# How common is prison rape? **URL:** \ **Category:** Factual Questions\ **Created:** [October 18, 2004, 8:29am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-common-is-prison-rape/269798 "2004-10-18T08:29:11Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 18\ **Page:** 1
**Author:** ![Blalron](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/35a633/32.png) [@Blalron](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Blalron)\ **Post date:** [October 18, 2004, 8:29am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-common-is-prison-rape/269798/1 "2004-10-18T08:29:11Z")
Is it a near certainty like I’ve been led to believe? Is prison life really that dire? ---
**Author:** ![clairobscur](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/839c29/32.png) [@clairobscur](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/clairobscur)\ **Post date:** [October 18, 2004, 11:12am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-common-is-prison-rape/269798/2 "2004-10-18T11:12:00Z")
I was pondering asking the exact same question. It seems that nearly everybody in the US is convinced that getting raped is part of the usual prison “way of life”. Each time some hateful crime has been commited, for instance, there are some posters rejoicing at the prospect of the culprit being raped once jailed. This belief is non-existent in France, for instance? It doesn’t mean that there aren’t rapes or coerced sex in french jails, but it’s not something random people would think about when considering life in prisons. I somehow doubt that life in american prisons would be _that_ different from life in french prisons, nor I’m inclined to believe that people in charge of prisons would tolerate a widespread “custom” of raping other inmates. So, I normally tend to assume that this popular belief is mistaken and don’t pay much attention. But with several threads currently refering to this, I too who would to know the “straight dope”. Especially since there are several people working in jails in this board, so they should be able to answer this question. By the way, I notice that people mentionning it quite always rejoice at this prospect. I never see one thread with some poster trying to bring the attention of fellow dopers about the awful conditions in american prisons, with rapes occuring all the time, etc… This too let me think that, though there most probably are rapes in prisons, the belief that it’s widespread is possibly related to the “feel good” factor of the prospect of evil criminals harshly punished by being raped. ---
**Author:** ![calm\_kiwi](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/9fc348/32.png) [@calm\_kiwi](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/calm_kiwi)\ **Post date:** [October 18, 2004, 11:31am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-common-is-prison-rape/269798/3 "2004-10-18T11:31:06Z")
Surely it can’t be as common as some percieve it to be? But if it is their is some serious prison reform needed. ---
**Author:** ![Diceman](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/22d042/32.png) [@Diceman](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Diceman)\ **Post date:** [October 18, 2004, 11:33am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-common-is-prison-rape/269798/4 "2004-10-18T11:33:41Z")
Doper **Qadgop** is a prison doctor. He said in another thread that rapes in prison are fairly rare. Consentual sex is apparantly pretty common, however, and it might be coerced. It seems to me that the idea of widespread prison rape is a mostly a fantasy for people who don’t think that prison is sufficient punishment. ---
**Author:** ![don\_t\_ask](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/e68b1a/32.png) [@don\_t\_ask](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/don_t_ask)\ **Post date:** [October 18, 2004, 11:54am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-common-is-prison-rape/269798/5 "2004-10-18T11:54:50Z")
In today’s other prison rape thread I linked to [this](http://boards.straightdope.com/sdmb/showthread.php?p=2959084) previous thread where a Doper prison guard discusses such things. ---
**Author:** ![The\_Chao\_Goes\_Mu](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/the_chao_goes_mu/32/3191_2.png) [@The\_Chao\_Goes\_Mu](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/The_Chao_Goes_Mu)\ **Post date:** [October 18, 2004, 11:55am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-common-is-prison-rape/269798/6 "2004-10-18T11:55:42Z")
I’m wondering if perhaps it’s more common in maximum security federal prisons than in state pens and more minimum security fascilities. It seems that men, and well, even women for that matter, that are the truest dregs of our society serving 25 years to life for horrendous crimes would be more likely to engage in violent activities behind bars than your white collar offenders. These are just my assumptions of course. I wonder if there are any statitistics available. Although that may be a difficult thing to keep track of since prisoners aren’t likely to report rape. Hmm. I do agree with **Calm Kiwi** that prison reform is needed. Rape should not some “given” in the punishment/reform process. Unless of course the offender is a child molester IMHO ---
**Author:** ![calm\_kiwi](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/9fc348/32.png) [@calm\_kiwi](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/calm_kiwi)\ **Post date:** [October 18, 2004, 11:56am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-common-is-prison-rape/269798/7 "2004-10-18T11:56:24Z")
That is what I was thinking. Prison IS the punishment. No need for rape as an extra. (I also meant there not their D) ) ---
**Author:** ![violacrane](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/v/c57346/32.png) [@violacrane](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/violacrane)\ **Post date:** [October 19, 2004, 12:47am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-common-is-prison-rape/269798/8 "2004-10-19T00:47:04Z")
I think it’s pretty sick when someone revels in the idea of a criminal being raped in prison. I also wonder why it never occurs to them that this criminal could be the one who gets to do the raping. If what they imagine is true then some people in prison get to spend their time there committing further crime and there’s nothing good about that. ---
