Queer Injustice: Preying on GLBT prisoners.

I don't know how sentencing judges can live with themselves sometimes, knowing that over 1 in 10 incarcerated children are sexually abused within the first year, guaranteed - and that over 40% of women prisoners are abused by guards. Now that's the real "truth-in-sentencing" that judges and prosecutors need to be made to speak aloud every time they decide to put another vulnerable person behind bars. Then I assure you we'd see both prison and sentencing reform happen in a heartbeat: those are some of the people we need help from the most to push it all through - and right now they're the ones who resist it the most.

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Queer Injustice: The Widespread Sexual Abuse LGBT People Face in Prison
By Kay Whitlock and Andrea Ritchie and Joey Mogul, Beacon Press
Posted on February 25, 2011
http://www.alternet.org/story/149873/


The following is an excerpt from Queer (In)Justice: The Criminalization of LGBT People in the United States, edited by Joey L. Mogul, Andrea J. Ritchie, and Kay Whitlock (Beacon Press, 2011).

SEXUAL VIOLENCE

Since sexual violence is one of the principal weapons of policing and punishing perceived sexual deviance and gender nonconformity on the outside, it may come as no surprise that it’s wielded to even greater effect in the highly controlled and violent environment of modern prisons. Roderick Johnson’s case and similarly horrifying experiences of countless other incarcerated queers illustrate the ways in which sexual violence allows prison authorities to control the queered prison environment as a whole.

Studies indicate that as many as one in four female prisoners and one in five male prisoners are subjected to some form of sexual violence at the hands of prison staff and other prisoners. Numbers vary depending on the methodology used in a study or survey, and many victims do not report instances of sexual violence they endure be- cause they fear retaliation, stigmatization, and isolation. Others fail to report assaults because they have become inured to it after years of abuse and forced sexual encounters. Consequently, reported instances of sexual violence represent only the tip of the iceberg.

The most recent surveys completed by the federal Bureau of Justice Statistics (BJS) extrapolated that 60,500 incarcerated adults or 4.5 percent of the prison population were sexually abused in 2007 alone, while 3,220 or 12 percent of youth incarcerated in juvenile detention centers were sexually violated by a staff member (10.3 percent) or another youth within the first twelve months of their admission.

While sexual violence is, in many respects, part of the daily prison experience for many inmates–whether they are victims, perpetrators, or forced observers—LGBT people are disproportionately targeted by staff and prisoners. It is now generally accepted by prison officials, experts, sociologists, and prison advocates that prisoners and detainees who are, or perceived to be, gay, transgender, or gender nonconforming are more likely to be sexually assaulted, coerced, and harassed than their heterosexual and gender-conforming counterparts. One study of six male prisons in California in 2007 found that 67 percent of the respondents who identified as LGBT reported having been sexually assaulted by another inmate during their imprisonment, a rate that was fifteen times higher than the rest of the prison population.

The first national survey of violence in the penal system, conducted by the BJS in 2003, found that sexual orientation was the single greatest determinant of sexual abuse in prisons, with 18.5 percent of homosexual inmates reporting they were sexually assaulted, compared to 2.7 percent of heterosexual prisoners. Additionally, it appears that rape victims of all sexualities are subsequently framed as gay and thereby become targets for further violence. According to Bryson Martel, imprisoned in an Arkansas prison for a narcotics-related offense, “You get labeled as a faggot if you get raped. If it gets out and then people know you have been raped, that opens the door for a lot of other predators. Anywhere I was, everybody looked at me like I was a target.”

Sexual violence is often used as a tool by staff and prisoners to enforce gender roles and conformity. A male prisoner’s rank in the hierarchical world of prisons is measured by traits stereotypically associated with masculinity, including physical strength and physique, ability to commit acts of violence and self-defense, and the nature of the offense that led to incarceration. As in larger society, masculinity is privileged while traits stereotypically associated with femininity, synonymous with weakness, are devalued. According to Donaldson, “The prison subculture fuses sexual and social roles and assigns prisoners accordingly . . . in my experience confinement institutions are the most sexist (as well as racist) environment in the country, bar none.”

Consequently, transgender women and men who are or perceived to be gay or effeminate find themselves at the bottom of the prison hierarchy, and as such become the targets of sexual abuse. According to Bella Christina Borrell, a transgender woman, “Female transgender prisoners are the ultimate target for sexual assault and rape. In this hyper-masculine world, inmates who project feminine characteristics attract unwanted attention and exploitation by others seeking to build up their masculinity by dominating and controlling women.”

As Alexander Lee, Donaldson, Ristroph, and others suggest, the way to maintain one’s “manhood” in prison is to dominate weaker, less powerful prisoners. Consequently, many prisoners, including some who are openly gay or gender nonconforming, may engage in ruthless acts of sexual or physical violence in order to avoid becoming victims of violence themselves. Femininity is not solely ascribed, and punished, based on sexual orientation or gender nonconformity in male institutions; it can also be associated with youthful age, diminutive size, lack of prior prison experience, and the nonviolent nature of one’s offense, rendering other “gender-nonconforming” prisoners likely targets for sexual abuse and victimization.

The case of Roderick Johnson highlights ways in which penal officials often are complicit and collaborate in sexual violence against prisoners, particularly LGBT prisoners. In some instances, guards promote and foster sexual violence between inmates in order to regulate the prison environment. This creates a system where prison staff are gatekeepers, all too often using sexual violence as a management tool by either allowing or prohibiting it as they wish.

For instance, according to TGJIP executive director Miss Major, who was incarcerated in a state facility in the late 1970s, transgender women were classified as mentally ill and therefore generally housed in the prison infirmary. Prison officials would at times take them, highly medicated with psychotropic drugs, and place them in cells with violent or troubled male inmates for the night. According to Lee, “A Louisiana prison guard described the situation inside as ‘sex and bodies become the coin of the realm,’ where prison staff trade sexual access to some prisoners for favors from other prisoners.” Guards may also promote coercive sex to recruit informants, in exchange for payoffs, or to destroy the leadership of an articulate prisoner.

