I know why male/male and female to male rape is not taken seriously but any idea why female to female rape is not taken seriously?

Someone was interviewed on the news and she was discussing how she was raped by a female guard but because it "only involved the fingers" they decided not to do anything.

Also I didn't know this until recently but female guards hooking up / and or getting pregnant by the inmates is a really really big problem. But the opposite isn't as prevalent (male guards with female inmates).

Gov. Pence may have other reasons. In a federal system, it's unseemly for the central government to attempt to command the states through statutory legislation. There is no constitutional warrant for it outside of the realm of suffrage and equal protection as originally understood.

Ideally, each prisoner would have a tiny individual cell, spend most of the day in that tiny individual cell with little social interaction with anyone but officialdom, and serve circumscribed and determinate sentences for all but the most heinous crimes. They've added quite a mass of inventory over the last 30 years, but they did not (AFAIK) see to the need to shelter convicts from other convicts all that much.

@Art Deco: "Gov. Pence may have other reasons."

Maybe. One thing I noticed about the Star article was that it never said what the federal prison rape standards actually were. That context seems kind of important.

Whether it's "too expensive" shouldn't be the issue:

http://www.justice.gov/opa/pr/2014/May/14-dag-570.html

“No one should be subjected to sexual abuse while in the custody of our justice system,” said Deputy Attorney General Cole. “It serves as a violation of fundamental rights, an attack on human dignity and runs contrary to everything we stand for as a nation. Based on these certifications and assurances, and other correspondence submitted by the governors, it is clear that addressing the issue of sexual abuse in confinement facilities is a high nationwide priority.”

If you are incarcerating people, doing it so their punishment includes only what the judge gave them and not turning them into a perhaps constant victim of rape, is what you owe them.

Some details on this are here:

http://www.prearesourcecenter.org/library/488/standards/department-of-justice-national-prea-standards

Why don't we just use the currently preferred feminist solution and just "teach [prisoners] not to rape?"

Whether it's "too expensive" shouldn't be the issue:

Except that's always an issue whenever scarcity and cost enter into the equation. If the posited incremental social benefit exceeds the incremental expenditure to achieve it, you're in the realm of 'too expensive'. In this case, that's probably a theoretical concern, of course.

And, again, the 'fundamental human rights' of the convicts are not being violated by guards, but by other convicts.

--

If you are incarcerating people, doing it so their punishment includes only what the judge gave them and not turning them into a perhaps constant victim of rape, is what you owe them.

Regrettably, there are a lot of accessories to a prison sentence, and these are known in a sketchy way by all parties.

--

So much to fix about that system...

What, exactly, are the penalties if a state fails to comply with these standards? Or are there none, and the whole thing is just a feelgood exercise?

"I'm sure that person is highly successful -- probably at sitting in their office all day with nothing to do."

That job probably sucks. The sort of person who would want that job is probably idealistic, and will quickly learn there's nothing they can frickin' do about it.

Pence said complying with the Prison Rape Elimination Act "would require the redirection of millions of tax dollars currently supporting other critical needs for Indiana."

I hear the town of Pawnee needs some of that funding for its Parks & Recreation department.

Texas advised the feds last week that they aren't going to comply either. There's little sympathy in the hinterlands of Texas for prisoners either being raped or having to sweat due to a lack of air conditioning. The rape edict is regarded as another unfunded mandate from Washington.

The law-abiding and working people of Texas have little sympathy for prisoners, and I'm one of those people. How about some sympathy for their victims?

Amy's liberal impulses, shining once again like the golden sunshine after a cleansing rain! Follow the their warming beams:

• As a younger woman, Amy was told there was rape in prisons. It was in a TV movie-of-the-week.

• Now, our federal government wants to enforce broad, blind and expensive new standards to prevent this: But it is not responding to any particular incident or circumstance, certainly none in Indiana.

• Indiana pushes back. Maybe there are reasons to fight back (besides the money, which is after all theirs), or maybe there aren't reasons.

• Amy supports the command of centralized authority, presuming without evidence that Indiana has a problem.

The point is not to solve problems. I seriously doubt Amy ever gave a dollar of her own money, or ten minutes of her own time, to fight the occurrence of prison rape in any other context.

She wants to spend other people's money to fight it, and then pretend to be a kinder person for doing so.

And she wants to strengthen the federal government through the effort... Because it's a sensational thrill to push people around at zero cost through these flighty impulses, she knows she'll wanna do it again in the future.

The law-abiding and working people of Texas have little sympathy for prisoners, and I'm one of those people. How about some sympathy for their victims?

I do not think it precludes sympathy for their victims to suggest that the point of a penitentiary is to manufacture a Spartan environment in which the convict does his penance and subsists without the freedom he abused. I do not think medieval penitentials ever included a discipline wherein the penitent bent over for buggery. Small and private cells, shaved heads and standard issue garb, a diet of bulgar wheat &c. taken alone, small dollops of exercise, but some medical care. Negligence allowing forcible sodomy crosses the line from imposing a penance to a regime of cruelty.

What about victimless crimes like drug possession and hookers?

