National Prison Rape Elimination Commission

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NPREC commissioners during a public hearing. National Prison Rape Elimination Commission commissioners.jpg
NPREC commissioners during a public hearing.

The National Prison Rape Elimination Commission (NPREC) was a U.S. bipartisan panel established by the 2003 Prison Rape Elimination Act. The commission was charged with studying sexual assaults in U.S. jails and prisons and presenting a report based on its findings.

Contents

The report was released in June 2009 and stated that approximately 60,000 U.S. inmates are sexually assaulted each year. NPREC sunsetted on August 22, 2009.

Mission

The NPREC was charged with studying federal, state and local government policies and practices concerning sexual assaults and crimes within the prison and jail systems. The study culminated with the release of the aforementioned report on its findings, conclusions and recommendations to the President, Congress, the U.S. Attorney General and other state and federal officials. [1]

History

Logo of the NPREC in 2009 NPREC logo.jpg
Logo of the NPREC in 2009

The National Prison Rape Elimination Commission (NPREC) was established when President George W. Bush signed the Prison Rape Elimination Act of 2003 (PREA) on September 4 of that year. [2] The commissioners were appointed in June 2004. [3] The commission was a major component of the PREA legislation and it was given subpoena powers as well as authorization to conduct a broad based study of prison rape in the United States. [2] In 2005 the commission received a federal earmark of US$987,000 to begin the implementation of the mandated provisions of the 2003 law that established the panel. [4]

The panel obtained information from a variety of sources, including a round of public hearings in locations nationwide. The first public hearing was held in Notre Dame, Indiana on March 31, 2005. Hearings continued into at least late 2007 in other locations, including Boston, New Orleans, and San Francisco, where commissioners heard from victims of prison rape as well as federal lawmakers. [5]

After seeking outside input from aforementioned sources and others the commission announced the release of "draft standards for the reduction of prison rape" on May 5, 2008. [6] Following a public comment period the standards were eventually incorporated into the final report.

The panel's original period of existence was until three years after its inception, when it would release its report. [7] The miscellaneous provisions the Second Chance Act of 2007, largely a law designed to help reintegrate criminal offenders into the community, extended the existence of the NPREC from 3 years to 5 years after its inception date. [8] Per the legislation that established the commission NPREC sunsetted sixty days after the report was released, [9] which was August 22, 2009. [1]

Members

Reggie B. Walton, chairman of NPREC Judge-walton-pic.jpg
Reggie B. Walton, chairman of NPREC

Upon its creation the panel consisted of nine members, three presidential appointees and six Congressional appointees. [10] The official NPREC web site listed eight commissioners, including a chairman and a vice-chair. [11]

The chairman was Judge Reggie B. Walton of the Washington D.C. United States District Court. [3] [11] The vice-chair was John A. Kaneb; the other six members were: James E. Aiken, Jamie Fellner, Pat Nolan, Gus Puryear, Brenda V. Smith, and Cindy Struckman-Johnson. [11]

Report and recommendations

In late June 2009 NPREC released its mandated report. [12] The report cited data that showed each year in the U.S. detention facilities (jails, prisons, et al.) 60,000 inmates are sexually abused. [12] The report noted that too often prison rape is seen as a joke rather than the problem it represents. [13] NPREC Commissioner Brenda V. Smith stated that sexual abuse in prison or jail is not a random event that can only "happen to other bad people", she added that the commission heard harrowing tales from victims, some of whom spent only one night in custody. [13]

The report set out a series of recommendations aimed at curbing the number of rapes in U.S. incarceration facilities. Among the recommendations were better staff training in recognizing assaults, addressing overcrowding, and providing proper mental health care and medical care for victims. [14] In addition NPREC recommended that harsher penalties exist for staff who engage in assault or contribute to a permissive atmosphere. [14]

There were other findings presented in the report as well. NPREC found that inmates who are short, gay, young, or female were victims of sexual assault more often than other groups of inmates. [12] The NPREC report also showed that inmate reports of sexual violence are not always taken seriously by staff and, thus, not always reported to the proper authorities. [12]

The report's finding that 2.9 percent of inmates reported sexual abuse by staff versus 2.0 percent of inmates who reported rape by other prisoners was called surprising by commission chair Reggie Walton. [12] [15] Walton was specifically surprised by the incidence of male staff on male inmate sexual assault. [15]

Following its release, the report was sent to U.S. Attorney General Eric Holder. Holder has one year to develop national standards, based on NPREC's report, for reducing prisoner rape. [16] The national standards will then be presented to the states. States are not required to comply with the standards but those that do not risk a five percent federal prison funding decrease. [12]

See also

Related Research Articles

Prison sexuality consists of sexual relationships between prisoners or between a prisoner and a prison employee or other persons to whom prisoners have access. Since prisons are usually separated by sex, most sexual activity is with a same-sex partner. Exceptions to this include sex with spouses/partners during conjugal visits and sex with a prison employee of the opposite sex.

