Rates of Prison Rape Remain a Mystery

Chandra Bozelko
Thu, 07 Mar 2019 15:24:52 -0800
Opinion

The Department of Justice released a bombshell report last summer that attracted very little attention.

The Office of Justice Programs' Bureau of Justice Statistics announced that claims of prison rape almost tripled between 2011 and 2015, the very time when sexual assault in correctional facilities should have been declining, as the Prison Rape Elimination Act (PREA) was finally in full effect, for the first time since its passage in 2003.
Updated: Fri Mar 08, 2019

The Department of Justice released a bombshell report last summer that attracted very little attention.

The Office of Justice Programs' Bureau of Justice Statistics announced that claims of prison rape almost tripled between 2011 and 2015, the very time when sexual assault in correctional facilities should have been declining, as the Prison Rape Elimination Act (PREA) was finally in full effect, for the first time since its passage in 2003.

One of the reasons why so few people were alarmed is that these reports' rate of substantiation — proving the claim of sexual assault to be true — barely moved. That is, to the federal government, rape isn't on the rise; only reports of rape are.

At first glance, the Bureau of Justice Statistics report makes it look like the federal law opened the floodgates for false reports.

I doubt that the marked increase in reports reflects falsehoods; the punishment for reporting a rape in prison is the same as, if not worse than, the punishment for committing one. If an inmate reports being sexually assaulted, he or she is almost always placed in solitary confinement.

Prison officials are keeping the rate of verification artificially low by allowing claims to languish in "pending investigation" status for long periods of time.

In 2015, almost twice as many cases were under investigation (11 percent) at the time of data collection as were substantiated (6 percent). The approximately 2,448 claims that remained under investigation at the time of data collection in 2011 constituted 28 percent of all reports that year — and was 2.7 times the number of substantiated reports.

If all claims pending investigation could be proven, then the rate of substantiation — the closest we can get to true incidence of prison rape — would almost triple for both the 2011 and 2015 data sets.

It would seem that active investigation is a good place for true reports to hide from government oversight. Keeping claims in perpetual investigation means they don't really appear in any statistics — and they haven't really happened. That way, we don't have to admit that we're facing a sexual violence crisis in prisons and jails.

It may seem far-fetched that a correctional facility administration would purposely extend investigatory periods for reports of rape, but this is what's being alleged by a woman who sued Rikers Island jail last year. According to the New York Post, she took home a $500,000 settlement of taxpayer money last month after she alleged that administrators at the notorious New York jail perpetuated a culture of violence by not looking into her and other inmates' claims of abuse.

Other investigations opened at Rikers Island have remained open since 2014. Many alleged victims have already left custody.

It's improbable that every ongoing investigation, even with the closest scrutiny, would conclude that an assault had occurred. But it's equally improbable that none of those claims currently under investigation can be confirmed. The true rate of prison rape lies somewhere in the murky pile of files that remain on investigators' desks.

Limiting time frames on prison sexual assault investigations will do little to force the real rate of prison sexual assault into the limelight. Against a deadline, prison officials will run out the clock and leave reports unverified.

But something must be done, and it's not clear what. Lovisa Stannow, the executive director of Just Detention International — a nonprofit devoted to ending sexual abuse in detention facilities — said she doesn't think that prison rape is necessarily getting worse. Reports are simply starting to reflect the true rate of prison sexual assault because of enhanced reporting mechanisms. Stannow says we need to let PREA continue to do its work.

But that's insufficient. We allowed states a nine-year introductory period to come into full compliance with PREA. Two states — Arkansas and Utah — still refuse to comply. The law's been in effect for over 15 years, and the true rate of prison rape remains a mystery. That's unacceptable. Once we define sexual violence, it will take twice that amount of time to solve the problem behind bars.

I'm not sure which is worse: the rate of prison rape rising or not knowing if it actually is rising. Either way, it's a story we're missing.