I've always thought that prisoners should be segregated by severity and length of sentance. Lifers and people in for murder shouldnt be in the same facility as people who burned down a house to collect on insurance.

The title of the blog post is teenage-sarcastic.

The last line of the blog post is teenage-sarcastic.

Could any rhetoric better encapsulate the vapidity of Obama-era liberalism, and its relentless disinterest in practicalities?

RightRightRight... And the importance of this nightmare in your life heretofore, and your concern in particular for the imprisoned of the Hoosier State has been demonstrated…

…How?

Hey crid, ever notice how so many of your arguments boil down to 'I dont care so lets castigate anyone who says they care'?

Most impressive are those who care with their own money, little fella.

I've always thought that prisoners should be segregated by severity and length of sentance. Lifers and people in for murder shouldnt be in the same facility as people who burned down a house to collect on insurance.

Don't we already? Petty thieves are not sent to Super Max prisons and serial killers don't go to country club minimum security prisons.

"Most impressive are those who care with their own money, little fella."

Posted by: Crid [CridComment at Gmail] at June 5, 2014 2:18 PM

If the government is going to put people in a publicly funded incarceration institution to further the people's prohibition ideology then the public have to take responsibility for the consequences for those actions. So unless you're willing to see only supporters of the drug prohibition fund these rape factories and take responsibility for the health consequences of that you must be in favour of shutting prisons down. Law and order zealots always want their long sentences and high police levels paid for with other people's money.

So. Crid?
Don't go to jail.

> If the government is going to put people
> in a publicly funded incarceration
> institution to further the people's
> prohibition ideology…

And that's how we've always thought of it!

We, the people, have always had a "prohibition ideology." Sure!

In olden days, primitive Americans would just say That sumbitch stole my wallet! We've evolved since then....




Friends, this is EXACTLY what I'm talking about: If I don't express eager admiration Amy's sarcastic cluck for greater public expenditure for a problem that shouldn't happen anyway, then I'm the bad guy… As if I thought prison rape was supposed to happen.

Except that, y'know, it wasn't ever that big a deal to her until she was in the mood to be sarcastic. About something.

I AM TIRED OF THIS MANIPULATION.

Government fuckbots, Republican and Democrat, love that shit! "Yes," they say, "Spend more money! Borrow it if you have to! Send it through this office for co-ordination, so we can cut off a slice... Because that's the only way to move the human project forward: through irresistible government power!"

Irresistible government power, IGP for short, is wonderfully inexpensive on an individual level, especially in an era of (bogusly) progressive taxation.

Future generations might wonder why, if this ever-exploding array of problems really meant anything to us, we couldn't figure out better, more direct, and more personal solutions for them. Persuasion, individual participation, charity... That kind of thing.

Ours is the culture of detachment "ideology." We've got one permissible religion, a single cosmology to rule them all: The authority of the Government of the United States.



> Don't go to jail.

Now he tells me.

So, basically, Indiana is telling cons to lie back, and think of Grand TheftAuto??

from the article:
"it would cost the state $15 million to $20 million a year to follow the guidelines"

and

"The state stands to lose 5 percent in certain Justice grants, but Garrison said that adds up to $345,000 a year at most."

Why any state would institute a federal guideline with this cost structure is beyond me. No one spends 15 million to get $345,000 in return.

Why any state would institute a federal guideline with this cost structure is beyond me. No one spends 15 million to get $345,000 in return.

Posted by: Matt at June 5, 2014 5:10 PM

Well someone thinks that five Taliban big wigs are worth one Army deserter.

That's government math for you.

"Well someone thinks that five Taliban big wigs are worth one Army deserter."

Only Americans who don't believe in leaving soldiers behind. YMMV.

Soldiers dont abandon their duty

Fucked up. When you have absolute power over someone, you have absolute responsibility over them too. What's next, they can't afford to feed them?

If you can't afford to keep that many people locked up and safe, then don't keep so many people locked up.

"If you can't afford to keep that many people locked up and safe, then don't keep so many people locked up."

And NicoleK has nailed it.

Fucked up. When you have absolute power over someone, you have absolute responsibility over them too. What's next, they can't afford to feed them?

If you can't afford to keep that many people locked up and safe, then don't keep so many people locked up.

Posted by: NicoleK at June 6, 2014 4:34 AM

I find it interesting how the safety argument can turn on a dime,when it is a prisoner we are talking about, as opposed to a small child left in a car.

The myth here, is that you can ever keep someone completely safe.

Risk is just redistributed to another area.

Left unsaid was:

if you followed all the federal guidelines on rape prevention in prisons, at a cost of millions of dollars, would it really reduce or eliminate rape, or would it be just another mindless paper pushing bureaucracy?

I wonder if anyone has "absolute power" when it comes to prisoners.

From "Goodfellas":

"Everybody else in the joint was doing real time, all mixed together, living like pigs. (But) we lived alone, we owned the joint. Even those hacks who we couldn't bribe would never rat on the guys who did."

I can't find that exact scene of Henry slipping cash into a prison guard's pocket on Youtube, but here's another well-known prison scene from that movie that gives you an idea of how little he and his "friends" had to put up with:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MQhBfRDd6GM
(2:30 minutes)

Um, if your kids are getting raped in your house there's a problem too.