The sexual assault and abuse of women, including lesbians and gender-nonconforming individuals, in women’s institutions has not prompted the same degree of attention and outrage as sexual violence in men’s prisons. Yet “sexual abuse and assault of prisoners by prison staff is commonplace and pervasive.” It appears that, compared to male prisoners, incarcerated women are more likely to be sexually abused by staff than by other prisoners. One study completed by sociologists Cindy and David Struckman-Johnson found that “41 percent of women prisoners, compared to 8 percent of the men who responded to surveys were victimized by prison staff.” Amnesty reports that “lesbians and other women who are seen to transgress gender boundaries are often at heightened risk of torture and ill- treatment” and that “perceived or actual sexual orientation” is “one of four categories that make a female prisoner a more likely target for sexual abuse.”

Furthermore, women, including transgender women, suffer from additional forms of sexual degradation and harassment from penal officials who routinely subject them to excessive, abusive, and invasive searches, groping their breasts, buttocks, or genitalia, repeatedly leering at them while they shower, disrobe, or use the bathroom, and generally, in the words of Human Rights Watch (HRW), creating an environment that is “highly sexualized and excessively hostile.” Vicki, a transgender woman, informed SRLP that prison guards “frisk as [a] means of harassment, with all their friends watching. After frisking me they say, ‘I need a cigarette now.’” Some transgender women reported being subjected to strip searches and frisks four to five times a day.

Often such searches are conducted merely to satisfy a guard or medical staff’s curiosity regarding a person’s genitalia, but ostensibly justified as necessary for determination of appropriate placement in sex-segregated facilities. Victoria Schneider, a transgender woman arrested for prostitution in 1996, was subjected to an un-necessary and degrading strip search in the San Francisco County Jail that included an inspection of her genitalia while she was forced to bend over and cough.

In 2002, a transgender woman of color held at the same facility was ordered by a sheriff to “strip naked, masturbate, and show him her body and dance for his arousal.” According to Judy Greenspan, cofounder of Trans/Gender Variant Prison Committee (TIP) in California, transgender men also “face a lot of oppression on the part of guards . . . When they’re strip-searched, many FTMs [female to males] who have had their breasts removed or take hormones are put on display. It’s psychological brutality and they’re demonized.”

Beyond violent sexual assault, both men and women prisoners also must often submit to nonconsensual sex acts with guards or with other inmates for safety, to be free from disciplinary punishment or further harassment, or in return for drugs, commissary items, or other survival needs.40 For example, a gay inmate in a male institution who described himself as “a free-world homosexual that looks and acts like a female” reported to HRW that he had no choice but “to hook up with someone that could make them give me a little respect . . . All open Homosexuals are preyed upon and if they don’t choose up they get chosen.” As Sunny, a transgender woman in a male prison in New York, told advocates from SRLP, “If you’re not fucking somebody, you’re gonna get fucked by everybody.”

The response Roderick Johnson received to his repeated pleas for help illustrates how indifference to the plight of queer prisoners often shown by penal officials derives from beliefs that gay men and trans- gender women, particularly those of color, are sexually degraded, inviolable, and more likely to be sexual predators than victims. Ac- cording to Linda McFarlane, deputy director of JDI, “We’ve heard multiple times about officers openly expressing a belief that gay and transgender inmates cannot be raped, that they deserve to be raped due to their mere presence in the environment, or that if they are raped it’s simply not a concern.”

Carl Shepard, a gay Mississippi man serving time for larceny and a narcotics offense, who was anally raped by his cell mate during a prison lockdown, tried to report the rape to a unit administrator, a major, and a warden. “When those three were questioning me, they actually made fun of me. The major said that I was gay, the sex must have been consensual. He said I got what I deserved.” Shepard had previously been denied medical attention even though he was bleeding from his anus. Timothy Tucker, a gay HIV-positive man raped by another male inmate in a federal prison in Virginia, reported, “After I was raped they asked me if I had learned my lesson . . . [Guards] said that since I am gay I should have enjoyed it.” An inmate in Florida told HRW, “I have been sexually assaulted twice since being incarcerated. Both times the staff refused to do anything except to lock me up and make accusations that I’m homosexual.”

Prisoners and inmates who report sexual violence not only fail to receive protection, they are frequently subject to retaliation from penal officials and other inmates for reporting the abuse. For instance, LGBT victims of sexual violence are often written up for violating the rules banning consensual sex, which leads to disciplinary action. In many institutions, when a prisoner reports he or she was raped, they are placed in solitary confinement under the pretense that penal officials are providing them protection during the investigation. Instead, it sends a message to inmates that reporting the assault will only lead to further punishment. Inadequate grievance procedures also make LGBT prisoners who report the sexual violence vulnerable to future attacks.

Amnesty states that “very few [abuses] are reported because of the tremendous stigma involved and because the life expectancy of a ‘snitch’ behind bars is measured in minutes rather than days.” As one legal advocate informed SRLP, “My clients have been punched, choked, thrown against walls, threatened with murder, framed with contraband . . . and threatened with all of these acts in retaliation for receiving a letter or a visit from me or my colleagues or for filing a grievance.”

The grim reality is that even though prison policies prohibit all sexual activity and violence, in practice prison officials not only allow and count on forcible sex, but use it to reinforce their own authority. Not only is forcible sex currency in prisons, but the prison system itself is predicated upon it. As a result, sexual violence is an entrenched and intractable feature of prison life. Defying efforts to suppress sexuality altogether, it serves the dual purpose of simultaneously queering prisons and punishing queerness and gender deviance. And because prisons are deemed to be queer spaces, it also serves to produce and strengthen queer criminal archetypes.


Support AlterNet by purchasing your copy of Queer (In)Justice: The Criminalization of LGBT People in the United States through our partner, Powell’s, an independent bookstore.

Joey L. Mogul is a partner at the People’s Law Office in Chicago and director of the Civil Rights Clinic at DePaul University’s College of Law. Andrea J. Ritchie is a police misconduct attorney and organizer in New York City. Kay Whitlock is a Montana-based writer, organizer, and consultant working for progressive social change.

Protect ALL American prisoners from rape.

From Prison Fellowship, a good summary of the damage that Holder's proposed Prison Rape Elimination Act (PREA) standards may do. This is really disappointing - especially the rule that exempts immigration facilities from having to comply with the law.

