[quote]ZEB wrote:
There you go again talking about something that you know nothing about, none of us have any good data on the subject. I asked early in the thread if anyone had any statistics regarding homosexual activity in prison. As I recall no one responded to my request.
[/quote]
Oh, wait, was there a request for statistics? CAN DO. This is regarding prison rape. I’m not willing to spend half the night fucking with the formatting, so I’m sure it’ll be hard to read. Nonetheless, here you go:
[quote]Studies Reporting Low Prevalence of Prison Sexual Victimization
Davis (1968) administered one of the first studies on male prison sexual victim-
ization. He conducted a 26-month study of sexual assault in the Philadelphia prison
system, and it included interviews of 3,304 inmates and 561 custodial staff, as well
as additional interviews and reviews of official records. The results indicated that 97
inmates had been sexually assaulted (roughly 3%). Despite this rather low estimate,
Davis noted that he assessed only 5% of the total inmate population, that many
inmates did not participate in the study for fear of retaliation, and that the prison
system itself did little to protect inmates following a complaint. Thus, although his
findings indicated a low prevalence of prison sexual violence, he believed that the
numbers reported were only the “tip of the iceberg” (p. 11).
Moss and Hosford (1979) reported findings similar to those of Davis (1968).
Their analysis focused on a single federal prison over a 12-month period, and they
used official records as their indicator of sexual victimization - in particular,whether
an inmate was identified and segregated as a perpetrator of rape. Using this method,
only 12 out of 1,100 inmates fell into that category, indicating a prevalence rate of
only 1%. Such a finding may not be surprising,however,given that official records of
sexual assault in the general population - where the stigma of sexual victimization,
though present, may not be as acute as it is in prison - tend to be biased downward
(Fisher & Cullen, 2000).
Studies employing interview data techniques have reported relatively low prevalence
rates of sexual victimization as well. In particular, Saum et al’s study (1995) of 101
male inmates from a medium-security facility in Delaware found that only 1 inmate
reported being the victim of a completed rape (0.9%). Furthermore,Hensley,Tewksbury,
et al’s interviews (2003) from 174 male inmates from three Oklahoma correctional
facilities revealed that only 2 inmates reported being sexually victimized (1.1%). [/quote]
But wait, say the article’s authors, there are other studies with different results:
[quote]Studies Reporting High Prevalence of Prison Sexual Victimization
Not all studies uncover such low prevalence rates of prison sexual victimization
(see,e.g.,Wooden & Parker,1982). Two studies took a much different approach than
that of previous work in this area; consequently,their findings are quite different as well.
First, Struckman-Johnson et al. (1996) argued that official records and face-to-face
interviews are both likely to be plagued with the problem of underreporting sexual
victimization. Furthermore, they argued that restricting the definition of sexual
violence to a completed rape may fail to fully uncover the range of sexually coercive
behaviors that inmates face on a day-to-day basis. After anonymously surveying a
sample of male inmates from a Midwestern state prison, the researchers found that
of the 101 inmates who had reported having been targets for sexual victimization,
52% were pressured or forced to engage in sex acts against their will - a rate much
higher than had been previously revealed in the prison sexual violence literature.
Second, in a replication of their 1996 study, Struckman-Johnson and Struckman-
Johnson (2000) examined sexual coercion rates in seven Midwestern prisons. From
surveys of 1,788 male inmates and 475 staff,they discovered that 21% of the inmates
had experienced at least one episode of forced or pressured sexual contact during
their incarceration experience. [/quote]
Blah blah blah, and then:
[quote]Accordingly, our argument here is
that a good study in this area is one that uses an inclusive definition of sexual vio-
lence (i.e., one that does not rely on an inmate’s directly reporting having been the
victim of a completed rape),one that employs an anonymous data collection approach
where inmates do not necessarily have to confess to victimization directly to an
interviewer, and one that makes an effort to gather data from multiple facilities of
different types so that greater generalization is possible. Based on these criteria, the
research indicates that such studies typically report prison sexual victimization rates
of around 20%, suggesting that prison sexual victimization is a significant problem
to be addressed. [/quote]
And as for why, well:
[quote]The act was commonly
described as inmates resorting to sex because of the deprivations associated with
confinement (Alarid,2000b; Koscheski et al.,2002; Money & Bohmer,1980; Sagarin,
1976; Tewksbury, 1989a); as such, the distinction between sexual victimization and
consensual same-sex sexual activity was ambiguous (Alarid, 2000b). Consequently,
there was little recognition that sex occurring in prison could be defined as assaultive
and coerced and that coerced sex was a form of sexual victimization. Beginning in
the early 1980s, however, researchers began to move toward a social constructionist
approach (Alarid, 2000a, 2000b), and with this framework, a more accurate and
informed body of research emerged concerning characteristics of inmates especially
vulnerable to sexual victimization (Dumond, 2003).
Accordingly, scholars have suggested that the act of prison sexual victimization
is more complex than traditional explanations contend it to be (Rideau & Sinclair,
1984). This view is supported by prison officials, criminological and psychological
practitioners, academic scholars, and prisoners themselves who agree that sexual
deprivation is not the main source of the phenomenon (Mariner,2001). An alternative
explanation is that the perpetration of sexual victimization in prison is more about
power and control than it is about obtaining sexual gratification. Through the exam-
ination of the unique nature of prison culture and prison life, this alternative expla-
nation proposes that the psychological pain involved in prison life creates in inmates
an urgent need to reinforce a sense of self,personal worth,and control,which they obtain
via sexual victimization (Hassine, 1999; Prichard, 2000). Unable to pursue normal
venues of personal gratification, these inmates channel their energy and frustrations
into the only available avenue to them - the pursuit of power (Mariner,2001; Parenti,
1999; Prichard,2000; Rideau & Sinclair,1984). With limited access to appropriate means
of exerting power within the prison walls, these inmates obtain it by establishing
control over other inmates through sexual victimization using violence and/or
coercion (Hassine, 1999; Rideau & Sinclair, 1984). [/quote]
Jones, T., & Pratt, T. (2008, June). The Prevalence of Sexual Violence in Prison: The State of the Knowledge Base and Implications for Evidence-Based Correctional Policy Making. International Journal of Offender Therapy & Comparative Criminology, 52(3), 280-295.
So there you go. Statistics.