Um, if your kids are getting raped in your house there's a problem too.

Posted by: NicoleK at June 6, 2014 8:07 AM

Yes, but it is more likely to be a trusted friend or relative. Not some stranger who just wandered in.

The whole social idea of people being responsible, and culpable for their own safety choices has been turned upside down.

Now it is the law abiding who are supposed to remain in a prison of their own making, and if they don't, they are responsible for "bad things happening to them".

You have to look at stats. If it is a common occurrence, something needs to be done. If it is a one time freak thing, it's another matter. Sounds like, from a few articles I've looked at, prison rape is pretty systemic. So it needs to be dealt with. If it was a very rare occurenec it would be different.

From Wikipedia, because I'm lazy:

Research has shown that juveniles incarcerated with adults are five times more likely to report being victims of sexual assault than youth in juvenile facilities,[7] and the suicide rate of juveniles in adult jails is 7.7 times higher than that of juvenile detention centers.[8]

In the United States, public awareness of the phenomenon of prison rape is a relatively recent development and estimates to its prevalence have varied widely for decades. In 1974 Carl Weiss and David James Friar wrote that 46 million Americans would one day be incarcerated; of that number, they claimed, 10 million would be raped. A 1992 estimate from the Federal Bureau of Prisons conjectured that between 9 and 20 percent of inmates had been sexually assaulted. Studies in 1982 and 1996 both concluded that the rate was somewhere between 12 and 14 percent; the 1996 study, by Cindy Struckman-Johnson, concluded that 18 percent of assaults were carried out by prison staff. A 1986 study by Daniel Lockwood put the number at around 23 percent for maximum security prisons in New York. Christine Saum's 1994 survey of 101 inmates showed 5 had been sexually assaulted.[9] Among women the number is one in forty and the offenders are more likely to be prison staff members.

Prison rape cases have drastically risen in recent years, mostly attributed to an increase in counseling and reports.[10] The threat of AIDS, which affects many of those raped in prison, has also resulted in the increase of reported cases for the benefit of medical assistance.

***

5%, which is the lowest estimate above (for men ), is pretty high.

From Wikipedia, because I'm lazy:

Research has shown that juveniles incarcerated with adults are five times more likely to report being victims of sexual assault than youth in juvenile facilities,[7] and the suicide rate of juveniles in adult jails is 7.7 times higher than that of juvenile detention centers.[8]

These numbers mean nothing really. In absolute terms. We have already discussed the high rate of mental illness in the juvenile facilities, and adult prisons.
Juveniles classified as adults, are very likely to have committed much more serious crimes than those put into juvenile facilities. They are also likely to be older.

Also,
Apparently too lazy to answer my second question which was:

Have you evaluated the federal proposals to see if they, at great expense, do anything to actually address the problem, or do you just assume this to be the case?

If 'something' must be done, why aren't you doing it? Why are you happier with waving your hands around demanding that government force other governments to do it, without any proof that these new requirements will have any mitigation what so ever...?.

Is there any thought on your part that the prisons we have now are the result of countless legal battles where prisoners sued the states, and the feds for imposing the kind of incarceration (solitary confinement) that would protect them from rape, without literally requiring one guard, for every prisoner, at all times?

And that absolute protection has been found to be cruel and unusual?

> If it is a common occurrence, something
> needs to be done.

These aren't even bromides. Not even fortune cookies. They're certainly not solutions.

That's the argument you think you're having: Should something be done? Well, apparently some people think NOT!!!

(And if the occurrence were merely "uncommon," we'd wonder if you'd expect victims to nonetheless admire your temperance and restraint.)

Besides, Nicole, IIRC, you live in another country. And I'd bet a couple grand that Americans would not admire the totality of your justice system, no matter what charms it may have in this (or any other) single respect.

But rhetorically, this is where we are: "something needs to be done."

And the only thing that you, or Amy, or anyone else can imagine doing on the whole motherfucking planet is to--

• Tax people at the federal level

• Elect a bunch of assholes

• Pay the assholes to demand programs (And pay them well! Remember: lifetime medical bennies for congressmen!)

• Hire federal weasels to run the programs (secure jobs! Bennies!)

• Watch the federal weasels insist that state-level weasels take state-level taxes from people to solve the problem

• Borrow money up and down the chain to make this happen.

Indisputably, this is "doing something." It's the kind of "something" we "do" for all manner of human nature problems, so even when it doesn't work, we won't be surprised.

But some taxpayers, inexplicably, will feel better about themselves, as if they'd be part of an organic, wholesome, sincere, hands-on effort to reach into lives of darkness and pain to improve things.

That's all fucked up.

Speaking of rape, everybody's looking forward to the Olympics, right?

Rape.

Rape.

So I was wrong... I'd thought India was hosting the games sometime soon... But no.

Maybe just as well.

was wrong... I'd thought India was hosting the games sometime soon... But no.

Maybe just as well.

Posted by: Crid [CridComment at Gmail] at June 6, 2014 4:33 PM

Nah, it is Brazil. Another crime ridden third world hell hole.

Followed by Tokyo 2012.