My girlfreind is in the media, and covers such topics as conditions in prisons, and assures me that the problem is highly exaggerated. Prisons are run tighter that that.
http://pwbts.com
Prisons are run tighter than that?
Think Richard Speck.
Sexuality is rated on a scale of one to five.
one= all straight five= all gay
Thus, you can be a two and still be straight.
Aren’t most men actually emotionally gay anyway? You know that male bonding over football, baseball, beer, brothers, etc?
Salieri2
I’m glad someone took the time to read my link. This is a major and disturbing issue, and I wish it would progress in our consciousness beyond crude jokes. It’s interesting: this is one area in which we seem to treat women better than men. Joking about the rape of a female turns people pale and earns you cold stares; joking about the rape of a male is treated like joking about airplane food or something. I suppose it’s good to know that our morality has advanced enough, that at least it’s not socially acceptable to laugh at the brutalization of a female.
Prisons are currently little dens of Dark Ages morality, hid from the public view by a prison system with a morality hardly any better. Every time some teenage bike thief gets brutalized, society runs the risk of creating another monster.
As to the question of consensual prison sex, I suppose I don’t have any problem with it, as long as prisoners have the equipment to practice it safely.
My link refers to consensual relationships between prisoners which are analogous to marriages; it also refers to efforts by prison authorities to break up these “marriages”, since they are thought to be overt evidence of homosexuality. Sexual violence will be hidden, so it doesn’t make the prison authorities look so bad.
And that, my friends, is sick.
Nothing I write about any person or group should be applied to a larger group.
- Boris Badenov
“According to you, these people are automatically gay (or at least bi-sexual), and I don’t think so.”
—Satan, respectfully 
That’s not what I meant to say, Satan.
My point is that if you, a man, have sex with another man, you’ve had a homosexual experience. Nothing wrong with that. But call it what it is.
Let’s turn it around; Say a gay man has sex with his female friend. Hasn’t he had a hetrosexual experience? Of course he has. Does this mean he’s straight? No, not at all.
As handy pointed out there are many degrees of sexuality. Maybe not exactly five, but plenty.
The bone (heh heh) of my contention is that some men have had these experiences, enjoyed it, and then they profess to hate “queers”. I say “Get real guys, you done it with a man”. It’s really nobody else’s business (if consentual), but neither is it something to be ashamed of.
And no, someone who has been raped has not had a sexual experience of any kind. Even if she/he cums. It’s sex only if preceeded by desire.
Peace,
mangeorge
Does that depend on what the definition “is” is? Sex is sex. Rape is non-consentual sex, but it’s still sex.
“I had a feeling that in Hell there would be mushrooms.” -The Secret of Monkey Island
“Rape is non-consentual sex, but it’s still sex.”
—Diceman
A victim of rape is definitely not having sex, Diceman.
The asshole commiting the act, motivated by some twisted desire, is having sex.
What “is” is has nothing to do with the issue.
Peace,
mangeorge
I read Boris B’s link yesterday. It was the most disturbing thing I read in a long time. http://www.igc.apc.org/spr/sections/prisoners.html read the survivor stories and the survival manual. It is shocking. I have sex for mine and my partners pleasure. I don’t equate any of this to sex though. It is basically coercian (sp?) to get the punk (as the prison slang calls it) to put out. There is a real threat of violence if he doesn’t put out and could likely die. I knew that prison rape was brutal, but thanks to my blinders, I did not know how widespread it was. Read Boris’s link.
Sqrl
Move over Satan. 
Now there’s something meatier. http://smallwonder.simplenet.com/COC.html
The term is called “situational homosexuality”. When you have situations where you have members of the same sex confined together without members of the opposite sex (prisons, the army, same-sex boarding schools), they have sex with each other. Combine that with rape as a power issue, and, in a competative, agressive prison situation…
Y’know, they used to call it “sexual preference” before they called it “sexual orientation”. But I think there is some merit to the former term. I mean, it’s been pointed out by some that if you were on a desert island with somebody of the wrong sex, your feelings might change. Especially if he’s just like Jay Davidson in The Crying Game. But we can’t imagine it.
How 'bout this. Let’s say, you’re not gay, but you’re also not a cannibal. You don’t fancy a meal of human flesh with little carmelized onions and a nice dark beer. But if you were trapped on a mountain with nothing but a few fresh-frozen pilot carcasses, maybe you’d choose cannibalism over death.
I personally can envision the cannibalism much easier than the situational homosexuality, since hunger can kill you and celibacy can’t (I’m living proof). But then, I’ve never been on the desert island.
So I hope it’s clear that, in or out of prison, there can be consensual sex as well as heinous acts of violence. Prisons are not unique in either regard, but I still wish people would give the matter more attention.
<big>SALTPETER</BIG>
Oh great, one prisoner rapes another one in the shower and suddenly it’s all my fault. The fact is that, prison rape is no more the fault of the guards then rape on the streets is the fault of the police. The blame lies on the rapist. In my prison, the average officer is expected to watch sixty to a hundred and twenty prisoners simultaneously in an area which has over a dozen different rooms.
We do all that we can to prevent rape and all other sexual acts in prison. Some of the people who posted on the website Boris linked to apparently feel we should allow consensual sex. But ask yourself how consensual the relationship really is. A weaker prisoner may “agree” to have sex with one prisoner in order to be protected from being violently raped by a group of prisoners, but his preference is not to have sex at all. So we prohibit all sexual acts.
And we realize that this prohibition will not stop all sex from occurring.
The thing that most annoys me however is when I’m doing all I can to provide a solution and people who don’t know any better accuse me of being part of the problem.
Who accused you of being part of the problem? I believe there is a social responsibility to prevent prison rape, since society chooses imprisonment as punishment. Sure, the person most responsible is the rapist. The thing we usually do with rapists is put them in prison. That approach doesn’t really help in this case.
