Nearly 10% of ex-inmates report sex victimization
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(AP) WASHINGTON - Almost 1 in every 10 former state or local prisoners reported being sexually victimized at least once by an inmate or facility staff member in prison, according to a study released Thursday by the Justice Department.
The findings, reported by the Bureau of Justice Statistics in the first-ever National Former Prisoners Survey, may indicate a greater problem with sexual victimization than previously thought. Surveyors found that 9.6 percent of former inmates said they were sexually victimized in jails, prisons and halfway houses. A somewhat similar survey of still-imprisoned convicts done by the same agency in 2008-09 found that only 4.4 percent of state and federal inmates said they were sexually victimized.
The difference may be because the former inmates in the current survey were asked about a longer time period than in the previous survey, said Allen J. Beck, one of the authors of the survey. But it also could be that former inmates may be more willing to talk about the sexual victimization than the inmates currently housed inside those facilities, who have concerns about retaliation or retribution for speaking up. Critics have said inmates may be willing to lie on these surveys in an attempt to embarrass a facility or refuse to report an incident for fear of retaliation.
"By looking at inmates who are out of that environment, who no longer have that immediate fear of retaliation, of retribution, who moreover don't have an immediate motivation to falsely accuse since they're out of the facility entirely, we get a sense that through interviewing these former inmates that our past work is confirmed, that some of the concerns about false negatives and false positives may have been overstated," Beck said.
The study defines sexual victimization as all types of unwanted sexual activity with other inmates, abusive sexual activity with other inmates and both willing and unwilling sexual activity with staff.
Among the survey's findings:
- Just about the same number of former inmates were victimized by facility staff as were victimized by other inmates. About 27,300 — 5.4 percent — reported incidents with other inmates, while 23,300 — 5.3 percent — reported incidents that involved facility staff. Of the former inmates who reported incidents with staff, 6,300 — or 1.2 percent — of the former inmates said they had unwilling sex or sexual contact with staff, while the rest said they "willingly" had sexual contact with the staff member.
Any sexual contact between staff and inmate is officially classified as nonconsensual. Prisons uniformly forbid inmate-staff sexual contact.
- A fourth of the former inmates who were victimized by other inmates said they had been physically held down or restrained, and a quarter also said they were physically injured or harmed during the attack.
- Half of the former inmates who were victimized by facility staff members said they were offered favors or privileges in exchange, while a third said they were talked into it.
- The majority of the sexual victimizations occurred in state prisons: 7.5 percent of inmates reported being victimized at least once there, while 1.8 percent reported incidents in local jails and 0.1 percent in halfway houses or other post-release community-treatment facilities.
- Gay and bisexual men seemed to be by far the most frequently targeted in prison. The survey said that 39 percent of men who were gay and 34 percent of bisexual men reported being sexually victimized by another inmate, while only 3.5 percent of heterosexual men reported incidents. Lesbian and heterosexual women reported incidents with other inmates at the same rates — 13 percent — while staff victimization was double for lesbian women — 8 percent — compared with heterosexual women — 4 percent.
- Multiracial men (9.5 percent) are targeted for sexual victimization more than non-Hispanic whites (5.9 percent) or blacks (2.9 percent).
The survey, which interviewed 18,526 former inmates on parole, is representative of 510,800 former state prisoners who were still on parole in the 50 states and the District of Columbia at midyear 2008.
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We could have 2 guards per inmate and somewhere, somehow, the problem wouldn't be 100% eliminated... :( But 99% prevention is far better than .9%, especially if the system is ethical but before I digress into an unrelated tangent...
What you do today could easily become a crime tomorrow and you might not know about it. (Probably not, but don't say "it can't happen here"...)