Sunday, August 29, 2010

A Big Shame!

20 Percent U.S. Prisoners Raped

on the First Day of Incarceration



If you call America the land of liberty, just rethink about it.

20% prisoners are raped on their first day in the American Prison System.

Let me repeat it:

One in five are raped on their very first day of incarceration. A BIG SHAME!

And that doesn’t even begin to tell the whole story of prison rape.

For example, contrary to popular belief, more prisoners reported sexual

assaults involving prison staff (2.8 percent) than other inmates (2.1 percent).

And women are more likely to be victimized than men.

Theses are only some of the findings of a newly released study by the

Department of Justice’s Bureau of Justice Statistics (BJS) which reports that

88,500 adults held in U.S. prisons and jails are sexually abused each year.

Meanwhile, Attorney General Eric Holder has already missed a deadline of

June, 2010 to institute reforms mandated by a bipartisan commission created

by the passage of the 2003 Prison Rape Elimination Act, reforms that could help

prevent these nearly 88,500 individual tragedies from continuing unabated.

“Every day that the Attorney General doesn’t finalize the national standards is

another day of anguish among prisoner rape survivors, of preventable safety

breaches in prisons, and of significant spending of taxpayers’ money on medical

treatment, investigations, and litigation that could have been avoided,” says

Lovisa Stannow, Executive Director of Just Detention International.

And if that's not enough, read the bit below:

A youth survey, released in January , found that the abuse in juvenile facilities is

even worse, with 12 percent of detainees reporting sexual assaults in various US jails.

I can only say this is simply unacceptable in the 21st century and ask where

all those champions of individual freedom and universal justice are...

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