Archive for the ‘Federal Bureau of Prisons’ tag
New report exposes the crisis of juvenile prison rape
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A jaw-dropping new study by the Bureau of Justice Statistics reveals that thousands of children are raped and molested every year while in the government’s care, usually by the very officials charged with their rehabilitation and protection. These findings are actually much worse than any numbers previously reported by the media.
The report summary, written by David Kaiser and Lovisa Stannow, and which should be read in its entirety, describes a nationwide epidemic that has been made worse by the overcrowding of prisons.
12.1 percent of kids taking the BJS survey across the country said they’d been sexually abused at their current facility during the preceding year. That’s approximately 3,220 out of the 26,550 who were eligible to take it.
And these figures are most likely low. Some prisoners hesitate to report abuse due to fear of retaliation from other prisoners or staff (80 percent of the abuse reported in the study was perpetrated by staff, and surprisingly, 95 percent of the youth making such allegations said they were victimized by female staff.) These prisoners are also unlikely to receive medical treatment after they are assaulted.
34 percent of these youth are in prison for non-violent crimes (not that violent crime perpetrators deserve this treatment either, but this detail seems particularly sad to me).