**Author:** ![pokey](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/p/ebca7d/32.png) [@pokey](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/pokey)\ **Post date:** [October 19, 2004, 1:35am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-common-is-prison-rape/269798/9 "2004-10-19T01:35:55Z")
I remember reading an interview with Ed Bunker, the author who spent a lot of time in prisons, and he said it happens but it is not as common as it is made out to be. I can’t find the magazine, but he says the same thing in this interview [here](http://www.plotswithguns.com/Eddie%20Bunker%20Interview.htm). I’ve always wondered how common it is for men to rape each other outside prison. A couple of times, male friends have told me about times they were in fear of it, especially as teens. ---
**Author:** ![Lissa](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/l/85f322/32.png) [@Lissa](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Lissa)\ **Post date:** [October 19, 2004, 4:33am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-common-is-prison-rape/269798/10 "2004-10-19T04:33:12Z")
> [@don't ask](#): > > In today’s other prison rape thread I linked to [this](http://boards.straightdope.com/sdmb/showthread.php?p=2959084) previous thread where a Doper prison guard discusses such things. That thread has pretty good information. My husband also works in corrections. He was the Investigator for a couple of years, during which he had no complaints of violent rape, but did have three complaints of intimidation rape. (This, out of a population of 2,500 inmates.) ---
**Author:** ![mhendo](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/mhendo/32/3159_2.png) [@mhendo](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/mhendo)\ **Post date:** [October 19, 2004, 7:00am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-common-is-prison-rape/269798/11 "2004-10-19T07:00:11Z")
Some relevant figures and summaries include: From [Legal Affairs](http://www.legalaffairs.org/issues/March-April-2004/feature_brook_marapr04.html): > [@](#): > > Compiling statistics on prison rape involves the same pitfalls as compiling conventional rape statistics. Male rape victims may be even more likely than female victims to underreport out of intimidation or shame. Tom Cahill, whom I talked to at his home in Northern California, heads the board of directors of the advocacy group Stop Prisoner Rape; he was gang-raped in 1968 in a San Antonio jail where he was being held on a civil disobedience charge. “For males, it’s the ultimate humiliation,” he said. “And that silences most of us.” Even without taking this reticence into account, the numbers are staggering. The most authoritative studies of the problem, conducted by the University of South Dakota professor Cindy Struckman-Johnson, found that over 20 percent of prisoners are the victims of some form of coerced sexual contact, and at least 7 percent are raped. Extrapolating from Struckman-Johnson’s findings suggests that some 140,000 current inmates have been raped. The corrections industry itself estimates that there are 12,000 rapes per year, which exceeds the annual number of reported rapes in Los Angeles, Chicago, and New York combined. From [Human Rights Watch](http://www.hrw.org/reports/2001/prison/report1.html#_1_5): > [@](#): > > In December 2000, the Prison Journal published a study based on a survey of inmates in seven men’s prison facilities in four states. The results showed that 21 percent of the inmates had experienced at least one episode of pressured or forced sexual contact since being incarcerated, and at least 7 percent had been raped in their facility. A 1996 study of the Nebraska prison system produced similar findings, with 22 percent of male inmates reporting that they had been pressured or forced to have sexual contact against their will while incarcerated. Of these, over 50 percent had submitted to forced anal sex at least once. Extrapolating these findings to the national level gives a total of at least 140,000 inmates who have been raped. > > An internal departmental survey of corrections officers in a southern state (provided to Human Rights Watch on the condition that the state not be identified) found that line officers – those charged with the direct supervision of inmates – estimated that roughly one-fifth of all prisoners were being coerced into participation in inmate-on-inmate sex. Interestingly, higher-ranking officials – those at the supervisory level – tended to give lower estimates of the frequency of abuse, while inmates themselves gave much higher estimates: the two groups cited victimization rates of roughly one-eighth and one-third, respectively. Although the author of the survey was careful to note that it was not conducted in accordance with scientific standards, and thus its findings may not be perfectly reliable, the basic conclusions are still striking. Even taking only the lowest of the three estimates of coerced sexual activity – and even framing that one conservatively – more than one in ten inmates in the prisons surveyed was subject to sexual abuse. From [Stop Prison Rape](http://www.spr.org/en/doc_01_factsheet.html): > [@](#): > > Rates for women, who are most likely to be abused by male staff members, vary greatly among institutions. In one facility, 27 percent of women reported a pressured or forced sex incident, while in another facility, seven percent of women reported sexual abuse.2 > > Youth in detention are also extremely vulnerable to abuse. Research has shown that juveniles incarcerated with adults are five times more likely to report being victims of sexual assault than youth in juvenile facilities,3 and the suicide rate of juveniles in adult jails is 7.7 times higher than that of juvenile detention centers. As states try growing numbers of juveniles as adults, the risk of sexual abuse increases. A few years ago, Human Rights Watch produced a comprehensive report entitled [No Escape: Male Rape in U.S. Prisons](http://www.hrw.org/reports/2001/prison/report.html), which not only gives some broad overviews and statistics, but outlines the various scenarios under which rape occurs, and gives case histories that often include oral testimony by the victims. It’s interesting—if rather depressing—reading. ---
