ANALYSIS: America’s Epidemic of Prison Rape

By Published on May 3, 2015

We have recently seen an uptick in the conversation about prison rape: A former inmate wrote in The New York Times about her experience; The Nation asked “Why Americans Don’t Care”; The Atlantic featured one young man’s harrowing story of too many attackers to number. And then there was Get Hard, the film starring Will Ferrell and Kevin Hart, which led The Week‘s Scott Meslow to bluntly suggest that “Hollywood needs to stop treating prison rape as a punchline.”

The facts are appalling. The Bureau of Justice Statistics has found that in 2011 alone, some 200,000 people were sexually victimized in the American prison system. Stronger inmates prey on the weak, and far too many guards close their eyes, collude, or are themselves rapists. The Prison Rape Elimination Act, passed in 2003 to provide some protection for the youngest and most vulnerable, is rarely effectual and often ignored. And as Meslow made excruciatingly clear, American culture thinks it’s all pretty funny β€” just look at John Oliver’s supercut.

This is a human disaster of monumental proportion, and the eagerness with which we laugh it off is an indictment of our notions of justice. I’m hopeful that the widely shared dismay over Get Hard indicates a shift in the discourse β€” but real change will only happen if we come to understand prison rape in the context in which any rape, anywhere, must be seen.

Read the article “ANALYSIS: America’s Epidemic of Prison Rape” on theweek.com.

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