Why in the hell would the feds say it's okay for immigrants in detention facilities to be raped?! That's hideous! Most women in ICE prisons are pregnant by rape. The entire Latino community should be up in arms with us - where is Puente (you can help by asking them to look into this info@puenteaz.org / (602) 314 – 5870)? Look at some of these articles:

http://www.hrw.org/en/news/2011/02/15/us-protect-detainees-immigration-facilities-rape

http://www.texastribune.org/immigration-in-texas/immigration/detention-center-guard-tells-of-rape-torture/

http://www.justdetention.org/en/factsheets/immigrationfactsheet.pdf

http://www.justdetention.org/pdf/norefugehere.pdf

http://www.hrw.org/en/reports/2010/08/25/detained-and-risk


Please follow the links below (and here) to submit your comments on the proposed PREA standards before the April 4 deadline.


Peg

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(This links to a brief sample letter and one-step submitting to the DOJ
about the proposed PREA standards)

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Attorney General Weakens Prison Rape Standards


3/17/2011

Dear friends,

Attorney General Eric Holder has significantly weakened the standards proposed by the National Prison Rape Elimination Commission to combat prison rapes. Without strong standards to hold prison officials accountable for ending prison rape, inmates will continue to be victimized by sexual predators. The Bureau of Justice Statistics estimates that 124 adult and juvenile inmates are sexually assaulted in US prisons every day.


There is still time to convince the AG to put teeth back in the standards, but you have to act quickly. Letters commenting on the AG's changes to the standards are due by April 4. I hope each of you will write the Attorney General and express your outrage that the process Congress established to enact tough standards has resulted in weak and ineffective protections. Go here to write the Attorney General today.


Here are just a few of the ways the Attorney General weakened the standards:

Allows Cross Gender Pat Downs

The Bureau of Justice Statistics has found that a significant number of sexual assaults begin with aggressive pat downs by officers of the opposite sex. This is such a major problem that most prison systems and jails prohibit pat downs by officers of the opposite sex absent exigent circumstances. The Commission banned them unless there is a bona fide emergency. Yet, the Attorney General’s standards allow cross gender pat downs.

No Prison Rape Standards for Immigration Prisons

The Attorney General ruled that immigration prisons (ICE) do not have to comply with any of the prison rape standards. Horrible rapes and assaults have occurred in ICE prisons. Yet, the AG has exempted them from the standards. If Mr. Holder felt that the DOJ did not have authority over the ICE prisons, he should have asked Congress to give him that authority, and Congress would have done it with no hesitation. Remember, the original Prison Rape Elimination Act was passed unanimously by both houses of Congress when the DOJ clearly had authority over immigration. Under the AG's rule, tens of thousands of foreign detainees are subject to sexual predators, and there are no standards to hold authorities accountable for protecting them.

Prison Systems May Audit Themselves

For standards to be effective, prisons' compliance should be audited by an outside organization. The Commission's standards required: that all facilities be audited; that audits must be conducted at least every three years by independent and qualified auditors; that the auditors have access to all parts of facilities and all documents; and, that the audits are made available to the legislature and the public.

The Attorney General allows agencies to audit themselves with no guarantee of access to facilities and documents. He suggests that random checks might be instituted in place of individual audits of every facility. He also suggests that audits might be required only if cause is shown. That is a recipe for disaster. "If it isn't counted, it isn't done" is a reality in every bureaucracy, and prisons are no exception. The AG’s revisions of the standards make an accurate monitoring of compliance with the standards very hard to accomplish, allows possibly biased auditors and allows the results to be hidden from the public.

No Need To Actually Protect Inmates - Having a Plan is Enough

The Commission's standards require a Zero Tolerance Policy, and that it be enforced in each facility to provide a basic level of safety for inmates. The AG also requires a Zero Tolerance Policy, but he removes the requirement that it be enforced and substitutes a requirement that the prisons outline its approach to prevention. There is no requirement that the plan be enforced; only that they have a plan. The AG does not require that inmates actually are protected, but only that there be a plan to do so. And what is the consequence if the plan is not implemented? Well, they have to develop another plan. This is not a standard at all, but merely a call for planning.

Estimated Costs Are Grossly Inflated

The Prison Rape Elimination Act wisely provided that the Attorney General shall not establish a national standard ‘‘that would impose substantial additional costs compared to the costs presently expended by Federal, State, and local prison authorities.’’ Congress didn’t want a “runaway” commission to impose absurdly expensive requirements on prisons such as mandating that all prisons be replaced with new construction. However, the AG has significantly exaggerated the costs of complying with the Commission’s standards.

For example, they interpreted standard PP7 to require electronic surveillance. That is not what the Commission’s standard requires, and it is clear from the record that our standards did not mandate that. The proposed standard merely says that electronic surveillance should be considered as one method of protecting inmates. By misinterpreting the standard, DOJ inflated the upfront costs to 24x the actual costs. Take out the amount caused by their erroneous interpretation (which they admit is 96% of the upfront costs) and the total upfront cost is reduced to a $260 million, out of a total of $70 billion spent on prisons this year. That is, to start complying with the Commission’s standards it will cost prisons and jails a mere .00371 of total spending on prisons – or less than 4/10ths of 1%. For the AG to say that this amounts to “a substantial cost” compared to the costs of all prisons is laughable.

Why Would the AG Weaken the Standards?

It is difficult to imagine that an Attorney General with so much experience in the justice system would not understand the magnitude of rape in our prisons, and would underestimate the damage in human terms caused by our prisons’ failure to protect inmates from sexual aggression. So, why would Eric Holder propose to weaken the standards? The explanation I have been told by people close to the professional staff at DOJ is that the career employees were planning to recommend only minor changes to the Commission’s standards. However, the “political people” took it out of their hands and caved in to pressure from the unions that represent prison employees. It appears that with an eye toward 2012, the unions held sway. If that is true, it is a sad day for the Department of Justice and a very sad day for inmates who will continue to be prey to sexual predators.

A telling comment on the AG’s proposed standards came from a question by a renowned expert on prisons, “On the day after the new standards go into effect, what will the Federal Bureau of Prisons have to do that is different than what it does now?” Shockingly, the DOJ employees could not think of a single thing.

The former members of the National Prison Rape Elimination Commission will hold a press conference on March 23 to express their strong opposition to the changes the Attorney General has made to their recommended standards. These diverse commissioners, who spent several years studying the scandal of prison rape and learning the best ways to prevent it, are united in urging the public to join them in opposing the weakening of the standards.

