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| Reduction and prevention |
| By Sarah Etter, News Reporter |
| Published: 11/27/2006 |
When the Prison Rape Elimination Act was passed in 2003, corrections officials knew the legislation would require the reduction and prevention of prison rape. 
Last week, that change began to take shape as California officials joined the Department of Justice for its first PREA review panel in Sacramento. During two days of comprehensive testimony, officials heard about initiatives taking place across the California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation. The three-member panel, including Acting Executive Director L. Jackson Thomas, listened closely as survivors of prisoner rape, corrections officers, transgender inmates, prison sociologists and mental health consultants testified in an ongoing effort to develop PREA standards for the rest of the country. According to Kathy Hall-Martinez, co-executive director of Stop Prisoner Rape, the review panel focused on California because it has the largest correctional system in the country. “Right now the review panel is just doing general fact finding and the examination of California is essentially a snapshot of how things might change for other states,” she says. “Lots of [California] officials are implementing PREA training at their facilities in the state, and they are putting better policies into shape.” The CDCR will implement one such policy in January, which includes increased mandatory training and an extensive partnership between corrections facilities and organizations like SPR. “These sessions gave a sense of how hard it is to implement a new policy,” Hall-Martinez explains. “An organization like CDCR has 56,000 employees that need to be trained to become a part of the PREA process.” Robert Dumond, a mental health counselor specializing in corrections, testified that despite the lack of research on sexual assault, some factors do exist that contribute to prisoner rape, such as lack of supervision, overcrowding, certain architectural features of facilities, and faulty classification systems. “Research has demonstrated that incarcerated victims are more often physically assaulted during attacks, and they may experience repetitive assaults by multiple assailants over a period of time,” Dumond said. “As a result, victims may experience on-going psychological trauma, terror, helplessness, and fear as the physical/sexual abuse continues.” Dumond also displayed a model that included a focus on investigation, data collection and analysis, long term treatment, public education about prisoner rape and staff and inmate training, Hall-Martinez says staff training will be a crucial part of the PREA standards, which should be released in 2008. “One important focus is on how staff should respond. If an inmate does come forward [about being sexually assaulted], we need to look at what an individual officer is going to say to them. It's really a crucial moment and COs need to be well versed in the right way to respond. They need to be supportive and helpful at all times.” Thomas Clinton, an inmate who was raped in a CDCR facility, also gave testimony, documenting his anger at being put into segregation after reporting the assault. Hall-Martinez says this is one of the reasons prisoners are afraid to speak up. “This practice sends the wrong signal,” she adds. “Inmates take this as a punishment for speaking up, and word spreads through out the facility like wildfire. It keeps offenders silent.” According to review panel transcripts, Terry Kupers, a professor at the Wright Institute, discussed her research on the factors that make one offender more susceptible to sexual assault than another. “Big guys with mean snarls are less likely than small young men [to be sexually assaulted],” Kupers explains. “Men and women prisoners suffering from serious mental illnesses are very vulnerable to sexual assault and rape. In crowded correctional facilities where rehabilitation programs are sparse and prisoners relatively idle, the worst traumas and abuses are reserved for prisoners suffering from mental illness.” As the two days of testimony wrap up, Hall-Martinez says the panel review served a sign that PREA is moving to the facility level. “There is a great sense of construction and optimism in these efforts,” she says. “There's a feeling that better policies and practices are being put into place and we're right on the cusp of that. 2007 will turn out to be a big year of research and standards development now.” Related Resources: NTPAC focuses on PREA, 10/09 NIC PREA training and information |
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