===> Incarceration of women in the US has increased ~400% since 1980,
a datum that buttresses the appalling allegations of the
following abbreviated Human Rights Watch report.
See it in its entirety at www.hrw.org.
Terry Gross hosted two women engaged in the fight against
this abuse just now, today; catch the evening replay if you can.
Remember just how little it takes to arrive in an American prison!
valis
Occupied America
"Without censorship, things can get terribly confused in the public mind."
-- General William Westmoreland
Title: 7 Dec 96 U.S.--Sexual Abuse of Women
in U.S. State Prisons
SEXUAL ABUSE OF WOMEN IN U.S. STATE PRISONS
A National Pattern of Misconduct and Impunity
(New York, 7 Dec 96) In "All Too Familiar: Sexual Abuse of Women in U.S.
State Prisons," released today, the Human Rights Watch Women's Rights Project
charges that in state prisons from Georgia to California, male officers are
sexually abusing female prisoners with nearly total impunity. State and
federal officials in a position to address such misconduct often deny that it
exists or fail to take adequate steps to prevent it. As a result, sexual
misconduct in U.S. state prisons for women is emerging as an explosive
national problem.
Human Rights Watch calls on all states to adopt and enforce prison rules that
clearly define and prohibit all forms of sexual misconduct, including sexual
intercourse and touching, inappropriate visual surveillance, and verbal
degradation and harassment. We further call on states to make all sexual
contact by officers with prisoners a crime and to ensure that correctional
employees who engage in such misconduct are prosecuted to the fullest extent
of the law.
The United States has the dubious distinction of incarcerating the largest
known number of prisoners in the world, of which a steadily increasing number
are women. Since 1980, the number of women entering U.S. prisons had risen by
almost 400 percent, roughly double the incarceration rate increase of males.
Fifty-two percent of these prisoners are African-American women who constitute
only fourteen percent of the total U.S. female population. According to
current estimates, at least half of all female prisoners have experienced some
form of sexual abuse prior to incarceration.
"The situation for women in U.S. state prisons is intolerable," said Dorothy
Q. Thomas, director of the Human Rights Watch Women's Rights Project and an
author of the report. "Male officers are sexually abusing female prisoners
while the state and federal governments largely look the other way. It
doesn't take a lot of resources to remedy this problem, just the political
will to put a stop to it."
One of the main factors contributing to sexual misconduct in U.S. state
prisons is that the U.S., in violation of international norms, allows male
officers to serve in positions that involve constant physical contact with
female prisoners. Thus, the increased number of women in U.S. state prisons
are more often than not being guarded by men. In fact, in many women's
facilities male officers outnumber their female counterparts by two, and
sometimes three to one.
"All Too Familiar" reflects research into sexual abuse of women in U.S. state
prisons conducted by the Human Rights Watch Women's Rights Project and other
Human Rights Watch staff from March 1994 to November 1996. It is based on
interviews with the U.S. federal government, state departments of corrections
and district attorneys, correctional employees, civil and women's rights
lawyers, prisoner aid organizations, and over sixty prisoners formerly or
currently incarcerated in eleven women's prisons in California, Georgia,
Illinois, Michigan, New York, and the District of Columbia (D.C.). It finds
that male officers vaginally, anally, and orally rape and sexually assault and
abuse female prisoners. They use mandatory pat-frisks to grope women's
breasts, buttocks, and vaginal areas, view them inappropriately while in a
state of undress, and engage in constant verbal harassment of female
prisoners, contributing to a custodial environment that is often hostile and
highly sexualized. In some cases, women have been impregnated as a result of
sexual misconduct and some of these prisoners have faced additional abuse in
the form of inappropriate segregation, denial of adequate health care, and/or
pressure to seek an abortion.
In committing such gross misconduct, male officers have abused their nearly
absolute power over female prisoners to force them to have sex, either through
actual or threatened physical violence or through the provision or, by
implication, threat to deny goods and privileges. In other cases, male
officers have offered or provided goods and privileges to female prisoners as
a form of reward for engaging in sexual relations or have violated their most
basic professional duty and engaged in sexual contact with female prisoners
absent the use or threat of force or any material exchange.
The U.S. is clearly bound under constitutional and international law to
prohibit all forms of custodial sexual misconduct. Yet neither the nation's
capital nor any of the five states investigated for this report are adequately
upholding these national and international obligations. All of them have
prison rules concerning sexual misconduct, but they often refer only vaguely
to "overfamiliarity" or "fraternization." Where criminal laws exist, they are
inadequately enforced.
[..............................]
(Deleted sections available at www.hrw.org)
