Top 10 Civil Liberties News Stories of the Week - August 4, 2006 Edition

According to the Bureau of Justic Statistics, more prisoners reported sexual violence in 2005 than 2004--2.8 per 1,000 rather than 2.5 per 1,000. Some 6,241 made formal allegations.

Although the number is going up, there are reasons to suspect that BJS data drastically understates the problem. Comparison of hospital rape cases with formal rape accusations suggests that over 80% of rapes in the general population go unreported--a percentage that is almost certainly higher in the insulated environment of a prison, where snitching to guards or showing any sign of weakness can expose the prisoner to further abuse at the hands of other inmates.

So there are at least two ways of reading the increase in reported incidents. We could take the higher number to mean that more inmates are actually being assaulted, or we could take the number to mean that of the inmates who are being assaulted, more felt ready to file reports with prison authorities in 2005 than in 2004.

I don't know which. I do know that firsthand accounts--such as those compiled in Human Rights Watch's 2001 report, No Escape: Male Rape in U.S. Prisons--indicate that far more than 0.28% of prisoners are victims of sexual assault.