question archive Review the article, "Thinking Critically About Corrections: Prison Rape," located in Chapter 9 of the textbook, Corrections in the 21st Century
Review the article, "Thinking Critically About Corrections: Prison Rape," located in Chapter 9 of the textbook, Corrections in the 21st Century
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Review the article, "Thinking Critically About Corrections: Prison Rape," located in Chapter 9 of the textbook, Corrections in the 21st Century.
James Gilligan, MD, contends that rape in prisons is "an intrinsic and universal part of the punishments that our government metes out to those whom it labels as 'criminal.'"81 In essence, Gilligan suggests, prison administrators passively employ inmate-on-inmate rape as a management tool to control the prisoner population.
Dr. Gilligan bases his charge on three contentions:
First, the relevant legal authorities, from judges to prosecutors who send people to prison, to the prison officials who administer them, are all aware of the existence, the reality, and the near-universality of rape in the prisons. Indeed, this is one reason that many conscientious judges are extremely reluctant to send anyone to prison except when they feel compelled to, either by the violence of the crime or, as is increasingly true, by laws mandating prison sentences even for nonviolent crimes, such as drug offenses.
Second, the conditions that stimulate such rapes (the enforced deprivation of other sources of self-esteem, respect, power, and sexual gratification) are consciously and deliberately imposed upon the prison population by the legal authorities.
Third, all these authorities tacitly and knowingly tolerate this form of sexual violence, passively delegating to the dominant and most violent inmates the power and authority to deliver this form of punishment to the more submissive and nonviolent ones, so that the rapists in this situation are acting as the vicarious enforcers of a form of punishment that the legal system does not itself enforce formally or directly.
Given that rape is universally acknowledged as a crime, Dr. Gilligan's charge is tantamount to an accusation of criminal conspiracy of monumental proportions.
Do you believe there is merit to Dr. Gilligan's claims? If so, how would you propose addressing this issue? If not, why not?
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