I’ve heard this a few times, including from former prisoners but google just gives me individual examples.
But the idea being that despite the popular perception of how prison Rape is entirely prisoner on prisoner, the fact is it’s the guards raping the prisoners so it’s actually the criminals being victimized by people allowed to get away with it.
Any truth to this?
Info from the Wiki page on Prison Rape in the U.S.:
"According to the Bureau of Justice Statistics, around 80,000 women and men a year get sexually abused in American correctional facilities. The National Inmate Survey presented data that consisted of 233 state and federal prisons, 358 local jails, and fifteen special correctional facilities between the time period of February 2011 and May 2012, with a sample of 92,449 inmates ages eighteen or older, and 1,738 inmates sixteen to seventeen. The statistical information highlighted that an estimated of 4.0% of state and federal prison inmates and 3.2% of jail inmates reported experiencing one or more incidents of sexual victimization by another inmate or facility staff since their admission to the facility or in the past twelve months since the survey was executed. More specifically, around 29,300 prisoners reported an incident regarding another inmate, 34,100 prisoners reported an incident involving staff that worked at the facility, and 5,500 inmates reported an incident involving both. Rates reported by female inmates were higher than male inmates, and lower among inmates ages thirty-five or older than inmates ages twenty to twenty-four. White inmates were more likely than black or Hispanic inmates to report sexual victimization by other inmates, while blacks and Hispanics were more likely than whites to report victimization by staff.
In addition, juvenile inmates ages sixteen to seventeen in adult prisons did not have significant higher rates of sexual victimization in comparison to adult inmates. An estimated 1.8% of juvenile inmates ages sixteen to seventeen reported being victimized by another inmate, in comparison to 2.0% of adult prisoners and 1.6% of adults in jails. Among juvenile inmates in the same age range, 3.2% juveniles reported experiencing staff sexual misconduct, in comparison to 2.4% of adults in prisons and 1.8% of adults in jails. Furthermore, inmates that reported their sexual orientation as gay, lesbian, bisexual, or other has the highest rates of sexual assault within the period of this survey (2011–12). Out of inmates who identify as non-heterosexual, 12.2% of prison inmates and 8.5% of jail inmates reported being sexually victimized by another inmate, compared to 1.2% and 2.1% for heterosexual inmates; 5.4% of non-heterosexual prison inmates and 4.3% of non-heterosexual jail inmates reported being sexually victimized by facility staff, while 1.2% and 1.7% are the corresponding numbers for heterosexual inmates."