purr this at US as our "Correctional Institution" don't they? No mention of the word prison or prisoner. Doesn't that send a chill down your spines..? 2.3 million souls and that doesn't tell the real story.. it's a revolving door for their profit. The turnover numbers of US destroyed in this way since they paramilitary enveloped US with their so called 'Drug War' in 1970.. simply staggering.. too many of our fellow now ex citizens, permanently damaged, literally past you.. enfelonated.. you uncaring and unperceiving. Your minds 'corrected' too. Stop mindlessly enforcing upon others for the CORPSETOCRACY. It will come to you.. sooner than you think. Open your eyes.

ASSUME THE POSITION !! SPREAD EM !! Music to your ears landbaron? No? Guess I stand 'corrected' for my thought crimes. Still standing though.. at the gates of your hell landbaron shaking my fists at the likes of you.

BURN IN THE HELL SUCH AS YOU MAKE FOR US ALL !!

SEEK THE TRUTH. LIVE BY IT . BE FREE.

Bobby Baxter ~ Calculated MilJetGun HCV CrossInfected Veteran & Marijuana Thought Crime Felon

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Excuuuuuuuse me!!!!
Posted by: Landbaron on Aug 20, 2007 3:37 PM   
Current rating: 1    [1 = poor; 5 = excellent]
I just saw that on "Inside American Prisons". The message I'm getting from that is like, "Scared straight". They should put surveillance cameras everywhere in the prisons (no privacy) and if the taxpayer doesn't want to pay, then they don't care...If crime is the bitter blossom of poverty, we need to work on wiping out poverty. China lifted 377 million people out of poverty in the last 20 years.

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Excused.. free pass
Posted by: bobjbax on Aug 22, 2007 5:13 PM   
Current rating: Not yet rated    [1 = poor; 5 = excellent]
Well. My hopes renewed. Thanks fer tha comeback landbaron. (heck of a choice of names in these days and times though)

I really wondered when I read your comment.. is this for real!? Grotesque!! This is either a real sick bastard or somebody playing the perfect foil for my overall, and very necessary reply to this article. For the benefit of all.. whether they really understand that yet or not.

So. Ooops. Hope you didn't get more than you bargained for. It's all the truth from the horse's mouth though. Fact is, I went real easy. People can only take in just so much and I tend to find that edge and press it ahead.. desperately needed social progress.

Especially something like the CORPSETOCRACY'S GULAG rising near invisibly about all our necks. That's our kids in there!! For thought crimes!! UNREAL!! And we just let that band play on. Hell's elevator music softly soothing US all into compliance. Out of sight.. out of mind. My how the mighty have fallen.

So hopefully folks will get right with all this and turn the tables so there'll be no need for you to go buy several shades of red lipstick anytime soon landbaron. I wouldn't factually wish that on anyone. If you do though.. don't forget the Prep H, a big tube of it from what I'm told by those in difficulty who have suffered it. Sad truth of it, once they get you, they never stop.

There are worse things in there, enormously ongoing medco, bioco, psycho and drugco experimentation, if one would dignify such dreadful criminality as 'scientific experimentation'. BioWarfare Agents tested. Psychotropics tested. Horridly worse. The experience for me many sad times in my three years that I will relate to perhaps kindly bring this into some sort of mind's view for folks is this: Single filing down those endless miles of corridor, you often pass coming the other way, trains of other fellows. All just the same, in their monolithically degrading rags and boots. Just numbers. You have to be careful, they don't allow communication between US or other 'blocks', but naturally many of US out of the corner of our eyes review our fellows passing, both in curiousity and to show them respect. Human contact. Always glad to see a friend.. and the same carefuly returned. One day you nod at someone and they carefully smile back letting you know they are keeping on keeping on. They are ok. A couple of weeks later.. you filter them out of a line coming past.. something's wrong.. something's wrong.. chill.. hope against hope since I know what could be.. I get a wan smile back.. but he's weakened by something.. young and healthy but he's struggling. Too often in these passings.. tragedy.. that immobile face, those blank, staring but unseeing eyes, no emotion, no response.. gone. They don't usually come back. I know what has happened, just not the specifics. Usually. I worked hard on those crimes, very difficult because of access and you could in no way allow them to suspect that you were on to them, much less pursuing and documenting it, extremely hazardous, I got a couple of filing drawers safetied out on it by my 'release' in 2000. Then distancing myself from it by distance and time for reasons one would not ordinarily suspect, trying to stabilize what they left me of my natural health, waiting till people will hear. These things are forced on the victim as something else, sometimes part of the 'experiment' is covert vectoring methodologies, by whatever means all covert.. you it's victims.. confused.. ill and rotting away.. not getting help.. not knowing what has happened. If you press too hard.. the price is higher. Trapped in the endless maze of that relentless iron box with no emotional privacy, sanctuary and no help.. how can I bring this grinding state of private existence to your mind.. it would be very unkind of me if I successfully did I suppose, the depth of personal aloneness, helplessness and despair.