As it stands, society imprisons young, weak, poorly connected men in situations where they will be unsupervised around older, strong, brutes with powerful prison contacts. This is not okay. I haven’t heard anyone blame this on individual corrections people.
Nothing I write about any person or group should be applied to a larger group.
- Boris Badenov
I’m sure most prison guards try to do the best they can in very difficult circumstances. But there are also cases where prison guards have been accused of using the threat of homosexual rape as punishment or threat.
A recent example would be Corcoran State Prison in California. Several questionable practices by the guards there have been raised. Note: in the latest court case, four guards accused of setting up the prison rape of a troublemaker have been acquitted.
La franchise ne consiste pas à dire tout ce que l’on pense, mais à penser tout ce que l’on dit.
H. de Livry
I’m not trying to antagonize you or anyone else, Boris, but these are quotes from your post: “Prisons are currently little dens of Dark Ages morality, hid from the public view by a prison system with a morality hardly any better” and “Sexual violence will be hidden, so it doesn’t make the prison authorities look so bad.” I’d like to think my morality is considerably better than that of the convicted criminals I work with and I have never seen any efforts being made to cover up crimes committed by prisoners in order to improve the prison “image”.
Allow me to use the analogy of a hospital, which is a place full of sickness, pain, and death. A person who only gave the place a casual glance might surmise that the hospital, and its staff, must have created all this suffering. But the reality is that all the suffering originated in the outside world and was brought to one location so it wouldn’t be inflicted on the public and so professionals could attempt to alleviate it as much as possible. The prison system works the same way. The criminal element of society is seperated out by the police and court system and confined in places where they cannot prey upon the public and where attempts can be made to rehabilitate them. It is true that prisons have incredibly high crime rates in the same sense that hospitals have incredibly high disease rates. This is an indication that we are forced to deal with a difficult problem not a sign that we are condoning it.
And yes Arnold I am aware that there are bad people in my profession as there are in any other. And like most people I am much angrier at these “colleagues”, whose acts reflect on me, than a member of the general public would be. I realize the difficulties they have to work under, but I also realize from my personal experience that it is possible to overcome these difficulties and do your job in a professional manner.
I said the morality of the prison system was hardly any better than that of the inmates. Clearly, I was not very informative.
I have no trouble believing that there are upstanding, ethical people working in the correctional system. This doesn’t really change the ethics of the system. The system cannot be ethical, regardless of the efforts of the people in it, as long as non-violent crimes are regarded as being as bad as, or worse than, violent crimes.
Yes, these are nothing more than my personal opinions. Moral judgements of systems and policies don’t really work like moral judgements of people. I feel comfortable criticizing U.S. policy during the Phillipine Wars, even though the soldiers involved were mostly upstanding citizens doing their jobs. The system was imperialist, destructive, and racist. The people involved are not being judged at all, with the exceptions of the people who created the policy.
If I’m condemning any individuals here, it is the people who wrote the laws that created the criminal justice system.
People who create mandatory minimum sentences for drug offenses, and not for violence.
People, like Arnold mentioned, who use the brutality in prisons as an anvil to threaten convicts.
The bizarre habit of attempting to try juveniles as adults. Perhaps it is justified sometimes, but it seems like prosecutors do it all the time.
People who tell themselves bedtime stories about how only the most brutal prisoners suffer sexual violence, and people who convince themselves that rape is “just deserts” for crime.
You’ve mentioned that small numbers of officials have to supervise huge numbers of convicts. Why is this? Could it be because politicians have built so many prisons that the availabe staff is spread ridiculously thin? Given the enormous prison-building boom, combined with tight-fisted staffing policies, it seems like we can only expect understaffing.
The alternative would be ending the drug war, but that is a different thread.
Nothing I write about any person or group should be applied to a larger group.
- Boris Badenov
Well, I went in and read one of the “survivor stories” and it read like a story straight out of a XXX mag. (“Memories of Rape”) I had trouble deciding if the site was legitimate or not after that one. (Not just a graphic description of rape, but one that uses “penthouse style” descriptions).
I know there is a real problem with this, but I wonder about some of those stories…
Zette
Zette’s quote is from: http://www.igc.apc.org/spr/docs/memories.html
Nothing about the account makes me doubt it. I suppose it could be made up, but I believe it. The fella who wrote it is just describing in detail the up and (mainly) downs of prison life.
Nothing I write about any person or group should be applied to a larger group.
- Boris Badenov
Okay, Boris, thanks for the response. But it seems to me the problems you’re describing are faults of the judicial system not the prison system. As I have had to tell any number of convicts, “I wasn’t the one who decided to put you in here and I won’t be the one who’ll decide to let you out of here. I’m just the one who’ll be watching you while you are here.”
As for your opinions on who should be in prison, I think I’d agree with many of them. On another thread on this board, I wrote that I personally favor the complete and total legalization of all drugs (on the grounds of individual liberty not personal preference). I’d also favor the elimination of most other victimless crimes on the same principle. But the fact is that lawmakers, in response to democratic influence, decide who will be incarcerated.
This is off-topic, but I can’t resist the chance to quote a great movie line of dialogue.
Mike King’s sentence
[quoe]I wasn’t the one who decided to put you in here and I won’t be the one who’ll decide to let you out of here. I’m just the one who’ll be watching you while you are here.
[/quote]
reminds me of the movie Double Jeopardy when Tommy Lee Jones’ character (a parole office) tells Ashely Judd’s character “I’m not interested in your contrition, I’m interested in your behaviour. Now go out there and behave yourself.”
La franchise ne consiste pas à dire tout ce que l’on pense, mais à penser tout ce que l’on dit.
H. de Livry