In the US? National studies that get numbers on this shit admit that much like all sexual assaults, these numbers are under reported.
Numbers in the early 2000’s were reporting a 20% rate of sexual assault in prisons. The fucked up part, I mean it’s all fucked up but the really really fucked up part? Half of it is the staff, not the other inmates.
Yeah I’ve always thought about it that way. Even if it’s not a guarantee that you’ll be sexually assaulted, the chances are high enough and it has become “acceptable” enough in mainstream American culture that it’s apparently okay to joke about it.
“Don’t drop the soap” jokes genuinely fill me with rage, and always have. Our criminal justice system is far from perfect, and plenty of innocent people end up in prison. But I don’t care if you’re guilty or innocent. Were you sentenced to be raped? No. Sexual assault is a heinous crime, so joking about it being an expectation or feature of the penal system is despicable and normalizes the behavior.
Our prison system is completely broken, so yes, I would confidently argue that nearly every sentence that includes prison time has a strong possibility of also including sexual assault. And that’s not okay.
Given that a good deal of the population thinks that if you disobey a cop, you deserve to be shot, I don’t think they’re all that concerned about people getting raped in prison. I’m sure there’s a good number of people who think there should be more rape.
Of course, this is really sad, but that’s the lay of the land.
Well it’s common but maybe not ubiquitous in the sense that you mean. I don’t know, does anyone have any numbers to look at the actual frequencies here?
It’s certainly a sentence to a high risk of sexual assault.
