By David Kaiser and Lovisa Stannow, New York Review of Books, Oct. 11, 2012 issue

Review & summary of two Dept of Justice reports and one Bureau of Justice Statistics report.  Excerpt:

[....] Overall (but accounting only for prisons, jails, and juvenile detention facilities), the Justice Department estimates that more than 209,400 people are sexually abused in US detention every year. This is a national disgrace—especially because prisoner rape is an eminently preventable problem.¹

In 2003, however, both chambers of Congress unanimously passed and President Bush signed the Prison Rape Elimination Act (PREA), which called both for extensive study of sexual abuse in detention and national standards to prevent, detect, and respond to it. The Obama administration has now issued those standards. If they are successful—and we believe they will be, to an extent many people may find surprising—not only will they reduce the incidence of prisoner rape dramatically, they will make American detention facilities better run, more humane, and safer places in general.

The standards have to do with how detention facilities are staffed, and how inmates are supervised and monitored; with how inmates are classified and housed within a facility; with the ways they can report sexual abuse, and how staff must investigate and respond to such reports. Among many other things, they will also affect the ways detention facilities must be monitored to ensure that they comply with these regulations [....]

Author bios from the NY Review of Books website:

David Kaiser is Chair of the Board of Just Detention International, a health and human rights organization; Lovisa Stannow is the Executive Director of Just Detention International.