Some victims of rape or other sexual violence incidents are male. It is estimated that approximately one in six men were sexually abused as children. Historically, rape was thought to be, and defined as, a crime committed solely against females. This belief is still held in some parts of the world, but rape of males is now commonly criminalized and has been subject to more discussion than in the past.

Prison rape commonly refers to the rape of inmates in prison by other inmates or prison staff. In 2001, Human Rights Watch estimated that at least 4.3 million inmates had been raped while incarcerated in the United States. A United States Department of Justice report, Sexual Victimization in Prisons and Jails Reported by Inmates, states that "In 2011–12, an estimated 4.0% of state and federal prison inmates and 3.2% of jail inmates reported experiencing one or more incidents of sexual victimization by another inmate or facility staff in the past 12 months or since admission to the facility, if less than 12 months." However, advocates dispute the accuracy of the numbers, saying they seem to under-report the real numbers of sexual assaults in prison, especially among juveniles.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Pat Nolan</span> American lawyer, politician and activist (b. 1950)

Patrick James Nolan is an American lawyer, politician and conservative activist.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Prison Rape Elimination Act of 2003</span> American law

The Prison Rape Elimination Act of 2003 (PREA) is the first United States federal law intended to deter the sexual assault of prisoners. The bill was signed into law on September 4, 2003.

Federal Correctional Institution, Tallahassee, is a low security United States federal prison for female inmates in Tallahassee, Florida with a designed designated capacity of 812. It is operated by the Federal Bureau of Prisons, a division of the Department of Justice. The facility also has an adjacent detention center that houses administrative security level male inmates.

Rape is a type of sexual assault initiated by one or more persons against another person without that person's consent. The act may be carried out by physical force, under threat or manipulation, by impersonation, or with a person who is incapable of giving valid consent.

Rape can be categorized in different ways: for example, by reference to the situation in which it occurs, by the identity or characteristics of the victim, and by the identity or characteristics of the perpetrator. These categories are referred to as types of rape. The types described below are not mutually exclusive: a given rape can fit into multiple categories, by for example being both a prison rape and a gang rape, or both a custodial rape and the rape of a child.

Rape by gender classifies types of rape by the sex and/or gender of both the rapist and the victim. This scope includes both rape and sexual assault more generally. Most research indicates that rape affects women disproportionately, with the majority of people convicted being men; however, since the broadening of the definition of rape in 2012 by the FBI, more attention is being given to male rape, including females raping males.

No Escape: Male Rape in U.S. Prisons is the title of an influential, book-length 2001 report by Human Rights Watch on prison rape in the United States. The report is credited with playing a major role in the 2003 passage of the Prison Rape Elimination Act.

Cindy Struckman-Johnson is a professor of psychology at the University of South Dakota in Vermillion, South Dakota. She was also a commissioner on the National Prison Rape Elimination Commission.

Timothy J. "T. J." Parsell is an American writer, filmmaker, and human rights activist committed to ending prison rape. He is best known for his book Fish: A Memoir of a Boy in a Man's Prison, which details the sexual violence he experienced while serving a four-year prison sentence as a teenager.

In common law jurisdictions, statutory rape is nonforcible sexual activity in which one of the individuals is below the age of consent. Although it usually refers to adults engaging in sexual contact with minors under the age of consent, it is a generic term, and very few jurisdictions use the actual term statutory rape in the language of statutes.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">LGBT people in prison</span> LGBTQ in prison

Lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender and queer (LGBTQ) people face difficulties in prison such as increased vulnerability to sexual assault, other kinds of violence, and trouble accessing necessary medical care. While much of the available data on LGBTQ inmates comes from the United States, Amnesty International maintains records of known incidents internationally in which LGBTQ prisoners and those perceived to be lesbian, gay, bisexual or transgender have suffered torture, ill-treatment and violence at the hands of fellow inmates as well as prison officials.