There is still time to press the Attorney General to change course and adopt stronger standards. Federal law allows the public to submit comments until April 4. Please go to our website where you can send a letter to the Attorney General immediately.

No prison sentence, no matter how heinous the crime, includes being raped. It is our responsibility to protect those who cannot speak for themselves.


In His service,

Pat Nolan
Vice-President, Prison Fellowship

Resources

Justice Fellowship Prison Rape Page

Justice Department’s proposed rules

National Prison Rape Elimination Commission Standards

National Prison Rape Elimination Act law

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Spread the Word

Talk with your family and friends about why we must combat rape in our prisons and jails.

• Correctional facilities across the country struggle to protect the men, women, and children confined within their walls. Approximately 60,500 sexual assaults occur in our state and federal prisons each year. This is roughly 4.5 percent of the U.S. prison and jail population. More inmates report sexual abuse from prison staff than from fellow inmates. (Sexual Victimization in State and Federal Prisons Reported by Inmates, 2007, Bureau of Justice Statistics, 2007)

• No matter how bad the crime, just punishment never includes rape.

• Because the government removes offenders’ every means of self-defense when they enter prison, the government has an obligation to protect these vulnerable people.

• Corrections administrators are responsible to create prison cultures with zero tolerance for prison rape. Administrators must clearly communicate with their staff that all rape is unacceptable. Staff must be trained on how to prevent inmate-on-inmate rape and inmates must be trained to know their rights under the law to report and prosecute sexual assault. (Strategies to Prevent Prison Rape by Changing the Correctional Culture, National Institute of Justice, 2008)

• Though the risk factors for becoming a victim of prison rape are obvious, many prisons do not actively identify and protect these vulnerable inmates. (National Prison Rape Elimination Commission Report, 2009)

• Very few prisons have the rigorous internal monitoring and external oversight to detect and prevent prison rape. (National Prison Rape Elimination Commission Report, 2009)

• Far too many prison staff who rape inmates are not prosecuted because inmates are too scared to report the assault or prison officers do not care. Prisons must create effective processes for inmates to report assault and must investigate and prosecute all incidents. (National Prison Rape Elimination Commission Report, 2009)

• Far too few prisons offer the medical and mental treatment necessary to minimize the trauma of abuse for victims of prison rape. (National Prison Rape Elimination Commission Report, 2009)

• The damage done by prison rape does not stay behind bars. The disease, the psychological damage, and the desire for revenge caused by prison rape come back to plague our communities when prisoners are released. (Addressing Sexual Violence in Prisons, The Urban Institute, 2006

• Juveniles housed in adult prisons and jails are more likely to be raped than any other category of inmates. (National Prison Rape Elimination Commission Report, 2009)

• There are over 60,000 sexual assaults in U.S. prisons and jails every year. This is roughly 4.5 percent of the national prison population. These numbers are likely low because they are only based on reported rapes. (National Prison Rape Elimination Commission Report, 2009)

Prison Rape: Our laws will not protect us.

Nor will our silence, so speak out or there will most certainly be neither justice nor peace.

The following post comes from the excellent blog Solitary Watch - appropriate for International Women's Day today, particularly given Arizona's history with the Justice Department on the issue. Men are victims of prison rape all too often too, of course, though we are less inclined to call it what it is. Approximately 300 prisoners will be raped today in America alone. One of every eight children we incarcerate will be sexually abused or exploited in custody.

Please take a few minutes to follow the embedded links and defend those whose voices have been so effectively shut out by our courts and legislatures - and ignored by the communities in which they are imprisoned. If you email us a copy of your comments, we'll probably post it. Send them to prisonabolitionist@gmail.com.

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Prison Rape, the PREA, and the PLRA

March 7, 2011
SOLITARY WATCH

Guest Post by Jennifer Wedekind

Editor’s Note: Jennifer Wedekind is a journalist whose work has appeared in Mother Jones, In These Times, and the Multinational Monitor. She is a 2011 JD Candidate at Georgetown Law.

The public comment period for the PREA regulations extends through April 4, 2011. To submit a comment or read the full text of the proposed standards, go to this page on the website of Just Detention International, an organization devoted to exposing and eliminating the epidemic of prison rape.

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The Department of Justice in early February opened a comment period for proposed regulations under the Prison Rape Elimination Act (PREA). Passed in 2003, the Act requires the Attorney General to promulgate national standards for the detection, prevention, reduction and punishment of prison rape. While its ultimate aim is to stem the rampant sexual abuse that occurs in prisons and jails across the country, up until now PREA has largely been an aspirational and fact-gathering statute.

The proposed regulations are structured around recommended standards put forth by the Prison Rape Elimination Commission, established by PREA, in a comprehensive 2009 report on the “the penological, physical, mental, medical, social, and economic impacts of prison rape in the United States.” However, subsequent comments by interested parties citing concerns about prison security and inmate “gamesmanship” have resulted in some of the recommendations being largely neutered. Additionally, a statutory mandate that no regulation impose substantial additional costs on prison authorities may limit the types of programs the regulations can implement. However, the comment period will allow for criticism and revision of the proposed regulations and provides an open forum for prisoner-rights advocates to be heard.

The problem of prison rape that PREA is attempting to address is nothing short of staggering. An estimated 88,500 adult inmates — 4.4 percent of prison inmates and 3.1 percent of jail inmates — reported at least one instance of sexual victimization in the previous year, according to a 2010 Bureau of Justice Statistics report. At a Hughes Unit prison in Texas, the facility with the highest rates of reported victimization, 8.6 percent of inmates reported being sexually assaulted by another inmate. Sexual victimization by guards is equally as prevalent. In the Crossroads Correctional Facility in Missouri, the male facility with the highest rates of guard sexual misconduct, 8.2 percent of inmates reported being victimized. At the women’s Bayview Correctional Facility in New York, 11.5 percent of inmates reported sexual victimization by guards.

When a prisoner comes forward and reports a sexual assault, he or she is more likely to face retribution than redress. Complaining prisoners frequently face retaliatory harassment, discipline or further abuse. A full 25 percent of inmate victims are summarily sent to solitary confinement, according to the Department of Justice’s own numbers.

