NEW ORLEANS, Louisiana, Dec 7, 2007 (AFP) - There is a serious problem with rape in the US prison system, experts said Thursday.
While it is difficult to get a true picture of how often inmates suffer assaults from their fellow criminals and by prison staff members, anecdotal evidence shows that the rape is an all-too common experience in the growing US prison complex.
According to the US Bureau of Justice Statistics, there were more than 6,500 inmate allegations of sexual assault reported in 2006 to authorities. That is a rate of 2.9 claims per 1,000 prisoners, an estimate based on a sampling of prison facilities.
"There are lot of prisoner advocates who would claim that this is a vast underreporting of the problem," said Michele Deitch, an adjunct professor of criminal justice policy at the University of Texas, who once served as a court-appointed monitor of a Texas prison reform lawsuit.
"Correction officials would argue that the vast majority of these inmate allegations are not sustained. Everyone agrees that prison rape is an issue that needs to be addressed, but not everyone agrees on the scope of the problem," Deitch says.
Congress estimates that one million inmates were sexually assaulted, during the 20 years preceding the signing of the federal Prison Rape Elimination Act of 2003 by President George W. Bush.
But that figure is also highly debated, experts say.
Authorities, scholars and independent monitors of US prisons hope that the federal law's requirement of mandatory reporting of sexual violence will soon yield more precise statistics.
Experts are trying to train corrections officials around the country so there is uniform reporting of data. "You really can't tell if the problem is worse in one state or another, or if they are just reporting incidents differently," Deitch said.
The National Commission to Eliminate Prison Rape hopes standardization of reporting will help develop standards for addressing sexual violence in prisons.
The Commission is charged with developing zero-tolerance national standards for enhancing the detection, prevention, reduction and punishment of sexual violence behind bars.
The panel will issue a draft report for public comment in the spring of 2008.
Jack Beck, director of monitoring project for the Correctional Association of New York, testified that sexual violence in prison is being increasingly addressed due to the mandatory reporting requirements of the federal law.
Beck and other experts who provided testimony to the national commission in New Orleans recommended increased outside scrutiny of prisons by grand juries, news media, prison ombudsmen, and independent monitors as well as increased accountability for how inmates are treated.
The consequences of prison sexual abuse for society include more mental health problems, increased cases of HIV/AIDS, and more violence.
"If people get sexually abused while incarcerated, they come out angry and with sexually transmitted diseases," Deitch said. "What happens in prison, doesn't stay in prison."
Experts say the good news is that more correctional agencies have become "professionalized" in recent years, thanks to internal accountability measures.
However, Deitch said, more outside oversight is needed. "The United States is one of the only Western nations that (lack) a comprehensive mechanism for ensuring the routine external monitoring of all correctional facilities," she testified.
Outside oversight will not solve the problem of sexual assault in prisons, but will let the public and correctional administrators know if the goal of "safe and humane" correctional facilities is being met.
Robert Green, warden of the 1,029-bed Montgomery County Correctional Facility at Boyds, Maryland says prison sexual violence must be vigorously investigated and prosecuted. "Crime should be no more acceptable within the walls of our correctional facilities than it is in the streets of our communities," Green said.
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