Texas Prisons Top Rape List: DOJ Drafts Reform

The number of rapes being committed annually in the U.S. prison system is just deplorable. And what’s even more shocking is that the majority of these crimes are reportedly being perpetrated by corrections officers. Who are the vast majority of victims? Women, gay men, juvenile offenders, the mentally disabled and the physically weak.

What’s even more gruesome is that five of the worst offending prisons are in Texas, which to me, suggests there is an atmosphere of abuse happening in the Lone Star State. At present, there is no automatic auditing of certain prisons where these rapes seem to be happening at a greater frequency. There currently is no uniformed process in which prison administrators are assessing the risk to certain inmates. In most of these prisons, there is not even a written mandate for prison officials to report any suspicions of sexual assault.

Consequently, we have prisons like the Estelle Unit in Huntsville, Texas—which topped the Bureau of Justice’s report— where 15.8 percent of its inmates report being raped annually. That means 470 people are raped in that prison each year, and the majority of those victims say they were raped multiple times.

Nationwide, the bureau reports that 4.5 percent of prisoners reported they were sexually victimized in the last year. The other four Texas prisons on the list — the Clements Unit in Amarillo; the Allred Unit near Wichita Falls; the Mountain View Unit near Gatesville; and the Coffield Unit near Tennessee Colony — had rates between 9.3 percent and 13.9 percent.

As horrific as the abuse is, there is at least some hope that the current Department of Justice plans to make an effort to curb these offenses. Last month, Attorney General Eric Holder started drafting some common sense proposals intended to curb these abuses. He’s pushing for a written zero tolerance policy, whether by prisoners or corrections personnel. He wants to make it mandatory to report any suspicions of sexual assault. And he wants prison officials to develop a process where they can assess inmate risks— like not placing a scrawny little kid whose never been to prison before in the same cell with known rapists.

But dealing with the code of silence, the apparent attitude among some corrections officers that the lives of inmates are expendable and therefore have no rights, will be a lot more difficult. That is why, Holder is also pushing for regular independent audits of every prison or jail in the U.S. and making that data public. Is it enough? No. Is it a good start? Absolutely.

Why is this important? According to the Houston Chronicle, the West Texas State School, a juvenile prison repeatedly praised by the Texas Youth Commission’s internal quality assurance monitors — even though the school’s staff complained routinely to their supervisors, and even to officials in Austin, that two high-ranking officers had been sexually abusing teen inmates for more than a year.

Eventually, the Texas Rangers conducted an investigation and found significant evidence that these officials used bribes and threats to get these kids and other staff members quiet. One boy, who refused their advances, was locked in solitary confinement for more than 13 hours, according to the Texas Rangers.

But even after that investigation, the local district attorney’s office or the DOJ, during the Bush Administration, didn’t charge the two prison officials. In fact, they simply left the prison and found other jobs, one actually got a job at a school. It wasn’t until this story was exposed by a local newspaper, The Texas Observer, that the scandal became public. And it wasn’t until that that anyone tried to clean up the West Texas State School.

The new standards can potentially be an invaluable tool to curb these blatant abuses. As President Obama gets all kind of nonsense flak from the far right, I think it’s important to note some of the solid, common sense governance we are finally seeing in this country.

Nice one Holder.

See the story here.