Can we put an end to inmate rape?

• Author: Donaldson, Stephen

THE FIGHT against the crime of rape is doomed to failure, and will remain an exercise in futility, as long as it ignores the vast network of training schools for rapists--jails, prisons, and reform schools. The nation long has turned a blind eye to these facilities, currently holding about 1,400,000 males and jailing approximately 4,000,000 men in the course of a year. There, rape is an institutionalized tradition, considered by prisoners a way to prove their manhood and satisfy sexual and power needs. Most of these inmates return to the streets with such attitudes, many of them having become rapists while locked up.

The precise number of sexually assaulted prisoners is unknown, but rough estimates can be derived by extrapolating previous studies of a jail system (by Philadelphia District Attorney Alan J. Davis) and medium-security prison (by sociologists Wayne S. Wooden and Jay Parker, their data confirmed by a 1994 survey of an entire state prison system) to estimate conservatively that more than 300,000 males are sexually assaulted behind bars every year. This compares with a 1992 Bureau of Justice Statistics estimate of 135,000 female rapes a year outside confinement. By all accounts, the situation is even worse in juvenile detention centers.

Once victimized, a prisoner is marked as a continual target for sexual exploitation and repeatedly is subjected to gang rapes, or must trade sexual use by one or a few men for protection from the remainder. An estimated 60,000 prisoners are subjected to involuntary sex each day. Very few of these rapes ever are reported to administrators, much less prosecuted.

The victims usually are the youngest, smallest, nonviolent, first-time offenders, and those facing less serious charges. If a prisoner is middle-class; not "streetwise," gang-affiliated, or part of the racial or ethnic group that dominates his institution; lacks fighting expertise; or is held in a big-city jail, he is more likely to be a target. The more of these victim characteristics that apply, the more likely to prisoner will be targeted. The victims generally are heterosexuals who are forced into a passive sexual role, though known homosexuals behind bars are three times as likely to be raped. (The assailants almost always are heterosexual in identity, preference, and practice outside confinement; thus, the widely used phrase "homosexual rape" in the context of confinement is extremely misleading.) Rape among female prisoners is unusual, but not unknown; they are far more likely to be sexually abused by keepers.

The catastrophic experience of violent penetration, unimaginably devastating to the typical heterosexual male, usually extends beyond a single incident, often becoming a daily occurrence. It tends to transform those victims who remain psychologically untreated into capsules of pent-up rage that can produce violence once they return to the community. Some of these victims will become rapists themselves, seeking to "regain their manhood" through the same violent means by which they have been led to believe it was lost. Other released victims look for revenge on society, which they see as the sponsor of the institution wherein their sense of self was demolished and they may have been infected with HIV. Numerous studies have shown that sexual abusers in the community are very likely to have been victims of sexual abuse themselves, most commonly as boys; there is no reason to think this dynamic does not apply to prisoners.

Even an attempted sexual attack that is warded off--a typical experience for a "fresh fish" or new prisoner--can cause severe trauma and enormous increases in stress, defensiveness, and violent reactions, as well as being one of the chief sources of combat injury behind bars. In this way, penal and detention institutions unwittingly inaugurate a vicious cycle, turning nonviolent detainees and minor offenders into far more...