Prison Rape and the Drug War
Jacob Sullum | March 22, 2007, 1:04pm
A new report from Stop Prisoner Rape documents the connection between the war on drugs and sexual assault in prisons:
While anyone can be a victim of prisoner rape, inmates convicted of a non-violent drug offense typically possess characteristics that put them at great risk for abuse. They tend to be young, unschooled in the ways of prison life, and lacking the street smarts necessary to protect themselves from other detainees....
The massive prison population growth caused by current U.S. drug policies has resulted in increasingly overcrowded detention facilities, rife with idleness and tension among inmates. With an astonishing 2.3 million people behind bars at any given time, U.S. prisons and jails have simply run out of bed space, leading nonviolent detainees to be housed together with predators in poorly monitored dormitories or cramped cells.
The report, which features chilling first-person accounts from nonviolent drug offenders (including some who stole to support their habits), should be read by anyone who has trouble getting worked up about this issue. Most Americans probably do not worry much about prison rape (and, as the activists often note, even joke about it), seeing it as a deserved comeuppance for criminals who have been imprisoned for preying on others. Even when the victims of prison rape have been locked up for violating other people's rights, this sort of arbitrary, torturous, extrajudicial punishment should be considered beyond the pale in a civilized society. When the victims are guilty only of consensual "crimes" and therefore do not belong in prison to begin with, the continued tolerance of such abuse is even more outrageous.
Frunobulax | March 22, 2007, 2:11pm | #
From Reno 911:
Who can guess what Circle the Wagons means?
That is when you put three bunks, like the circling up of the wagons in a wagon train, an old cowboy movie, and they have the sheets hanging down so you can't see what's going on inside the four bunks and inside the four bunks about two dozen boys just fucked the shit out of this little Mormon kid. Now they don't want to break your jaw because they still want your jaw to be able to work, so what it does it takes out your teeth and then they just skull-fucked the shit out of this boy.
Uh... we came in and there wasn't really anything left. They ass-fucked him, skull-fucked him, they fucked his back, they've been up his shoulders and titty-fucked him with his shoulder blades.
Fucked up shit, man. We came in here and all the convicts you know, all of them where like, "Uh..." you know, "He was fucked to death before we got here." So we couldn't really point the finger at nobody, because it was either all or nothing, and you ain't going to book two dozen people. Uh... so then, you know, that's when we starting bolting the bunks to the wall like that.
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0370194/quotes
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As a graduate of the prison system, I laughed my ass off when I saw that episode
The prison I was in had to convert office space into dorms to make space for all the new arrivals
I was in for a violent crime, so I wasn't allowed in the dorms
but I heard stories that went pretty much like Reno-911's skit did
then there was the time I was in the shower
There's an elevated guard post right next to it, so the guards can keep the predatory inmates from molesting the weaklings
a fight started down the down the way, by the pool tables
the guard watching the showers rushed off to help restore order
I turn around, and there's this fey looking skinny long blond-haired newbie (in on drug charges, he was), on his knees, hastily sucking a muscle bound gangsta off, while one of the gangsta's cronies stood by on lookout, ready to signal the guard's return
the kid owed money for fronting weed, and was convinced to work it off in trade
that was the second grossest thing I saw in my year and a day stay in the big house
the grossest?
Once, while talking to my mom at the prison's phone banks, a fight started at the nearby pool table
one guy punched the other guy in the side of the head so hard that dude's eyeball actually popped out of it's socket and dangled for a moment on his cheek...then he grabbed it and manually put it back in
oh, the horror
and I could hardly tell mom what I just witnessed, so I told her I had to go because a friend wanted to play cards
which was ironic, because I had no friends there
Frunobulax | March 22, 2007, 4:28pm | #
what do you suppose the ratio of "yuppie coke dealers doing hard time" to "street corner crack dealers doing hard time" is?
I don't watch TV, although posters here convinced me to check out "The Wire" (I watched seasons one and two, and the beginning of season 3 before I moved on--my wife watched all 4 and told me all about them...helluva story teller, that wife of mine)
I try to limit my observations to the "primary source" category
last winter (it IS springtime, you know), I drove into deepest darkest north minneapolis to work on a friend's computer
dude lives in a bad neighborhood
there's a barber shop by his house where the crack dealers hang out
on the night in question, is was very cold, even by relaxed minnesota standards
yet there was a clutch of bundled up brothers, hanging out, waiting to make sales
"how fucked do you gotta be to end up hanging out on a street corner selling rock in this weather?" I wondered as we passed them
on our way back there were bunches of cop cars and vans camped, lights flashing, around the barbershop
judging by the backseat headcount, it looked like 5 people were in custody
easy pickings for the cops
nobody but a crack head's gonna be hanging out on that street corner in miserable sub zero temps
if charged (maybe they were mercy arrests to get them out of the cold) those miserable souls were doomed to the tender mercies our court system directs towards our poor
public defender, plea bargain, jail time, probation
any future charges result in a probation violation, revocation, and then time in the state prison for undergraduate work
(it you squint just right, the prision system looks so much like our school system it's scary....and vice versa)
how many yuppie coke dealers do you suppose were popped on the night in question?
and how many of them ended up following anyplace near the same lawyerless, fastfood justice trajectory as their lower class drug dealing brethren?