(cont)

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» RE: xcused.. free pass Posted by: Landbaron
please excuse my limitless character alternet
Posted by: bobjbax on Aug 22, 2007 5:14 PM   
Current rating: Not yet rated    [1 = poor; 5 = excellent]
Most who suffer these medical profit predations go into denial about what has happened to them.. repress it.. the only way they can deal with it through the endless ticking days and years ahead.. bear it. Just part of the 'experiment', these monsters safetying themselves in the slow destruction of that soul. I know. I was lucky.. I was mentally agile.. mentally tough.. learned to safety myself. Smuggled my spiritual survival through it, though not my physical health. Evil is as Evil does.

Those are your kids in those dark spider holes folks. My how the mighty have fallen..

These terrible things they practice in there.. refine.. have a purpose. It will come soon enough to all of US. Already has.. but that's another discourse entirely. I'll limit it to this.. is your innocent child's school under 'lockdown' today?....

Bravo to Alternet, there is another article, this one very elucidative. Carries what you will hear as yet a step further. Anyone who cares, and they should for the sake of themselves and their children, should dial on over and absorb it. And weep. For themselves.

http://www.alternet.org/rights/60065/
Jailing Nation: How Did Our Prison System Become Such a Nightmare?

You got big big trouble folks.. better start thinking about what you are going to do about all this.. and so much more these hobnailers are coming at US with now or soon.

Landbaron.. best wishes to you in your land acquisition ambitions.. I feel a tad more reassured by your response that it won't involve too much peonage. Thank Goodness for small favors these days. May I suggest a couple of shades of hussy red and perhaps your taste in bordello pink.. heh heh

bob

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RE: xcused.. free pass
Posted by: bobjbax on Aug 25, 2007 9:18 AM   
Current rating: Not yet rated    [1 = poor; 5 = excellent]
Hevin's ta betsy landbaron.. these deceptive statistics are a dreadful thing. What they hide. The majority of our fellows in there are in truth in there for 'thought crimes'. Thought Crimes landbaron! The majority. Such a thing is unthinkable in a FREE SOCIETY! When you take it all down to it's common denominators, as we must learn our due diligence and perform if we are to survive and be FREE again, our 'books' are loaded and endlessly deluged with these COPRSETOCRACIST'S 'paid made's' 'laws', utterly immoral and UnConstitutional, utterly deceptive to all our minds, for the purpose of 'correcting our minds', enslaving US into our 'corporate widgetnesses', unseeing the truth corroding US, enforcing it upon each other. Ever Deepening. This has been going on for a long time, we are all in deep, we are only just beginning now that the 'industrial policist's' manacles are unavoidably noticeably clicking upon all our wrists, to glimmer this dreadful truth. Worse, scabrously cravenly so, The CORPSETOCRACIST'S PRISON INDUSTRIAL COMPLEX they overwrote our Justice System with in 1970's declaration of the so called Drug War, is FOR THEIR PROFIT TOO!! Anything goes.. and does.. in there. Anything!! The Silence of Fear. You cannot have such statistics in a Free Nation under a Constitution as ours and not quickly and deeply, very insistently question what is going on. It has been crept about US all, is happening to you, you just don't quite 'see' it yet. This is just one tiny part of it. We are enveloped and overwhelmed. Physically enveloped by their paramilitaries.. mentally and spiritually overwhelmed by their media PSYOPS. What is all this the formula for... ?

P.S. more bad news.. those poor fellow souls of ours work hard and most humiliatingly of purpose in there, at things that 'teach' them no useful skills outside to actually make them a practical living. The Prison Industrial Complex. In the GULAG.. you are forced to work for .19 cents an hour.. you were not sentenced to such a thing.. you were 'sentenced' to do your time in penance. These prisons are full of nasty, often toxic industries for CORPSECO PROFIT, that pay nothing of consequence, and they chain gang you out of there to do brute or migrant labor work, for nothing of consequence. The purpose is their BLOOD PROFIT and to destroy your core self respect as a human being.. without which you can never succeed in life again as a free man of free mind in a 'free society'. CORRECTED!! I can assure you that you 'work for a living'.. eeaauuugh.. in there. GULAG SLAVE LABOR.

You can find an article that is a bit evasive on this point but confirms it at http://www.alternet.org/workplace/60497/

Thought Crime Felon

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I stand corrected!
Posted by: Landbaron on Aug 25, 2007 10:30 AM   
Current rating: Not yet rated    [1 = poor; 5 = excellent]
Some people would rather be on 23/1 lock down than doing that kind of wage slavery.

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