Do you think that federal prison is a safe place to be? Well, according to a shocking new report from the inspector general of the Department of Justice, rape and sexual abuse of inmates by staff members in U.S. federal prisons has doubled over the last eight years. This does not even take into consideration the rape of prison inmates by each other, which has reached epidemic proportions. The new report issued by the inspector general of the Department of Justice found that there were 257 cases of sexual abuse of prisoners by U.S. federal prison staff there were referred for prosecution, but only 102 of those cases actually were prosecuted. Of the 102 cases that were actually prosecuted, 83 resulted in convictions.
Overall, there were allegations of sexual abuse of inmates by prison staff at all but 1 of the 93 prison sites under the jurisdiction of the Bureau of Prisons. In addition, there were allegations of sexual abuse of inmates against staff in every single occupational category except human resources.
So what does this all mean? It means that this is a very, very widespread problem.
The rape and sexual abuse of prisoners by U.S. federal prison staff is a systemic problem and it is growing.
But of course the sexual abuse by prison staff pales in comparison to what prisoners are doing to each other.
In 2007, the Bureau of Justice Statistics (BJS) released a report entitled: “Sexual Victimization in State and Federal Prisons Reported by Inmates, 2007”. According to that report, a whopping 4.5 percent of the state and federal prisoners surveyed actually admitted that they had been sexually victimized during the past 12 months. The shame of being raped is a huge factor in cases, such as these, so it is likely that even this number understates the reality of the problem.
But even if you just take the 4.5 percent number, the implications are staggering. Assuming a national prison population of about 1.5 million prisoners, the BJS report suggests that in just one year alone more than 70,000 prison inmates were raped or sexually abused.
So the next time that you consider doing something that could end up with you behind bars, perhaps you should consider these statistics. The reality is that U.S. prisons and NOT safe and they are full of sexual perverts. It is a silent tragedy that goes on every single day across the nation, and government officials have been extremely slow to do anything about it.