Additionally, an inmate complaint will rarely result in legal sanctions for the perpetrator or prison authorities, despite the fact that the Supreme Court has held that placing an inmate at risk of sexual assault with deliberate indifference can be a violation of the 8th Amendment. The main obstacle between inmates and a courtroom is the 1996 Prison Litigation Reform Act (PLRA). Congress passed the PLRA in an effort to prevent “frivolous” inmate lawsuits and created considerable hurdles that an inmate must overcome to see his or her day in court. Significantly, any regulations passed under PREA will have to be in compliance with the PLRA, which may hamper its effectiveness in some areas.

In cases of sexual assault, inmates are most often stymied by two PLRA requirements — an exhaustion of all administrative remedies and a showing of physical harm. If a prisoner fails to comply with the technical and often arbitrary requirements of the administrative procedures, or if the inmate misses one of the filing deadlines — which may be as short as 48 hours — his or her right to sue is forever forfeited. Cases are frequently dismissed because of technical errors, because the wrong form was used or because the complaint was submitted to the wrong entity within the sprawling prison system.

In a notable 2003 case, Human Rights Watch reported that sixteen female inmates filed suit alleging systematic sexual abuse by prison staff, including forcible rape, coerced sexual activity, oral and anal sodomy, and forced pregnancies. The federal court hearing the case refused to address the merits, instead taking nearly five years to conclude that the women’s use of informal reporting procedures provided by the prison resulted in a failure to adequately exhaust all administrative remedies.

The PLRA also requires a showing of physical injury — and many jurisdictions do not consider a sexual assault to constitute a physical injury per se. This provision in particular is frequently relied upon to dismiss claims by victims of sexual assault, who frequently have no proof of physical injury due to delay in reporting, lack of additional violence during the assault, or inadequate prison medical providers, who often do not have the resources or willingness to administer a rape kit.

Advocates hope the final PREA regulations will provide more services for inmates and more accountability for prison administrators. However, while the regulations may be able to ease some of the administrative burdens currently on inmate victims, it will not provide a private cause of action and the PLRA will still dictate access to courts.

The proposed regulations would ban cross-gender strip searches, create minimum standards for investigations following a report, require correctional facilities to provide medical and mental health care, and institute a zero tolerance policy for sexual assault and harassment. The regulations also purport to make the prison grievance systems more accessible, however they don’t go as far as most advocates think necessary. It remains to be seen what effect, if any, the regulations will have.

Rape is Rape: More CCA abuses at Saguaro.

According to Courthouse News this week, a suit was filed against the State of Hawaii and Corrections Corporation of America due to the October 2009 sexual assault of a prisoner who was coerced to perform oral sex on CCA Saguaro Correctional Center guard Richard Ketland. Apparently in Eloy, Arizona, the rape of a prisoner brings - at worst - a felony charge of "unlawful sexual contact," and can be settled as a lesser offense so as to only require probation.

The guy he assaulted was just in on a drug charge, by the way, for those of you to whom it matters.

The real "truth in sentencing" in America is that you may be raped, regardless of the severity of your own crime. As for Ketland - on July 14, 2010 he plead guilty to "attempted unlawful sexual conduct" (a class 6 felony), and sure didn't hit the news or go to prison.

I doubt he did a day in jail, either.

You wouldn't know this kind of thing happens here from the mainstream media in Arizona. Here's an interesting article in the region's Tri-Valley Central notifying the nearby Florence community of sex offenders who have been released there. That was posted the day after Ketland's victim filed suit. I don't find any mention of a CCA guard sexually assaulting a prisoner at all, though, after a number of different searches of the publication: nothing on Ketland even in the deeper archives.

I only got six hits on Google when I looked up the terms " 'richard ketland' cca prison arizona", too.

I assure the uninitiated out there: forcing someone to their knees and ejaculating in their mouth is a pretty heinous form of penetration. Most of us would call that rape. Prison guards in this state have the authority to use lethal force against prisoners to prevent them from harming anyone else or escaping - and no one believes a "criminal" over a "cop". The victim could have easily been crucified by Ketland and CCA if he even survived putting up a fight.

I'd hope that if the same thing happened to me in Pinal County, the good sheriff and prosecutor would call rape what it is and treat it accordingly - especially if my assailant wore a uniform and a badge, and carried the responsibility of the public's trust.

I guess I should commend the Pinal County prosecutor for calling it a crime at all. Still, I'm disappointed. Some of you should remember that in December 18 other prisoners from the Saguaro Correctional Center in Eloy filed suit over brutality by guards on a massive scale. I have yet to hear anything about criminal charges being filed for the assault, intimidation, threats to prisoners and families, etc. - crimes that were apparently perpetrated with the blessing of the CCA warden.

So, I again urge the public that cares - wherever you may be - to contact the Pinal County Sheriff, Paul Babeu, the Pinal County Attorney, James P. Walsh, and the Arizona media to shine a spotlight on this abuse and prosecute the criminals working for CCA at Eloy's Saguaro Correctional Center. All the contact info you need is here from December: "Prosecute CCA prisoner abuse." If you didn't speak up against violence and abuse then, please do so now.

For reference, here's the Private Corrections Working Group's rap sheet on CCA prisons across the country; they have four facilities in Eloy alone.

And here's the Hawaiian victim's actual legal claim...

Welcome to Eloy, AZ. Note their affection for Jesus.

He was a prisoner, too.

Prison suicide and gangs at Florence Central.

UPDATED 3/25/2011

This is the second suicide out of ASPC-Florence Central in one week: Word there is that Rosario, the new prisoner who hung himself last Friday, had just been turned down for protective custody that day. I know of another kid who tried to do himself in to avoid going back into general population. I think the gangs are getting some mileage out of Shannon Palmer's murder.

Our condolences to Duron's mom, Saundra Cunningham, and the rest of his family. By their report, he has a history of depression, and had been both sexually and physically assaulted since being incarcerated just a few months earlier; they think he was seeking protective custody at the time that he killed himself. The discovery process for the lawsuit they file should tell us a lot about how the ADC really deals with prison rape, and if they actually counsel affected prisoners after the suicide of a peer (they provide the COs with critical incident debriefing by a specially-trained team).


