Sexual Assault in Prison is Not What TV Tells You.

Sexual Assault in Prison is Not What TV Tells You.

by James Kilgore and Vic Liu

One of the most dehumanizing stereotypes of prison life is the notion that men in prison are constantly raping each other. The phrase “Don’t drop the soap,” referring to dropping the soap in a shower in a men’s prison, has become almost a cliché.

While sexual assault is part of the reality of prison, it has little to do with dropped bars of soap. According to research done by Interrogating Justice, “Most rape and sexual assault allegations point the finger at staff.”

Despite the bar-of-soap intimations, the highest rate of sexual abuse comes from women’s prison, with male staff being the primary offenders. The problem became so pervasive at the women’s federal correctional institute in Dublin, California, that the population nicknamed the institution the “rape club.” Allegations of sexual assault led to the firing of the warden at Dublin, Ray Garcia. He and three staff members were criminally charged for sexual assault. Garcia allegedly forced women in the prison to strip naked while he took photos of them. Pictures he had taken of the women were found on his phone during the investigation.

In the early 2000s, the Federal Bureau of Prisons identified sexual assault as a serious problem. Data gathered by authorities, along with grievances filed by people in prison, led to the passage of the Prison Rape Elimination Act of 2003 (PREA). This act mandated a zero-tolerance policy for sexual assault and compelled prisons to officially document every reported sexual assault. PREA did not absolutely ban consensual sex between incarcerated people, but it did give individual facilities the authority to ban all sexual activity in their institution. According to PREA, no sexual interaction between a staff member and an incarcerated person can be classified as consensual.

Excerpted from The Warehouse: A Visual Primer on Mass Incarceration by James Kilgore and Vic Liu

While PREA has had some impact, incidents of sexual abuse in prison are difficult to quantify. Many go unreported due to shame or fear of retribution. Until 2012, there were few regulations defining sexual assault in prisons. But a directive from the Justice Department in 2012 expanded the ways people in prison could report sexual assault and compelled authorities to investigate every allegation. As a result, reports of sexual assault rose from 8,768 in 2011 to 24,661 in 2015. About 58% of the reported incidents were accusations against staff. But while the number of reports grew astronomically, the percentage that was classified as “substantiated” shrank. Many people have expressed skepticism at this alleged number of false reports, as incarcerated people do not benefit and sometimes suffer greatly for coming forward.

Whether carried out by a staff member or another incarcerated person, LGBTQ+ individuals are the most likely to be victimized. A California study found that transgender women in men’s prisons were 13 times more likely to be sexually abused than the rest of the population. The act of housing a transgender person in a facility not designed for their gender identity could also be considered a form of sexual assault.

The most common sexual assaults are the strip searches by staff that every person endures every time they leave or reenter the prison. These searches have been the subject of lawsuits from incarcerated individuals, claiming that they violate the 4th Amendment. In Cook County, Illinois, 150,000 people who had passed through the jail were awarded up to $200 each for the violation of their 4th Amendment rights due to strip searches between 2002 and 2009.

In 2020, people incarcerated at Lincoln women’s prison in Illinois won a suit against the Illinois Department of Corrections for an incident in 2011 in which women were forced to stand naked for several hours while trainee guards practiced handcuffing and searching them.

“It is hard to fully explain how this felt.

The captain who already had complete control over my day-to-day life was now enforcing that control over my body and using my desire to see my child to threaten me to stay silent. ... I was sentenced and put in prison for the choices I made. I was not sentenced to being raped and abused while in prison.”

Excerpted from The Warehouse: A Visual Primer on Mass Incarceration by James Kilgore and Vic Liu. Reprinted with permission from PM Press, © 2024.

ICYMI—From The Appeal

An investigation by The Appeal and The Nation revealed that the federal prison system has quietly expanded its use of Communication Management Units—secretive lockdowns created during the War on Terror where detainees are strictly surveilled. Critics say the units, known informally as “Little Guantánamos,” are used to silence dissent.

Last week, Tiana Hill testified before the U.S. Senate that, while incarcerated inside Georgia’s notorious Clayton County Jail, she was forced to give birth on a metal bed after staff members ridiculed her and denied she was pregnant. The child was born prematurely and died five days later.

In the News

Two days after Hill’s testimony, yet another person died inside Georgia’s Clayton County Jail. On Friday, Perez Denis Martinez died after repeatedly losing consciousness inside the facility. He is at least the seventh person to die in the jail this year. [Clayton County Sheriff’s Office] From The Appeal: Deaths mount at scandal-plagued Georgia jail.

Crime has not gone up in Baltimore after the U.S. Department of Justice instituted mandatory police reforms. Despite pro-police scaremongering that crime would rise after the DOJ mandated civil rights reforms at the city’s police department, gun violence has dropped. [Ben Conarck / The Baltimore Banner]

Chrystul Kizer was sentenced to 11 years in prison for killing her alleged sex trafficker when she was 17. Kizer said she shot her abuser, who had sold her for sex, when he attempted to rape her. The murdered man, Randy Volar, had previously been arrested on child sexual assault charges, and was allowed out on bail. During this time, the prosecutor’s office had evidence he was abusing other underage Black girls. [Sarah Lehr / Wisconsin Public Radio]

The New Jersey Attorney General’s Office released body-worn camera footage from the shooting of Victoria Lee, who was killed by Fort Lee Police after her brother called 911 asking for mental health assistance. [Chris Sheldon / NJ.com]

Sheriff’s deputies in Kern County, California, are back to work after getting caught using a cat for target practice. The department sustained allegations from a woman who says she witnessed police shoot the cat to death in a park. [Russ Mitchell / Los Angeles Times]