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Monday, July 31, 2006
Study says prison rape is largely underreported
A third of alleged victims adhere to code of silence
WASHINGTON -- Fewer than three prisoners in every 1,000 report they were sexually abused or harassed, but that probably is not the whole story, a government study says.
There may be far more sexual violence in prisons than is reported, the study's authors said, because inmates fear reprisal, adhere to a code of silence, do not trust the staff or are embarrassed.
"Administrative records alone cannot provide reliable estimates of sexual violence," wrote Allen Beck and Paige Harrison of the Bureau of Justice Statistics.
The study released Sunday by the Justice Department agency is based on reports to corrections officials in 2005.
The bureau looked at more than 1,800 correctional facilities holding about 1.7 million inmates -- 78 percent of the adult prison population.
The report is the second one required by the Prison Rape Elimination Act of 2003, which was an attempt to solve a problem believed to be widespread.
"What gets reported is the tip of the iceberg," said Cindy Struckman-Johnson, professor of social psychology at the University of South Dakota and a member of the National Prison Rape Elimination Commission.
Struckman-Johnson said her studies found 10 percent of male Midwestern state penitentiary inmates have been raped.
"In my research, only a third of the inmates actually reported it to anybody working in a prison," she said.
Beck and Harrison found that 38 percent of allegations involved staff sexual misconduct and 35 percent involved forced sex by an inmate on another inmate.
Also, 17 percent involved staff sexual harassment, and 10 percent involved abusive sexual contact by an inmate on another.
This year's study includes more detailed information than the first study, published a year ago. The second study includes data on the circumstances surrounding each incident, the characteristics of the victims and perpetrators, the kind of force or pressure used, injuries, sanctions imposed and victim assistance.
"The greatest improvements in reporting were for staff sexual misconduct and harassment," the report said.
Only 15 percent of the sexual-violence incidents were substantiated, the report said.
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