If any of you haven't written to the Department of Justice by now, this would be a good time. We're up to 17 dead in 15 months now; that should be enough to get them started. Just print this up, write CRIPA across the top, and mail it. Be sure to emphasize your concern that you see a "pattern and practice of neglect" of prisoners' mental health needs. Their address is:

Jonathan M. Smith, Chief
US DOJ _ Special Litigation Section
950 Pennsylvania Ave NW
Patrick Henry Building
Washington DC, 20530

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ARIZONA DEPARTMENT OF CORRECTIONS
1601 W. JEFFERSON
PHOENIX, ARIZONA 85007
(602) 542-3133
JANICE K. BREWER, GOVERNOR
CHARLES L. RYAN, DIRECTOR

NEWS RELEASE For Immediate Release

For more information contact:
Barrett Marson
www.bmarson@azcorrections.gov
Bill Lamoreaux
www.blamorea@azcorrections.gov

Sept. 30, 2010
Inmate Death Notification

Florence, Az- Inmate Duron Cunningham, ADC#245305, died while in Arizona Department of Corrections custody Thursday after apparently committing suicide.

Cunningham, 40, came to ADC on Aug. 17, 2009, after convictions from Maricopa County for dangerous drug violation and kidnapping. He was serving five years and housed at the Central Unit of ASPC-Florence.

The death is under investigation by the Department.

300 American prisoners will be raped today.

Hey folks - please read this article then head over to sign the petition to Holder at

CriminalJustice.Change.org

Leave an intelligent comment there, while you're at it.
Too many idiots have said
their piece already.




----------------------From the New York Review of Books------------------

Prison Rape: Eric Holder's Unfinished Business

David Kaiser and Lovisa Stannow

A new report by the Bureau of Justice Statistics (BJS) provides grim reaffirmation of something we already knew: sexual violence is epidemic within our country’s prisons and jails. According to the report, 64,500 of the inmates who were in a state or federal prison on the day the latest BJS survey was administered had been sexually abused at their current facility within the previous year, as had 24,000 of those who were in a county jail that day—a total of 88,500 people.

In fact, as we’ve explained before, the true national total is much higher. The BJS numbers don’t include thousands who we know are sexually abused in juvenile detention and other kinds of corrections facilities every year, nor do they account for the constant turnover among jailed detainees. Stays in jail are typically short, and several times as many people pass through jail in a year as are held there on any given day. Overall, we can confidently say that well over 100,000 people are sexually abused in American detention facilities every year.

As appalling as this figure is, mere numbers can obscure what is at issue here. So consider the case of Scott Howard. Scott was a gay, non-violent, first-time inmate in a Colorado prison when he was targeted by members of the “2-11 crew,” a white supremacist gang with over 1,000 members in prisons throughout the state. For two years he was forced into prostitution by the gang’s leaders, repeatedly raped and made to perform oral sex. Even after he told prison staff that he was being raped and needed protection from the gang, Scott was told that nothing could be done unless he named his abusers—even though they had threatened to kill him if he did. Because Scott is openly gay, some officials blamed him for the attacks, saying that as a homosexual he should expect to be targeted by one gang or another. And by his account, even those officers who were not hostile didn’t know how to respond to his reports, because appropriate procedures were not in place. They failed to take even the most basic measures to protect him.

Ultimately, despite his fear, Scott did identify some of the gang members who had raped him. Not only did the prison authorities again fail to respond, they later put Scott in a holding cell with one of his previous assailants on the day he was to be released from state custody. Again, he was beaten and forced to perform oral sex. Scott had a civil lawsuit settled in his favor recently, winning financial damages and seventeen policy changes that will now become mandatory in the Colorado prison system. Otherwise, however, nothing about his story is unusual.

In 2003 Congress passed the Prison Rape Elimination Act (PREA), legislation that, among other things, called into being the bipartisan National Prison Rape Elimination Commission (NPREC), a panel of experts charged with devising national standards for the detection, prevention, reduction, and punishment of sexual abuse in detention. But the implementation of these standards is now being held up, because, as Attorney General Eric Holder has explained, according to PREA the new rules should not “impose substantial additional costs compared to the costs presently expended by Federal, State, and local prison authorities.”

Last September, the Justice Department commissioned Booz Allen Hamilton to study what it would cost to implement the NPREC standards. Unfortunately, the results of that study are too flawed to be of much use. Even more concerning is that Mr. Holder has commissioned no study of the benefits of reducing prisoner rape; nor, apparently, does he plan to. Yet as a brief submitted to the Department of Justice by New York University Law School’s Institute for Policy Integrity makes clear, “substantial additional costs” can only be understood in relation to the standards’ projected benefits. Moreover, Mr. Holder is legally obligated to analyze the costs and the benefits of the new standards together: he cannot give greater emphasis to one half of the calculation than the other. By failing to perform proper analysis, the Attorney General is delaying the reform mandated by a unanimous Congress in passing PREA—and he has already missed his statutory deadline for issuing a final rule on the standards by more than two months.

Prisoner rape is far more a legal and moral issue than a financial one. Since cost considerations are impeding reform, however, it is worth taking a closer look at the true financial implications of sexual abuse behind bars. There are at least two ways in which the Department might try to estimate the value of reducing sexual abuse in detention. One—called “contingent valuation,” and used frequently by environmental economists—seeks to assign dollar-values to goods not traded in the marketplace. Using its techniques, a recent study concluded that the public values the prevention of a single incident of rape or sexual assault at $237,000, a greater worth than it places on preventing any other kind of crime except homicide.

Alternately, the Justice Department can try to quantify particular, identifiable savings and benefits of preventing prisoner rape, and weigh them against particular, quantifiable costs. The costs (no matter how benefits are measured) are the investments needed by corrections systems to comply with the recommended standards, divided by the Department’s estimation of the percentage by which the standards will actually reduce sexual abuse in detention. As for the benefits, a partial list of those to be considered might begin with the medical cost of treating rape victims, which must be shouldered by corrections systems. This is much more expensive in the prison setting than in the general community, because inmates must be transported to often-distant hospitals and escorted the whole time by security staff. And it is a cost that must be paid, not for every victim of prisoner rape, but for every instance. We can deduce from the new BJS study that victims of sexual abuse in detention suffer an average of three to five incidents apiece.

