I agree. And I think it’s dangerous.

It positions inmates as permanently-evil people. That’s not to say that there aren’t some truly dangerous people in prison, who it would be a good idea to stay far away from. There are. But there are also people in prison who are innocent, who have changed, who have suffered under the prison system, etc.

And not only does this bad vs. good dichotomy paint all inmates as evil (and, thus, a woman’s attraction to an inmate as unnatural or messed up), but it also tends to paint non-inmates as good. It implies, by proxy, that people outside of a jail are “safe” or “normal,” etc. And that’s very problematic.

“Prison sex” is a porn classic. The “female guard / male inmate” is just too good to let go. The slut shaming, the nasty attitude to female sexuality, and the overall tone follows. As is often the case, the newspaper is doing soft porn, because readers prefer that to news.

I agree that what is happening here is clearly a sex crime. I don’t say that because the law defines it as such (tho I’m glad it does). It’s because I dare say any inmate propositioned by a guard rarely has the opportunity to decline (and a propositioned guard always has the duty to say no). The inherent power differential makes it a sex crime.

When I was in jail, the guards feel into basically three groups: those that sorta felt bad for you and mostly left you alone; those who were completely indifferent to you and left you alone; and the ones who used the power as an excuse to fuck with you. It was solely a matter of luck who you get stuck with on any given day.

I think single-gender systems may help SOME. But i also believe that they won’t curb the root cause of abuse, which is the centralization of power in very few hands and little recourse for the abused. The Stanford Prison Experiment was a great example of same-gender abuses that were about, above all, power. I’m a big fan of low-intervention prison models and dormatories (which I experienced), where the inmates are generally left alone in less-restrictive settings. This won’t work for especially violent inmates or a lot of others, but I think it’s a start.