Good and Mad Reading for the Weekend

This post at MSNBC sums up appalling new statistics on prison rape.

It isn't pretty:

Nearly one in 10 prisoners suffer sexual abuse while incarcerated in state prisons, local jails and post-release treatment facilities, according to a report published Thursday by the U.S. Department of Justice. ...

An estimated 3.7 percent said they were forced or pressured to have nonconsensual sex with another inmate. About 5.3 percent reported an incident that involved facility staff. ...

A quarter of those who reported they had suffered unwanted sexual contact at the hands of other inmates said they had been physically held down or restrained and a quarter had been physically harmed or injured. Nearly a quarter (23 percent) reported serious injuries, including anal/vaginal tearing (12 percent), chipped or lost teeth (12 percent), being knocked unconscious (8 percent), internal injuries (6 percent), knife/stab wounds (4 percent) or broken bones (4 percent), according to the survey of former prisoners. ...

Most victims of staff sexual misconduct reported some type of coercion. Half said they had been offered favors or special privileges and a third said they had been talked into it. Nearly 7 in 8 in this category reported only perpetrators of the opposite sex. More than three-quarters of all reported staff sexual misconduct involved a male inmate with female staff.

You can read the full report, the National Former Prisoner Survey, online here.

We've written before about the consequences of prison that most of us -- including many lawmakers who call for tougher and longer sentences -- just don't think about. Rape is one of those consequences, an ugly part of prison life that leaves physical and psychological wounds that hinder a person's rehabilitation and reentry to society. Rape shouldn't be part of prison life, but it should make us take a good, hard, long look at who we incarcerate, why, and for how long.  Prison is serious business and should be reserved for serious, dangerous offenders -- and a judge, not a legislature, is in the best position to decide who those people are.