The Washington Department of Corrections estimates that the cost of providing mental health treatment for victims of prisoner rape or sexual assault—which is different from immediate medical care—is approximately $9,700 per victim. Neither category of care includes treatment for HIV, Hepatitis C, and other sexually transmitted infections, which are of course spread by prisoner rape and also impose great costs on prison health services. Making our prisons and jails safer should have a positive effect generally on the mental health problems that are endemic there. And reducing prisoner rape would also lower the number of suicides and unwanted pregnancies in our prison systems.

Quite apart from the horror it inflicts on the victim, failing to protect an inmate from sexual abuse contributes to the substantial legal costs our prison systems face. While it is extraordinarily difficult for an incarcerated victim to bring a civil lawsuit—the 1996 Prison Litigation Reform Act (PLRA) was enacted with the explicit purpose of limiting prisoners’ ability to be heard in court—prisons have still had to pay hundreds of millions of dollars in damages and fees to inmates who can establish that officials were “deliberately indifferent” in failing to protect them.

When inmates do report sexual abuse in prison, they are often put in “administrative segregation,” isolated housing that can entail being locked alone in a tiny cell for up to twenty-three hours a day. While this is purportedly done to protect them from more assaults, such housing is also used for punishment: inmates in solitary confinement are denied many programs and services, and the extensive isolation often causes or exacerbates mental and emotional problems. It is also enormously expensive. In California, for example, it costs an additional $14,600 per year to house a prisoner in administrative segregation.

Prisons and jails in which sexual abuse is widespread have been shown to be more dangerous than others generally. At such facilities, violence of every kind, importation of contraband, and other problems tend to flourish. Facilities with less sexual abuse thereby have lower overall security costs and fewer security breaches. When prisons are safer for inmates, they are also safer for corrections staff. The various measures called for by NPREC’s standards—among them better surveillance technology and external oversight—will provide a wide range of benefits for the facilities in which they are implemented, going far beyond the reduction of sexual violence.

Preventing prisoner rape will also help inmates successfully re-enter their communities when they’re released from prison (as almost all will be, eventually). Not only will recidivism be decreased and the enormous costs of re-incarceration lowered, this will lower the costs of disability payments, public housing, and other government-subsidy programs. As we know from our extensive work with survivors of prisoner rape, former inmates who have not been sexually abused are far more likely to become members of the legitimate workforce and pay taxes. Severe financial, emotional, and social burdens are removed from the families who support former inmates if their loved ones are released from prison without the lasting trauma of sexual abuse. And the children who depend on those former inmates will also do better. Today, more than a million children in this country have at least one incarcerated parent.

Testifying before a House subcommittee, Attorney General Holder said, “We want to effect substantive, real change, so that the horrors that too often are visited upon people in our prisons [are] eliminated…. It is something that I think needs to be done, not tomorrow, but yesterday.” That was on March 16. In mid-August a Department spokesman said that the Attorney General would send a proposed rule on the standards to the White House Office of Management and Budgets “in the fall.” Even then, however, it will take months for another layer of review. If well over 100,000 inmates are sexually abused every year, that is something like 300 every day, or even more. Since Attorney General Holder said that change needed to come “yesterday”—five months ago now—more than 40,000 people have been sexually abused in detention. Good corrections officers are doing what they can, but they are desperate for the support that binding national standards would give them. It is time for Mr. Holder to act.

August 26, 2010 2:15 p.m.

What part of PREA doesn't Sheriff Joe and the MCSO Understand?

What is wrong with them?There's no reason this guy should have been sharing a cell with someone. That was hardly protective custody. He should also be in a hospital room where he can be reasonably safe and start to recover from the trauma of what just happened, not the jail setting. One or more cops or guards probably set him up in the first place.

PREA is the Prison Rape Elimination Act: If thnat's how this fellow was assaulted, then I hope the DOJ is all over this. Perhaps they will look at it as part of a CRIPA investigation: how many prisoners have been murdered, raped, or died of medical neglect on Arpaio's watch?

If you're thinking "maybe he deserved it", then you're a big part of the problem of perpetual violence in our society: the part that tolerates violent crime when you approve of how the victim is selected. Prisoners are dependent on the state for their safety, and in this guy's case, should be presumed innocent before trial. Even once convicted, it certainly shouldn't be up to other prisoners or even guards how one gets punished - that's what the judge does. The MCSO blatantly failed to keep that man safe - I don't know how putting another prisoner in there with him (one being held for assault himself) was anything but reckless disregard for human life. It was criminal.

--------------------------------

Sexual assault suspect found in cell lying in pool of blood


by Kyle Daly
Jun. 4, 2010
03:26 PM


The Arizona Republic

A Scottsdale man who was facing sexual assault charges was in critical condition after he was found in his jail cell lying in a pool of blood early Friday morning at the Lower Buckeye Jail in Phoenix, according to a Maricopa County Sheriff's Office news release.

The man's cellmate, Lamont Rider, 28, was sitting on his bunk when detention officers discovered the scene at about 3:50 a.m., according to the Sheriff's Office. The Scottsdale man was taken to a hospital where he was in serious condition.


Just before the Scottsdale man was discovered, detention officers had performed a cell-block check, according to authorities. An inmate in a nearby cell called officers on his intercom and said he heard cries of help coming from the next cell.


Jail detectives suspected that the victim's cellmate might have assaulted the Scottsdale man. Rider was in jail because he faces a minor assault charge, according to the Sheriff's Office. The Scottsdale man has been accused of sexually assaulting a 15-year-old girl.


The victim underwent surgery early Friday morning and is under watch in a secure section of the hospital.


Both men had requested administrative segregation for fear of their safety in the general population. The two had been in the cell together for less than 48 hours.

CCA: More Sexual Abuse of Prisoners.

So, small town Arizona - are you sure this is who you want to have as your grandchild's employer - or you niece's incarcerator? Want the CCA warden to be your mayor? You can someday be known like Otter Creek will be - as that town where all those women were raped in prison. 

If we as individuals aided and abetted in multiple sexual assaults and/or covering them up, we would - and should - be prosecuted. But as a corporate entity, while Corrections Corporation of America has the rights of a human (more than prisoners, I would say), it seems to have to take no responsibility for its actions whatsoever - maybe a little hit in the cash box once in awhile. The towns that host these places and turn their backs on the prisoners inside also seem to have no sense of responsibility for what happens, so long as they get what they wanted out of the deal.

