Prison Sanctioned Sexual Violence Against LGBTs

I have been learning and thinking a lot lately about the criminal legal system, especially in regards to mass incarceration. It’s been a central topic of discussion in the democratic primary race and the subject of two classes I am taking at Regis right now. In my Liberation Theology class, I read In the Shadow of the Lynching Tree in which James Cohn writes about the mass incarnation of blacks in America as the “modern lynching tree.” Certainly race plays a huge role in mass incarceration and the sentencing of crimes. However, Joey Mogul, Andrea Ritchie, and Kay Whitlock pointed out in Queer Injustice that not only racial minorities, but that LGBT racial minorities are being jailed disproportionately.

But this is just the tip of the iceberg of the problem for LGBT people of color. What is actually happening to these people once in prison is nothing short of criminal. The authors of Queer Injustice report that rape and sexual violence against LGBT inmates occur at rate fifteen times higher than for heterosexuals with a 2007 study of six federal prisons finding that about 67% of LGBT inmates reported being sexually assaulted. What’s worse is that prison staff and guards have done little to protect these men and women, but have actually enforced this violence, “the grim reality is that even though prison policies prohibit all sexual activity and violence, in practice prison officials not only allow and count on forcible sex, but use it to reinforce their own authority.” Clearly, official policy change doesn’t mean anything when those in authority who are supposed to be protecting inmates are the ones enacting sexual violence. So what could possibly be done to combat this?

Something that was frustrating for me about Queer Injustice is that the authors go into graphic detail about the issue of sexual violence within the prisons, but in the final chapter where multiple LGBT organizations are described and connected to specific issues of LGBT criminalization, nothing is mentioned about how activist groups are addressing sexual violence within prisons. This leads me to believe that right now there is a huge gap between this horrendous issue and the LGBT community’s response to it. 

When I did some further research into what current LGBT activist groups are doing about prison safety and rape prevention, I found that most organizations were going about change through legislative change. While I think legislative change in official policies isn’t a bad thing, I can't help but feel that these organizations are wasting their time trying to ensure LGBT prisoners’ safety by changing what they law says. If the ways prisons work and are run simply increase sexual violence, the solution obviously cannot come from the prison itself. Outside intervention has to happen for anything to change. Some states, like California have passed legislation to try to promote LGBT prisoner safety in the way housing is determined, but whether or not safety will be guaranteed for LGBT prisoners is a whole other issue. 

I think that if action and advocacy programs for LGBT inmates could actually get inside the prisons and set up some kind of system of reporting than prison guards and officers could more easily be held accountable to enforcing policy and could less easily get away with controlling prisoners through rape and non-consensual sex acts as well. I could not find any organizations that have such programs, but perhaps activist groups that have previously focused on legal policy change could shift their focus to a more hands-on intervention model.

The other possible solution would be just a complete tear down of the prison system and criminal legal system. One of the things we have discussed in class is the possibility that perhaps trying to reform the prison system isn’t enough. Maybe the system is fundamentally corrupt and prone to corruption that reforms would act like a band-aid would work for cancer. However, I don’t think nihilism about this issue is very realistic or obtainable. I am more of a realist so having a more practical and small-scale action seems like the best option to me.

It is difficult to even wrap my head around a possible solution to this many-layered problem. Should community groups put pressure on prisons and have better monitoring and accountability so that guards cannot get away with rape address the immediate problem? Or, is this problem so huge and imbedded in the present prison system that only a complete restructuring of criminal legal system in United States would put an end to the sexual violence occurring?