I don’t have words for the outrage I felt after reading Think Progress’s article on how the group American Action Forum is claiming that The Department of Justice’s plan to crack down on prison rape and assault is too costly.
Even though cost savings would be incurred due to less medical expenses, Think Progress noted that the Weekly Standard also complained about the costs associated with the plan.
“The Weekly Standard echoed AAF’s response, bemoaning the cost of preventing people from being raped in prison. The total expected cost is less than 1 percent of the overall cost of our prison system and ultimately “end up saving money — for example, by avoiding the medical costs of injuries suffered by rape victims,” according to the New York Times.
Sexual assault in prisons is so prevalent that more men are raped in the United States than women. Actually doing something about that, however, is too “costly” a “burden” for conservatives.”
What about the cost to the men being raped in prison, now numbering so high it’s a crisis? What is the cost to generations of men and their families for being locked away and tortured? What is the cost of drug laws and systems of enforcement that create imbalances in who winds up in jail to begin with? Does that matter to AAF or Weekly Standard? It matters to me. It should matter to all of us far more than how much money is made on new prisons or keeping costs low at them, despite rampant abuses.
I don’t have the words but I hope you all do. I hope you make your voices known, not only here in comments but at the various sites linked in this piece.
Photo of hands in jail courtesy of Shutterstock
About Julie Gillis
I’m going to get very liberal here for a moment: How the hell can they say that military spending can’t be cut at all and then say that trying to prevent rape is costing too much! It’s enraging.
(On a lighter note, you took my article for the blog. Kidding).
The two aren’t related.
The crux of the complaint is that this is an “unfunded mandate” because the justice department is creating a set of standards that the prison system, which is paid for by states and localities, is required to follow.
This isn’t actually a new cost being paid out by the Federal Government, but rather a cost that the Federal Gov’t is requiring the states to take on without any additional help.
If you read through the AAF’s report, the actual theme is “unfunded mandate” rather than “cannot afford at any cost.”
As a result, comparisons to things like military spending are non sequitur because those come from a totally different budget (that being the Federal budget). If anything this is closer to a “state’s rights” argument than an actual “we can’t afford this” argument.
It’s still a shame that they can’t provide constructive criticism (perhaps a competing plan to solve the same problem, but within existing Federal Funding?).
Mike, if Think Progress was honest about the AAF’s criticisms of the funding mandates on local governments, they wouldn’t be able to so easily demonize conservatives. If AAF hadn’t criticized the proposal, Think Progress wouldn’t have bothered to mention the issue of male rape victims at all.
I have a funding proposal for Julie and other liberals that are so conveniently outraged: Let’s stop all local government funding of Planned Parenthood and instead divert all those dollars to stop rape in prison. What do you think? Would you rather tax dollars go to providing free and/or subsidized abortions for women, or to prevent men from being raped? In the reality of local governments, many of which by law must balance their budgets, choices must be made. This is yours. Choose one and explain why.
BTW, this is the first time I have read that more men are raped in the US than women. Flies in the face of the feminist mantra, doesn’t it?
I had no idea feminist mantra involved rape or victimization at all … I was under the impression that it dealt with equality, and realistically looking at both the female gender and female sex instead of viewing it through the lenses of generalizations and stereotypes.
But then again, I also don’t understand why balancing the government’s budget should be the concern of a writer when even politicians so rarely concern themselves with it.
I don’t know if it flies in the face of mantra. I’m a feminist and I put this post up. I’m a feminist and I’m against sexual assault no matter who it is on.
As for your devil’s bargain, I’ll take a third choice and ask that my tax money not be spent on corporate subsidies and bailouts, war machinery and totalitarian drug enforcement on soft drugs (which lines prisons full of people) and instead be spent on human services for men, women, and children alike.
Planned Parenthood spends approximately three percent of it’s budget on abortion services, with the rest being preventative health care (preventing pregnancies thus preventing abortions). “It’s also worth noting that federal law already forbids Planned Parenthood from using the funds it receives from the government for abortions.”
Also, there are cash savings to think of by reducing prison rape. How about 50 billion per year? Spend 500 Million to save 50 billion.
And finally, think of what a great thing it would be to stop rape in general. I find it so strange that people would fight something like that. Too much money to stop something so horrible? How can we not spend the money?
Alright I’m being all cynical right now…but I wonder how much of the response is related to the anti-Obama mentality that seems to be running through the GOP and conservatives. I’m thinking it’s probably both that and this bizarre acceptance that if we don’t have the resources for social services, we should get rid of the social services…as opposed to restructuring the system to find the resources for those social services.