The summation that the main source of all the sexual abuse is that there weren’t enough female officers at Otter Creek presumes that their male officers can’t and shouldn’t be trusted to conduct themselves professionally without a constant check on their behavior in place, preventing the opportunity for sexual abuse to even arise – which there should be, both for theirs and the prisoners' protection. But what’s the point of having male officers if they can’t be trusted unsupervised and are really sexual predators in the making? There's more going on than that. What about prisons or law enforcement attracts or produces brutal, exploitative people like them? 

The “solution” to the problems at Otter Creek  strikes me as ludicrous - rape isn't just about sex, it's about power, control, violence. There's no reason to believe that swapping genders of prisoners at Otter Creek will prevent further abuse of prisoners; I fully expect the men to be abused there as well, just in different ways. The problem is in the contempt they have for prisoners and the whole culture of incarceration. It's also embedded in the primary purpose of the corporation: to confine and control the greatest number of prisoners at the least possible cost for the greatest possible profit to shareholders (they give a cut to the host town, too, of course, to make sure they keep everyone’s hands equally bloody). That’s it. That’s what they do. That makes anyone who enters their facility in the wrong color jump suit a source of revenue, not a human being. 

 CCA can corrupt everyone, even those who resist...they will, if you let them. I'd argue that in engaging the resistance primarily around issues of economics and public safety (the town's, not the prisoners'), they've already corrupted the debate by avoiding the human rights implications of profiting from the oppression and exploitation of mass numbers of people. Punishment is problematic enough as it is when just the state does the job. 

This stuff with Otter Creek is glossed over in this article (though that's our Ken from PCWG giving them hell). There's no excuse for allowing CCA to continue to operate anything there. If you’re living in a town they have their sights set on for a prison, beware. The devil talks up a sweet deal and makes it go down easy with cold hard cash and visions of a thriving town and stable middle class – but you can bet that given who’s selling, it’s still going to land you in hell if you buy it. 

 

 

So, isn't having this charming monster move into your community more of a threat to public welfare and safety than the "prisoner families" that so often get trashed in local rags and private prison resistance movements?

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Kentucky removing women from private Otter Creek prison

January 8, 2010

By Stephenie Steitzer

ssteitzer@courier-journal.com

FRANKFORT, Ky. — Gov. Steve Beshear announced Friday that the state will move more than 400 women prisoners out of the privately run Otter Creek Correctional Center, amid allegations of sexual misconduct by male workers there.

The women prisoners will be transferred to the state-run Western Kentucky Correctional Complex in Fredonia this summer — and the nearly 700 male inmates there will be moved to Otter Creek in Eastern Kentucky, which has 656 beds, and other prisons in the state, he said.

At least six workers at Otter Creek have been criminally charged with sex-related crimes involving inmates at the facility, run by Nashville-based Corrections Corp. of America.

Kentucky State Police spokesman Mike Goble said Friday that state police expect to present another case to a Floyd County grand jury next month.

“There is no place for this kind of behavior in our system,” Beshear said Friday.

He said the move would save taxpayers “millions of dollars” a year because the state would pay CCA less per day for males than females.

But Justice Cabinet Secretary J. Michael Brown acknowledged the private company that operates Otter Creek could end up making more money off the deal, because the state would likely house more male prisoners at Otter Creek than it had female prisoners.

Ken Kopczynski, executive director of the Private Corrections Institute, a Florida-based anti-privatization group, said he believes the deal rewards Otter Creek for failing to protect female inmates from alleged sexual abuse.

He said the state should've sanctioned Corrections Corp. of America for not being able to meet the terms of the contract struck last fall, which included minimum staffing levels and female worker ratios.

The state's contract with CCA allows the state to fine the company up to $5,000 a day, but it has never imposed any staffing-level sanctions.

“It's an abdication of the state's responsibility first off to hold the vendors to the contract and then to reward them for bad performance,” Kopczynski said.

Corrections Corp. of America has been under fire since last summer after multiple inmates at Otter Creek made allegations that they were sexual assaulted by corrections officers and other workers there.

A Department of Corrections investigation found that authorities at the prison failed to investigate seven alleged incidents of sexual contact between workers and inmates since 2007.

In four of those cases, the workers involved were fired. But investigations, required under the federal Prison Rape Elimination Act, were not conducted.

The state of Hawaii moved its nearly 200 women prisoners out of Otter Creek, in part because of the incidents. Kentucky officials, however, extended its contract with CCA for one year last fall.

Brown said officials are in the process of renegotiating its contract under the new arrangement. He said he hopes to have the contract in place by July 1, the start of next fiscal year.

Beshear attributed some of the problems at Otter Creek to the lack of female corrections officers and said that because the state pays more than CCA, it would have an easier time recruiting female corrections officers to work at the Western Kentucky prison.

However Corrections Commissioner LaDonna Thompson said she doesn't expect to hire additional officers and would instead transfer female workers from nearby prisons if necessary.

“We think this change will pay off in better management for inmates,” Beshear said.

When the state extended the Otter Creek contract with CCA in the fall, it said it was requiring CCA to raise its ratio of female workers.

Brown did not answer when asked whether CCA was having difficulty meeting the new requirement.

“All I can say is we presented CCA what our intent was and asked them to partner with us,” he said. “They are very much on board in that effort, I can tell you that.”

CCA issued a statement Friday applauding the new arrangement.

“CCA welcomes the opportunity to continue meeting Kentucky's correctional needs at Otter Creek,” said Steve Conry, a vice president of operations.

The new arrangement could benefit CCA because the state likely will fill all 653 beds — including the 180 have been vacant since Hawaii pulled its inmates last year.

But Brown and Beshear said taxpayers will still come out ahead by as much as $2.2 million annually after the first year, even if CCA's contract grows.

“They may come out with more, but nothing they come out with is going to be to the detriment of the commonwealth,” Brown said. “The governor has already indicated that right now we are going to be operating … at less funds than we had before. I certainly don't have any more money to give away.”

Justice Cabinet spokeswoman Jennifer Brislin added later that the state also would save money by pulling female inmates out of local jails, where the state pays counties a per diem, and housing them at the Western Kentucky center.

The state will have to pay to modify the plumbing there to accommodate women prisoners; officials didn't have a cost estimate Friday.

Reporter Stephenie Steitzer can be reached at (502) 875-5136.