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Originally posted by Replaced_Texan
According to a CDC study cited in the article I posted, 72 percent of prisoners reporting sexual encounters said the sex was consensual.
DC (and a few other US) city jails distribute condoms. So do most prisons in Europe. And Canada*. Vermont is the only state prison system that distributes condoms.
*Canada isn't to be trusted, though. They subject their own innocent citizens to torture, you know.
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Springing off from this, and especially this quote from the Houston Press article, I have a lot of problems with the way our prisons are run.
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"It's still such a conservative atmosphere and homosexuality still has such a stigma attached to it," she says. "I think wardens privately will acknowledge that sex is going on...But publicly, I think they hesitate to talk about it because, as one warden said to me, 'If we admit that sex is going on, then we're admitting failure in our security role.'"
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A friend of mine is from El Salvador. She came here illegally decades ago, but now she's a citizen and free to travel back and forth between the two countries. This summer, she went home to visit her family and take care of some health issues (it's a lot cheaper to, say, go to the dentist in El Salvador than it is here if you don't have insurance which is another rant for another day). She was suprised at the increased level of violence in El Salvador. She said that it reminded her of her youth there, when she'd hear machine gun fire every night.
The cause? El Salvadorians who end up in US prisons and the various prison gangs. After they serve their sentences, they're shipped back to El Salvador and pretty much terrorize the population there, having learned how to organize as gangs.
A few months ago, there was a three day report on NPR
1,
2, and
3) about solitary confinement. What struck me from that report was that the practice became much more prevelant in the 80s and 90s, as the prison population expanded exponentially. I remember reading last week during the Ann Richards coverage that the Texas Prison System doubled under her reign. I'm pretty sure that this is the result of the War on Drugs.
But the thing that struck me the most from the report was this, which goes back to Mila's observations in El Salvador:
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Officials say 70 percent of the inmates in California's prisons are in some way affiliated with prison gangs.
When asked whether the gangs control Pelican Bay, Williams says: "The biggest part of me wants to say no. But you know, prisons only run with the consent of the inmates -- and that's all the inmates. The administration and the officers do have control of the prisons. But there are times when you lose control."
Associate Warden Larry Williams says it has been this way since the 1980s, when the number of inmates exploded, and rehabilitative programs disappeared. The gangs filled the void left from increasingly tense conditions and utter boredom. California's answer to the gangs was, and is, the SHU.
. . .
Jim says gang leaders still control the gangs from within the SHU, mostly by mailing each other letters. And he says if you show up to prison and don't join the gang of your race, you'll be a target for the other gangs within days.
"When there's a war, there's a war," Jim says. "You're a target just because of the color of your skin, so you might as well. You're going to have to defend yourself. The lines get divided. You've gotta take sides."
Jim was sent to prison 10 years ago for armed robbery. Several years later, he was put in segregation for assaulting other prisoners when he joined a prison gang called the Nazi Low Riders.
"It's definitely racist," Jim says. But he says he wasn't racist before he came to prison. "Prison made me that way. My mom and dad taught me to respect everybody, no matter who it was. It's funny because I still remember, to this day, my dad telling me, 'You respect every man until he proves differently.'"
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I know absolutely nothing about how prisons are run other than having watched Oz. I have no idea how realistic it is to try and quell the gang situation inside of prisons, and for the most part, no one really cares about what prisoners are doing to other prisoners. But it bothers me quite a bit that gangs running the asylums is pretty much accepted as the status quo in American prisons, and it seems to me that somehow focusing on the enforcement of a "no sex" rule is ridiculous in light of how little control our prisons seem to have over the prisoners.
And when they get out, it seems to me, they are much worse people for society than they were when they went in.
