Decius wrote:

Rape is violent, destructive, and a crime—no less so when the victim is incarcerated. Until recently, however, the public viewed sexual abuse as an inevitable feature of confinement...

Congress affirmed the duty to protect incarcerated individuals from sexual abuse by unanimously enacting the Prison Rape Elimination Act of 2003.

I'm glad to see the government taking this problem seriously, although I have to agree with Reason's take:

The recommendations read more like a desperate plea for basic competency in prison management.

To my mind, there are two possibilities here. Either the commission has wasted years of funding and produced a vanilla, restatement-of-the-conventional-wisdom report, or the extent of safety problems in America's prisons beggars belief, making a novelty out of even the most conventional policy proposals.

Its the later.

Thank you so much for posting this.
I've been very, very concerned about the problem of prison rape for a very long time.
It constantly amazes me how many people take it to be something that is acceptable punishment for someone who has broken the law.
When I worked in the mental health field we had a constant succession of patients from prisons who had been raped while incarcerated, usually for some minor traffic or drug offense! Men that were smaller and younger men seemed to be of much increased risk.
To me it is something that is as hideous or perhaps more hideous than torture, because it IS torture - even having to feel as though it might happen to you for these men is something they deal with on a daily basis.
It's a hidden problem, swept under the rock and silently condoned by the public, until it happens to their sons.
I do not have as much experience with female prisoners but I know it happens a lot to men in Georgia.

RE: National Prison Rape Elimination Commission - Publication - Report - Executive Summary