Prison rape is the rape of inmates in prison by other inmates or prison staff. In 2001, Human Rights Watch estimated that at least 4.3 million inmates had been raped while incarcerated in the United States. A United States Department of Justice report, Sexual Victimization in Prisons and Jails Reported by Inmates, states that "In 2011–12, an estimated 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 in the past 12 months or since admission to the facility, if less than 12 months." However, advocates dispute the accuracy of the numbers, saying they under-report the real numbers of sexual assaults in prison, especially among juveniles.
A meta-analysis published in 2004 found a prevalence of 1.91% with a 95% confidence interval between 1.37 and 2.46%.Gerald G. Gaes; Andrew L. Goldberg: Prison Rape: A Critical Review of the Literature, Executive Summary. 2004 In a survey of 1,788 male inmates in Midwestern prisons by Prison Journal, about 21% claimed they had been coerced or pressured into sexual activity during their incarceration, and 7% claimed that they had been raped in their current facility.
Prevalence 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, and the suicide rate of juveniles in adult jails is 7.7 times higher than that of juvenile detention centers.The Basics on Rape Behind Bars. spr.org
In the United States, public awareness of the phenomenon of prison rape is a relatively recent development and estimates to its prevalence have varied widely for decades. In 1974 Carl Weiss and David James Friar wrote that 46 million Americans would one day be incarcerated; of that number, they claimed, 10 million would be raped. A 1992 estimate from the Federal Bureau of Prisons conjectured that between nine and 20 percent of inmates had been sexually assaulted. Studies in 1982 and 1996 both concluded that the rate was somewhere between 12 and 14 percent; the 1996 study, by Cindy Struckman-Johnson, concluded that 18 percent of assaults were carried out by prison staff. A 1986 study by Daniel Lockwood put the number at around 23 percent for maximum security prisons in New York. Christine Saum's 1994 survey of 101 inmates showed five had been sexually assaulted.
Reported prison rape cases have drastically risen in recent years, although this may be partially attributed to an increase in counseling and reports. The threat of HIV, which affects many of those raped in prison, has also resulted in the increase of reported cases for the benefit of medical assistance.
According to the study conducted by the United States Department of Justice for the year 2006, there were 2,205 allegations of inmate-on-inmate non-consensual sexual acts reported in the U.S. prison system, 262 of which were substantiated.Devon B. Adams, Allen J. Beck, Paige M. Harrison Sexual Violence Reported by Correctional Authorities, 2006 . Bureau of Justice Statistics. August 16, 2007
According to one source, female-perpetrated sexual abuse of inmates is a particularly large problem in juvenile detention centers, where 90% of victims of staff abuse say a female correctional officer was the perpetrator.
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 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 (2.9%) and mixed-race (4.0%) inmates were slightly more likely than black (1.6%) inmates to report sexual victimization by other inmates, while black men (2.6%) and mixed race men (3.9%) were slightly 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.
During 2016 and 2017, the U.S Department of Justice and the Bureau of Justice statistics updated the data collected for the Prison Rape Elimination Act (2003) through the National Survey of Youth in Custody (NSYC). The National Survey of Youth in Custody provided an estimate of youth reporting sexual victimization in juvenile facilities through computerized self-interviewing technology. This survey was first conducted in June 2008 and the third data was collected in 2017. The collected data highlighted that sexual assault in female-only juvenile facilities (5.3%) was more than three times greater than in male-only facilities (1.5%). Youth-on-youth sexual assault was lowest (1.1%) in facilities where almost all youth reported to have first learned sexual assault was not allowed within the first twenty-four hours of arrival. For facilities with a 76% greater concentration of youth with a history of psychiatric conditions, there was a 4.0% reported incidents of sexual assault by another youth. Youth reported a 5.9% of staff sexual misconduct for facilities with multiple living units, in comparison to 2.1% of youth in facilities with single units. To conclude, rates of staff sexual misconduct were highest in facilities where youth perceived the facility staff to be unfair (10.3%), youth had the fewest positive perceptions of staff (9.7%), and youth worried about physical assault by other youth (8.2%) or staff (11.2%).
Risk factors for victimization and perpetration Concerning victimization by other inmates, many risk factors have been identified through research: race, size or stature, age, awkwardness, naivete, appearing to be intellectually challenged, not being affiliated with a gang, appearing to be homosexual, being disliked by peers and staff, reporting a prior history of sexual victimization, having a middle class background, lacking assertiveness, reporting concern regarding the possibility of victimization, getting other inmates in trouble, committing a hate crime, and committing a sexual crime against a child. There has been less research on risk factors for perpetration, but a few factors have nevertheless been identified: number of prior incarcerations, history of predation or violence, length of sentence, extent of criminal history, size or stature, duration of current sentence that has been served, race, age, and type of crime committed.
Research in this field has consistently concluded that being of European American descent was a risk factor for victimization. The few studies that have looked at how race may impact the likelihood of perpetration of sexual violence and assault found that the majority of victims said their perpetrator had been African American. Much of the early research has been described by the Bureau of Justice Statistics as too small for valid generalizations about the entire US correctional population to be made. Additionally, much of the research on the topic of sexual assault and rape in prison has relied on retrospective self-reports of victimization and self-reports of traits.
Most research on size and stature as a risk factor has lacked explicit definitions of what exact measurements would warrant a large or small characterization. Still, studies more often find that perpetrators tend to be larger than their victims, although there has been research conducted that concluded that victims tended to be overweight or small or large in stature, with perpetrators being of an "average" weight.
As far as age goes, there have been some conflicting conclusions regarding whether perpetrators tend to be older or younger than the general prison population, but it has consistently been found that victims tend to be younger than their perpetrators, with one study finding that victimized inmates were on average about 20.5 years of age, while another stated an average of 34 years old.
One study had found that a homosexual sexual orientation was a risk factor for perpetration, and a heterosexual sexual orientation before one was incarcerated was a risk factor for victimization, but much of the other research that has been done on this topic conflicts with this conclusion. One study had found that seven out of every ten inmates who identify as bisexual or homosexual reported being sexually assaulted in prison, and another study had found that homosexual inmates were 2.3 times as likely as heterosexual inmates to be the targets of sexual assault. Multiple authors have concluded that openly positive opinions of homosexual behaviors or homosexuality in general increase the risk of victimization. For more on this topic, see the section on prison rape and sexuality located below.
Staff frequently help place inmates into particular housing units to lower an inmate's risk of harm, but effectively evaluating risk during inmate intake is an ongoing issue, as conventional tools for evaluating risk have time commitment and background information requirements that are unreasonable to satisfy during intake. Additionally, one must often go through significant training to use them. Furthermore, a study from 2006 of twelve prisons found that staff at eight of them felt that, concerning appropriately managing sexual misconduct among the prisoners, they lacked training completely. Staff at overcrowded prisons may also be incentivized to avoid attaching a "high risk" label to those who may be at a high risk of victimization, as staff are required to isolate them, which may be problematic and not at all feasible when there is not enough space available to meet these requirements- This issue needs to be addressed as both correctional facility staff and imprisoned people share the belief that rates of sexual victimization would fall if more effective methods of screening and separating potential victims and abusers were developed.