(I also totally blogged about it, so I’m going to plug that right now: here it is)
And perhaps it’s irksome somehow that a liberal magazine is in support of ending male rape? I’d think people would be rejoicing that there is some forward momentum at all.
There is an impressive “win-at-all-costs” mentality throughout politics and even the city of DC itself. I feel like I have been a broken record about this in my pieces, but we’re at war with ourselves, both as a country and as individuals
Julie,
I suspect that the idea of rejoicing at “some forward momentum at all,” is little different from the many conservatives who thought women would “rejoice” when female politicians like Michelle Bachmann and Sarah Palin became prominent members of the conservative establishment.
Liberals pointed out, correctly, that having more female politicians is not actually “forward progress” when those politicians are people like Bachmann and Palin. This is the case even though having more female politicians should technically be “forward progress.”
Similarly, there is a case to be made that unfunded federal mandates, for untested policies with dubious track records, that shift cost burdens onto stretched state budgets, are a bad idea even if it is technically “forward progress.”
I was Always thrilled at any woman running for office as it proved that they could do it, though I always laughed at some of the irony around women’s traditional roles. Also just goes to show that some women can Fight dirty and play mean. Progress towards stopping rape is a huge thing.
“Liberals pointed out, correctly, that having more female politicians is not actually “forward progress” when those politicians are people like Bachmann and Palin.”
- Because liberals, like Mike L, aren’t really interested in more women or minorities getting involved in government. They are only interested in getting more LIBERALS invovled in government. If they don’t have the “correct” (i.e. liberal) beliefs they aren’t worth it, which just goes to show that all the talk of diversity for gender and race is hollow on the left.
“irksome somehow that a liberal magazine is in support of ending male rape?”
- Its irksome that a liberal magazine is only concerned with male rape when criticizing a fiscally conservative group. Not male rape on it own, in which case they never write about it.
That’s an incredibly unfair choice to ask someone make. Fund the prevention of this bodily intrusion or that bodily intrusion, PICK ONE SO I CAN PROVE YOU DON’T CARE ABOUT MEN!
Seriously, instead of what you’re trying to do here, which is incredibly transparent, do something for the men and women being raped in prisons. Tell your congressmen that you are concerned about rape in prison and you want them to do something about it. There are plenty of corners the government could cut that don’t involve taking from an important program that women need.
“There are plenty of corners the government could cut that don’t involve taking from an important program that women need.”
- You just proved my point with the implication that important programs that women need supersede those of men. If it were otherwise, feminists would be advocating against prison rape of men as aggressively as they against the rape of women. They don’t.
I’m going to go out on a limb and state they they might feel differently if it was a son, father, a close relative, or themselves who were assaulted. Bet they could find the money then.
Does this include female prisons? I’ve only seen ToySoldiers talk about this, has jezebel or other feminist sites picked up on it? Curious to see some MRA takes on the issue too.
Why does AAF not just cut to the chase? They have no regard for human suffering and would really just prefer that all annoyances literally die.
It’s true that a lot of the whining in the AAF article is about the unfunded mandate portion, and Mike L. makes a good point (constructive criticism would be infinitely more useful than simple nay-saying), but at the heart of the matter is putting a price on confronting a crisis.
I’m actually confused by the figures being quoted!
Prison Rape of men or women by men or women is not just a US issue. In the UK it was found that the biggest preventative measure was weeding out guards who enjoyed facilitating and allowing it – think Shawshank Redemption – and you get the idea!
Question:
Sexual assault in prisons is so prevalent that more men are raped in the United States than women.
Why is this worded in a way that sounds like its supposed to be cause for pause over the possibility that more men are raped that women in US?
I wonder if it has something to do with the tendency to want to surgically separate prison rape from other forms of rape.
Oh yeah and I wrote about this myself.
I quoted a few bits out of the DOJ plan to see exactly what was being called too costly.
“A part of me wonder is this is stemming from the idea that prison rape is funny or that it is something that inmates deserve to suffer (and of course most of those condemnations are against male inmates). ” I suspect there are people who feel that if you commit a crime, any punishment in prison is just fair game.
I think that’s sick.
I know right?
I can back that suspicion up with actual conversations I’ve had with people. There have been times that I’ve noticed that when a man is accused, not even convicted, of a crime the rape joking starts. And the more horrible the crime the more intense it can get, especially if we’re talking about a sex crime against a child.