**Author:** ![casdave](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/c6cbf5/32.png) [@casdave](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/casdave)\ **Post date:** [October 19, 2004, 5:25pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-common-is-prison-rape/269798/12 "2004-10-19T17:25:14Z")
Rape is very rare in UK jails, and consensual sex is not very common in most jails, with the execption of some of the higher security units. Those units would be usually very long term prisoners, who are generally considered to be a high security rating because of the length of jail term and the type of offence. So you might see say serious sexual offenders engage in consensual sex, but probably not serious organised criminals. Its not so cut and dried though, but in the jaisl where consensual sex does take place, rape is not attractive in the sense that the victim is likely to be a serious offender themselves and in all probability is prepared to to almost anything to take revenge. You do not have to be an eight foot tall gorilla to cause serious or fatal injuries, and makeshift weapons are soon found, for example one attempted murder was effected on Peter Sutcliffe using felt tip pens inot the eyes(lots of kudos for killing this person among some prisoners) He survived but his birdwatching days may well have been somewhat diminished. What this shows is that anyone can retaliate in a deadly fashion, and rape isnt worth the risk. The medium high risks dont have much rape at all, there may be a little self prostitution, but even this is rare. ---
**Author:** ![Wesley\_Clark](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/wesley_clark/32/20581_2.png) [@Wesley\_Clark](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Wesley_Clark)\ **Post date:** [October 19, 2004, 6:48pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-common-is-prison-rape/269798/13 "2004-10-19T18:48:22Z")
From what I gather coerced rape is more common. Violent rape is more likely to get the rapist in trouble while coerced rape is harder to prove and I guess the victim less likely to go to authorities over. So I guess it depends on how you define rape. If you define it as the rapist trying to maintain a low profile by using psychological intimidation instead of physical intimidation then it is still relatively common. But it was also my understanding that prisons already had tons of homosexuals in them so why bother turning out a few more? ---
**Author:** ![Exapno\_Mapcase](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/exapno_mapcase/32/1051_2.png) [@Exapno\_Mapcase](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Exapno_Mapcase)\ **Post date:** [October 19, 2004, 11:42pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-common-is-prison-rape/269798/14 "2004-10-19T23:42:00Z")
> [@Wesley Clark](#): > > But it was also my understanding that prisons already had tons of homosexuals in them so why bother turning out a few more? What makes you think this? Do you have any statistics on the subject? ---
**Author:** ![kevja](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/k/aeb1de/32.png) [@kevja](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/kevja)\ **Post date:** [October 20, 2004, 12:00am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-common-is-prison-rape/269798/15 "2004-10-20T00:00:42Z")
> [@Wesley Clark](#): > > But it was also my understanding that prisons already had tons of homosexuals in them so why bother turning out a few more? Tons of homosexuals. Huh? “Your understanding?” Any facts to back that up? ---
**Author:** ![Measure\_for\_Measure](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/measure_for_measure/32/557_2.png) [@Measure\_for\_Measure](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Measure_for_Measure)\ **Post date:** [October 20, 2004, 2:01am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-common-is-prison-rape/269798/16 "2004-10-20T02:01:28Z")
Saturday’s NYT (reg. req) had an article on this. [Ex-Inmate’s Suit Offers View Into Sexual Slavery in Prisons](http://www.nytimes.com/2004/10/16/national/16rape.html?oref=login). "The phenomenon of sexual slavery in prison has only recently emerged from the shadows. Prison rape, in general, has received sporadic notice over the years and sustained attention more recently, with the passage last year of a federal law that aims to eliminate it. But there has never been a comprehensive study of incarcerated gay men subjected to sexual abuse. Discussing any form of prison rape is difficult. It makes many people uncomfortable. Some find it amusing. “It has been the subject of mockery and almost sadistic glee,” said Margaret Winter, associate director of the National Prison Project of the American Civil Liberties Union. “But Roderick is a human being who doesn’t deserve this, not in a civilized society.” The civil liberties union represents Mr. Johnson in his lawsuit, which will go to trial next summer." ---
**Author:** ![Exapno\_Mapcase](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/exapno_mapcase/32/1051_2.png) [@Exapno\_Mapcase](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Exapno_Mapcase)\ **Post date:** [October 20, 2004, 3:52pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-common-is-prison-rape/269798/17 "2004-10-20T15:52:52Z")
Note that the article implies that homosexuals are _rare_ in prisons. ---
**Author:** ![beltbuckle](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/3da27b/32.png) [@beltbuckle](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/beltbuckle)\ **Post date:** [October 20, 2004, 4:10pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-common-is-prison-rape/269798/18 "2004-10-20T16:10:59Z")
“Hey Peter man, watch your cornhole, bud.”