Prison Rape Can, And Must, Be Stopped
Don't tell me it's impossible. We just decided not to care.
This week, the family of a man raped and murdered by another inmate in his jail cell brought a lawsuit against the City of Philadelphia. The facts are horrifying, with prison employees placing him in a cell with a known violent offender and then ignoring his screams for help as it all went down. Not that this matters one bit, but the victim was arrested for petty theft, getting into an altercation with a store clerk, and lighting his pants on fire. Say his name: Armani Faison.
He suffered from mental health issues for a long time. But for all of the incantations and the messages on NFL sidelines and t-shirts, this was a Black life that didn’t matter to a whole lot of people.
I mention his mental condition and his offenses even though in a sense I hate to do so- we are all human beings, and it would be just as wrong if Khalid Sheikh Mohammed were allowed to be raped and murdered at Guantanamo Bay. But I think it’s still important to counter something that I think lies behind what happened to Mr. Faison: the American public is perfectly comfortable with prison rape as an imagined punishment for serious criminals.
You can see this, for instance, in the jokes we tell. Especially when a high profile sex abuse case is brought: Bill Cosby, Harvey Weinstein, Jeffrey Epstein, people immediately think of the “justice” of what might happen to him behind bars. And, of course, it does happen (although it’s much less likely to happen to celebrity inmates): 80,000 inmates per year are sexually assaulted.
But to be clear- again, not that it matters, but because I think this is necessary to inform readers of what the actual effect of this attitude is- those 80,000 sexual assault victims per year include plenty of people who did not commit serious crimes. They include people like Mr. Faison, jailed in the local lockup for minor offenses, sometimes beset by mental health issues. They include gender nonconforming males (guys who seem “effeminate” are often targeted because they can’t defend themselves the way a 6 foot 250 pound gang member and murderer can), women who are victimized by male prison guards (when I briefly worked as a habeas lawyer in law school and visited the California Institution for Women, I heard numerous reports of this from the inmates I talked to), and trans people.
What ticks me off more than anything about this is that it is 2022 and we so obviously have the tools to stop this, if we only cared to. Right now, American prisons enforce rules against masturbation and even possession of relatively harmless drugs can get an inmate thrown into solitary confinement. The technology sector has blessed us with tiny, unobtrusive, cheap cameras that can be deployed anywhere. And America has built so many prisons that many states and the federal government have “Supermax” facilities where the supposedly most dangerous prisoners can be held in their own cells with very little human contact. We have all these tools and we can’t stop 80,000 prisoners from being assaulted every year? Come on. We don’t want to stop it.
I think prison wardens and guards read the room. I think they realize the American public doesn’t give a hoot about prisoners, tolerates the threat of rape as part of the criminal punishment, while feeling secure that they are members of the great American middle class which will never be sent to prison and have to face this. Indeed, I suspect some guards even seek entry into the profession because it will provide them access to potential victims in a venue where nobody will stop them. And unfortunately they are right.
But this needs to stop. This is a horrible human rights violation. And I might add that it isn’t good for those middle class taxpaying Americans- ordinary law abiding Philadelphians, for instance, will have to pony up the money to pay compensation to Mr. Faison’s family. Wouldn’t it be better to spend the money on the cameras and procedures and solitary cells necessary to prevent prison rape in the first place?