Jokes about not dropping the soap, being someone’s boyfriend while in prison, to even direct “I hope he gets raped in prison”.
(And again speaking for myself I don’t think I’ve ever heard anyone joke about a woman getting raped in prison, but not to say it doesn’t happen.)
Also think about what’s happening. These people get tossed into an environment where they know most people don’t just not care if they are attacked but are actively hoping they get attacked. Then they are taken out of that environment, put back into free society, and then people wonder why so many criminals end up back in prison?
Wait wait…I was with you until the bit where you point out you don’t think you’ve heard a joke about women getting raped in prison. Mate, rape jokes directed at women don’t have to be prison specific because there are a shit ton of rape jokes out there about women, full stop.
You are right in saying that the widespread prison rape jokes aimed at men are indicative of a culture that has accepted that part of going to prison means getting raped, and that’s horrible. By the same token, though, the widespread rape jokes aimed at women are also indicative of a culture that has accepted that part of being a woman is being subjected to sexual harassment, and that’s also horrible.
Mate, rape jokes directed at women don’t have to be prison specific because there are a shit ton of rape jokes out there about women, full stop.
I don’t recall saying they had to be prison specific.
As I said I was only speaking for myself.
By the same token, though, the widespread rape jokes aimed at women are also indicative of a culture that has accepted that part of being a woman is being subjected to sexual harassment, and that’s also horrible.
You’re on the money with that observation.
Serious question:
What’s the difference between using the phrase “full stop” as used above, and instead typing out a phrase along the lines of “shut up, don’t argue”?
I’m having a hard time seeing a significant difference in meaning between the two, and I cannot help but wonder if “full stop,” again, as used above, is really helpful to discourse.
I’m going to assume you are being serious and not provocative at heather, but the full stop read to me as “all this happens full stop” as in it’s all inclusive. That she was referring to the list of things not Danny.
I guess I’m confused because it doesn’t seem like a list if there’s only one entry.
Also, Danny is 100% correct in his comment below that the phrase “full stop” is usually synonymous with “shut up, don’t argue” when used in the blogosphere. I’ve even seen it used this way by some contributors to this site (some of the articles by Nikki come to mind, though those tend to be more emotionally effusive than other items appearing here).
The combination of list-with-just-one-item and the use of the phrase elsewhere led me to question its use here.
Believe me Mike for a moment there that’s what I thought she meant by it. And it took a moment to decide to hope that that wasn’t how she meant it. But what really almost made me lose my cool was the “mate” part. It came off sounding like a dismissive “pal”, “buddy”, or of course “dude”.
But let me guess, you’ve seen it used as “shut up, don’t argue” before too haven’t you?
When a term that has good use is misused and abused to the point that it becomes a trigger response for other people confusion like this is bound to happen.
I guess the question becomes do you trust heather and can you argue with familiarity “mate” which is a common Britishism or do you not trust her. For it reads to me like two peoPle arguing in good faith and with a level of history and familiarity and then looking for insult where there may be none. I think heather is at pride all day so she may not see this, but my understanding of her is she respects you Danny and she has at times in emails referred to me as “mate” when weve bickered about things. I e felt dismissed by people of the site, often actually. And I usually take it offline if I figure it merits it. This feels like a derail. It might not be but it feels like it.
For it reads to me like two peoPle arguing in good faith and with a level of history and familiarity and then looking for insult where there may be none.
Yeah. I had to stop and a bit and chill out.
. I think heather is at pride all day so she may not see this, but my understanding of her is she respects you Danny and she has at times in emails referred to me as “mate” when weve bickered about things.
Oh yeah I believe she does and the fact that she uses “mate” on a very regular basis around here needs to be counted into this as well. She has a very long history of using that word in everyday chat around here. Which is what cooled me off.
I e felt dismissed by people of the site, often actually. And I usually take it offline if I figure it merits it. This feels like a derail. It might not be but it feels like it.
I’ve actually been having a background exchange with Heather for the last day or so, but not related to this. It’s been good for me.
Don’t sweat it Mike, she’s one of the good ones. It’s cool.
All in all I think all four of us can agree that rape is some terrible shit and trying to cut down a plan to take action against it because it’s too costly in the face of spending billions on all sorts of less than worth causes is f’d up.
