Prison Rape and the Government

By artappraiser on Fri, 03/04/2011 - 8:29pm |

By David Kaiser and Lovisa Stannow, New York Review of Books, March 24, 2011 issue

The notion that rape is inevitable in our prisons is, as the Justice Department says, “not only incorrect but incompatible with American values.” After all, the government has extraordinary control over the lives of people whom it locks up and keeps under surveillance every hour of every day. Preventing sexual abuse in detention is primarily a matter of management. The policies needed are, for the most part, straightforward. Well-run prisons have adopted such policies already, and their rates of sexual assault are dramatically lower than the national average. But for too long, too many facilities have failed to take these basic measures.

URL:

http://www.nybooks.com/articles/archives/2011/mar/24/prison-rape-and-government/