Comments on: Rape is Cruel and Unusual Punishment

By: J.D.Regent

J.D.Regent — Tue, 30 Jun 2009 15:06:40 +0000

I’m not sure Sarah, but I don’t think that national standards would be justiciable and the PLRA would still be applied by courts. National standards would be good for willing facilities who take on the recommendations, but in terms of individual lawsuits and accountability, what we need is federal legislative reform of the PLRA to classify rape as de facto physical injury regardless of one’s medical status after the fact.

By: BeckySharper

BeckySharper — Mon, 29 Jun 2009 22:32:16 +0000

@meg: unlike a trial jury, pretty much everyone can sit on a grand jury. You’re just hearing evidence to decide whether to indict, so there’s no selection process the way there is with a trial jury. If you’re over 18 and a US citizen, there’s no way of escaping a grand jury summons.

By: tallgirl-in-heels

tallgirl-in-heels — Mon, 29 Jun 2009 22:21:12 +0000

Re prison guards, I’d just point to the Stanford Prison Experiment. ‘Nuff said.

Well, maybe not. Anecdotally, I knew of a guy whose life’s dream was to be a police officer. He applied to several city PDs in several states and couldn’t get through the background and psych checks. He ended up doing a stint as a prison guard. To begin with, he was an ignorant, entitled guy who desperately wanted to be in a position of power (he considers himself a wolf in a world where there are only two kinds of people: wolves and sheep). By the time he’d been rejected by several PDs, he was also angry and feeling as though he had been denied something he deserved. Scary.

By: Meg

Meg — Mon, 29 Jun 2009 20:45:19 +0000

Becky, I can’t believe a corrections officer was allowed onto a grand jury, full-stop. How on earth wasn’t he disqualified?

By: SarahMC

SarahMC — Mon, 29 Jun 2009 20:02:00 +0000

I wonder if new national standards (as a result of this report) will override PLRA, JD. What do you think?

Spicy, that is the number I read in the report, too. Lithwick is completely correct, according to the available evidence.

By: spicyplumchatni

spicyplumchatni — Mon, 29 Jun 2009 19:41:08 +0000

From what I understand, approximately one in every 31 adults in the U.S. is in prison, in jail or on supervised release. Given the sheer number of people in prison and the attitude towards prison-rape, I wonder what kind of culture are we creating?
For everyone who says that any individual deserves to get raped, they are also sanctioning the creation of a rapist.
Prison rape also cannot be justified as a punishment when you begin to consider the number of mentally ill patients who are also locked up for the lack of a better system (I think it is upto 16% of the incarcerated population according to the Justice Department).
Dahlia Lithwick had an article in Newsweek where she said that the current system ends up creating a “mass of meaner, more violent and less employable people at exit.” I completely agree.

By: BeckySharper

BeckySharper — Mon, 29 Jun 2009 17:50:29 +0000

I sat on a grand jury in Brooklyn a couple years ago where one juror was a corrections officer at Riker’s Island. He swore up and down that rape doesn’t happen there and we all just stared at him in disbelief. We heard three rape cases and, not surprisingly, the warden was the one who was always like “Well, she’s probably lying.” (In one case, involving a man who raped his three daughters, one of my fellow jurors got out of her chair and almost physically attacked him for saying that.) It was sick, and made me feel really sorry for the inmates this guy was watching over.

By: J.D.Regent

J.D.Regent — Mon, 29 Jun 2009 17:45:15 +0000

Thanks for dealing with this heartbreaking topic. It is especially problematic in federal prisons for two reasons:

1. They don’t hand out condoms in fed. prison. (Not that availability of condoms is going to make rapists use them, but still). You know, because you’re not supposed to be having sex in the first place in prison! You can thank Reagan for that one.

2. The Prison Litigation Reform Act (PLRA) which was passed to make it harder for prisoners to sue prisons over conditions of confinement, severely limits the rape cases in which a prisoner can sue prison officials because of the harm done to them. Courts have interpreted the law to limit awards to “physical” injury. Can’t sue for “emotional” damage. So if you, like an old client of mine, are passed around a facility as a sex “slave,” aided and abetted and bought and sold even by the correctional workers charged with your safety, unless you can prove that you were physically injured from the rapes, no dice.

Sick world, ain’t it?