I’ve heard of them, though they weren’t really jokes but indiciations of punishment. Believe it was in a movie but the term “broom-stick” scared the shit out of me (it was said for women but I don’t recall seeing a scene using it, and another movie used it as a rape device for men in a prison scene). It disgusted me to the core that I hoped the movie would quickly turn into some prisoner gets superhero abilities n kills those rapist fucks violently. I think I’ve seen movies where the plot had a woman who was raped by broomstick but I’m pretty sure they didn’t show it in a violent scene, just talked about after the fact. I’m guessing there are movies that do show it, (not graphically of course) but as a way to really send the message home of the horror that goes on in prison, but in the movies I’ve seen they show the male violence a bit more “real time”. I think American History X had it happen to Edward Norton?
Just thinking about that stuff pisses me off, it’s fucking shameful n disgusting that this happens even ONCE in real life. They’re prisoners, the prison guards etc have a moral duty of care to protect them. If you see their life as so worthless then save the torture n just give them a humane death if you can’t handle their existence. And after seeing the U.S, Australia etc talk about the brutality of the Iraq regime whilst that shit goes on in our prisons it’s disgustingly hypocritical.
500million is cheap to save billions, but saving our collective moral being is a cost you cannot quantify.
Ah just wanted to point out that there are movies and cable t.v. shows (from HBO and Showtime and the like) that do depict rape quite graphically with both male and female victims. In the movies/shows I’m thinking of, rape is depicted as something that is absolutely horrible, and that’s the point.
Yeah rape n sexual violence is one of the only things that really makes my skin crawl in fictional media, I can see the Braveheart ending without trouble but the rape scenes of both men n women just feel so aggravating.
Totally understandable…heck it makes my skin crawl too. I just thought you were saying that one was usually depicted more graphically than another or something.
Oh no nothing like that, just in the movies I’ve seen. 95% or more of the prison movies I’ve seen are male prisons, I haven’t seen many of the HBO or straight to video movies and the topshelf movies are mostly male prisons that I can see. That could be reflective n similar to the gender ratio of prisoners though. I don’t doubt that there would be some extreme examples of violence in a female prison movie, just that I haven’t seen it. I just remember something about broom sticks in one movie and how it was ghastly to hear, I think they were telling a female inmate about what happens to scare her in the movie I remember. The movies I have seen seem to be more delicate with the females, fights happen but it wasn’t shown much whereas more of the movies I’ve seen of the men tended to be ultra-brutal like American History X. I don’t know of any female variant of AH:X, in fact the most brutally violent movies I’ve seen were of males. By brutally violent I mean quite graphic, gritty, rape n torture, not just a few seconds of cut cut kill like Kill Bill to which I’m desensitized but stuff like AH:X, the warehouse scene in Law Abiding Citizen, Ichi the killer (haven’t watched this though, seen parts of it and all I can say is….holy f), A Clockwork Orange, the vietnam POW torture movies, etc.
I’d ask to know what decent female prisoner movies are, but I’m not sure I want to see them at the moment.
Ah I got you…well more men than women are in prison in the U.S. so it does sort of follow that movies about prison would more likely be about men in prison. But let’s see here…the HBO series Oz was about a men’s prison, but it featured a woman on death row. Um…I know there’s a movie from the 1950s about women in prison that’s got subtle anti-lesbian undertones, and anti-masculine-women undertones…mind it’s from the 50s so it’s not exactly graphic. I can’t remember what it’s called.
What do you mean Danny? I think it means what it says, men are raped to an extent that more men are raped than women. They didn’t differentiate it as if it doesn’t count. If we understand the general narrative to be women are raped more, then perhaps the cause for pause is because this article is actually confronting the narrative.
I’d think that’s a good thing.
Agreed. I was trying to imply that the narrative may have been getting strength for a long time from the tendency to separate prison rape from out of prison rape.
And of course challenging the narrative is a good thing.
In reply to the prison rape forum. As a younger person a little over 10years ago I had made some bad choices related to driving without a drivers license and had to serve some time in jail because of it. The most effective way i feel to eliminate rape would be to have single cells and it may even help with keeping people from being repeat offenders. Because from my experience the inmates who where repeat offenders to a point enjoyed the social aspect and in a way had fun while in jai. Basically just a hangout for awhile with new friends. Single cells would eliminate the fun or enjoyment while in jail. Now the downside to that is the cost and the possibility of no social interaction making a worse criminal than what came in. No one should be raped though so i feel the single cell approach along with designing a plan to include social and remolding into a good citizen would be the best plan.