Farmer v. Brennan, 511 U.S. 825 (1994), was a case in which the Supreme Court of the United States ruled that a prison official's "deliberate indifference" to a substantial risk of serious harm to an inmate violates the cruel and unusual punishment clause of the Eighth Amendment. Farmer built on two previous Supreme Court decisions addressing prison conditions, Estelle v. Gamble and Wilson v. Seiter. The decision marked the first time the Supreme Court directly addressed sexual assault in prisons.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Prison rape</span> Forced sexual intercourse in prison

Prison rape or jail rape is sexual assault of people while they are incarcerated. The phrase is commonly used to describe rape of inmates by other inmates, or to describe rape of inmates by staff.

Brenda V. Smith is a law professor at American University's Washington College of Law. She served on the National Prison Rape Elimination Commission.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Sexual violence in South Africa</span>

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<span class="mw-page-title-main">Incarceration of women in the United States</span> Topic page on incarceration of women

The incarceration of women in the United States refers to the imprisonment of women in both prisons and jails in the United States. There are approximately 219,000 incarcerated women in the US according to a November 2018 report by the Prison Policy Initiative, and the rate of incarceration of women in the United States is at a historic and global high, with 133 women in correctional facilities per every 100,000 female citizens. The United States is home to just 4% of the world's female population, yet the US is responsible for 33% of the entire world's incarcerated female population. The steep rise in the population of incarcerated women in the US is linked to the complex history of the war on drugs and the US's prison–industrial complex, which lead to mass incarceration among many demographics, but had particularly dramatic impacts on women and especially women of color. However, women made up only 10.4% of the US prison and jail population, as of 2015.

Medomsley Detention Centre was a prison for young male offenders near Consett in Durham, England from 1961 until the late 1980s, where more than 1,800 living former inmates have reported sexual and physical abuse by staff. Police believe many of the staff belonged to a child sex abuse ring.

References

  1. 1 2 "About NPREC". National Prison Rape Elimination Commission. Archived from the original on 2008-05-08. Retrieved 2008-06-03.
  2. 1 2 Jordan, Andrew; Morgan, Marcia; McCampbell, Michael (April 2006), "The Prison Rape Elimination Act: What Police Chiefs Need to Know", The Police Chief, vol. 73, no. 4, retrieved 2008-06-03
  3. 1 2 Marshall, Carolyn (August 20, 2005), "Panel on Prison Rape Hears Victims' Chilling Accounts", The New York Times , retrieved 2008-06-03
  4. ↑ Implementation of the Prison Rape Elimination Act of 2003 - National Prison Rape Elimination Commission, Office of Management and Budget, 2005, archived from the original on 2008-10-30, retrieved 2008-06-04
  5. ↑ Research and Information Gathering (PDF), National Prison Rape Elimination Commission, November 2007, archived from the original (PDF) on January 1, 2009, retrieved 2008-06-03
  6. ↑ "Bipartisan Prison Rape Commission Releases Draft Standards for Helping Corrections Facilities Achieve Zero-Tolerance" (PDF) (Press release). National Prison Rape Elimination Commission. May 5, 2008.
  7. ↑ Prison Rape Elimination Act of 2003, Pub. L.   108–79 (text) (PDF)
  8. ↑ H.R. 1593
  9. ↑ "National Prison Rape Elimination Commission Releases Report", (Press release), California Coalition Against Sexual Assault , June 24, 2009, accessed July 1, 2009.
  10. ↑ Strode, Tom (September 3, 2003), Law targeting prison rape signed; diverse coalition backed measure, Baptist Press, archived from the original on March 27, 2008, retrieved 2008-06-03
  11. 1 2 3 "The Commissioners". National Prison Rape Elimination Commission. Archived from the original on 2008-05-08. Retrieved 2008-06-03.
  12. 1 2 3 4 5 6 Kerr, Jennifer C. (June 23, 2009). "States could lose money over prison rapes". The Associated Press. Archived from the original on 2009-07-18. Retrieved May 10, 2023.
  13. 1 2 Johnson, Carrie. "Panel Sets Guidelines For Fighting Prison Rape", Washington Post , June 23, 2009, retrieved July 1, 2009.
  14. 1 2 Moore, Solomon. "Panel to Issue Standards to Reduce Prison Rapes", The New York Times , June 22, 2009, retrieved July 1, 2009.
  15. 1 2 "Judge Reggie Walton, National Prison Rape Elimination Commission, Chairman", Video segment, C-SPAN , "Washington Journal", June 30, 2009, retrieved July 2, 2009.
  16. ↑ "U.S. panel urges curb on prison rape", United Press International , June 23, 2009, retrieved July 2, 2009.

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