Another other blind spot in statistics is that
all handsome boys are approached at one time or
another and in one way or another by homosexual
men. Where the dividing line occurs between
homosexual seduction and paedophilia escapes me.
Future generations will look back on this
politically confused one with astonishment.
Keith
At 20:28 21/06/2012, Natalia wrote:
I wouldn't count on the suggestion that more men
are raped than women now, but below a realistic
scenario is described which certainly augments
the numbers to that effect. I might suggest that
rapes, along with general violence, would be
much less likely if they had only one inmate per
cell, but can't expect the system to change for
the better. The system wants as many inmates as
it can get, after all. Once the system
collapses, and they're forced to release
countless, let's hope it's the victims, rather
than the perpetrators who are given parole.
The second story is focused on female youths in
detention. We had been discussing
genes,environment, and epigenetics, and I found
the stats presented were rather similar, though
not quite as bad, to percentages found in
history of early abuse in mental health patients.
Natalia
Men Outnumber Women Among American Rape Victims
<http://www.outsidethebeltway.com/men-outnumber-women-among-american-rape-victims/>http://www.outsidethebeltway.com/men-outnumber-women-among-american-rape-victims/
<http://outsidethebeltway.com>James Joyner · Sunday, February 5, 2012
Statistics are notoriously slippery, but the
figures that suggest that violence has been
disappearing in the United States contain a
blind spot so large that to cite them
uncritically, as the major papers do, is to
collude in an epic con. Uncounted in the
official tallies are the hundreds of thousands
of crimes that take place in the countrys
prison system, a vast and growing residential
network whose forsaken tenants increasingly bear
the brunt of Americas propensity for anger and violence.
Crime has not fallen in the United Statesits
been shifted. Just as Wall Street connived with
regulators to transfer financial risk from
spendthrift banks to careless home buyers, so
have federal, state, and local legislatures
succeeded in rerouting criminal risk away from
urban centres and concentrating it in a
proliferating web of hyperhells. The statistics
touting the countrys crime-reduction miracle,
when juxtaposed with those documenting the
quantity of rape and assault that takes place
each year within the correctional system, are
exposed as not merely a lie, or even a damn
liebut as the single most shameful lie in American life.
From 1980 to 2007, the number of prisoners held
in the United States quadrupled to 2.3 million,
with an additional 5 million on probation or parole.
[...]
Victims in juvenile facilities, or facilities
for women, have an even tougher time: usually
its the guards, rather than the inmates, who
coerce them into sex. The guards tell their
victims that no one will believe them, and that
complaining will only make things worse. This is
sound advice: even on the rare occasions when
juvenile complaints are taken seriously and
allegations are substantiated, only half of
confirmed abusers are referred for prosecution,
only a quarter are arrested, and only 3 percent
end up getting charged with a crime.
In January, prodded in part by outrage over a
series of articles in the New York Review of
Books, the Justice Department finally released
an estimate of the prevalence of sexual abuse in
penitentiaries. The reliance on filed complaints
appeared to understate the problem. For 2008,
for example, the government had previously
tallied 935 confirmed instances of sexual abuse.
After asking around, and performing some
calculations, the Justice Department came up
with a new number: 216,000. Thats 216,000
victims, not instances. These victims are often
assaulted multiple times over the course of the
year. The Justice Department now seems to be
saying that prison rape accounted for the
majority of all rapes committed in the US in
2008, likely making the United States the first
country in the history of the world to count more rapes for men than for women.
Americas prison system is a moral catastrophe.
The eerie sense of security that prevails on the
streets of lower Manhattan obscures, and depends
upon, a system of state-sponsored suffering as
vicious and widespread as any in human history.
Dismantling the system of American gulags, and
holding accountable those responsible for their
operation, presents the most urgent humanitarian imperative of our time.
Progressives lament the growth of private
prisons (prisons for profit). But its sadism,
not avarice, that fuels the countrys prison
crisis. Prisoners are not the victims of poor
planning (as other progressive reformers have
argued)they are the victims of an ideological
system that dehumanizes an entire class of human
being and permits nearly infinite violence
against it. As much as a physical space, prisons
denote an ethical space, or, more precisely, a
space where ordinary ethics are suspended. Bunk
beds, in and of themselves, are not cruel and
unusual. University dorms have bunk beds, too.
What matters is what happens in those beds. In
the dorm room, sex, typically consensual. In
prisons, also sex, but often violent rape. The
prisons are overcrowded, we are told (and, in
fact, courts have ruled). Overcrowding is a
euphemism for an authoritarian nightmare.
While the attempt to count the number of rapes
in Americas prisons is new, the problem is not.
Alas, its one quite unlikely to go away because
the overwhelming majority of Americans are
perfectly happy to shift the risk of violent
crime off our streets and out of our
neighborhoods and into walled communities where
people regarded as little more than vicious
animals are housed. That they face a good chance
of being raped while there is variously seen as
fodder for jokes, the wicked getting their just
desserts, or collateral damage. Its virtually
inconceivable that political will to do
something about the problem will coalesce any time soon.
via <https://twitter.com/#%21/JimmySky/status/166192202765189120>Jimmy Gerrond
Invisible Prisoners: Why Are So Many Children,
Especially Girls, Placed in Solitary Confinement?
<http://www.rhrealitycheck.org/article/2012/06/18/girls-in-juvenile-justice-an-invisible-population>http://www.rhrealitycheck.org/article/2012/06/18/girls-in-juvenile-justice-an-invisible-population
by
<http://www.rhrealitycheck.org/people/yasmin-vafa>Yasmin
Vafa, Human Rights Project for Girls
June 18, 2012 - 10:43pm (<http://www.rhrealitycheck.org/print/20028>Print)
When we hear about solitary confinement, we
often imagine it as a form of extreme punishment
inflicted on the most vicious and dangerous
criminals in prison. The last thing you would
expect is for this practice to be inflicted on children.
But it is. All across this country, children are
being placed in solitary for a host of different
reasons ranging from protection to the most minor misbehaviors.
This practice is even more disturbing when you
consider the distinct pathways of girls into the
juvenile justice system. We often talk about the
school-to-prison pipeline for boys but for
girls, it is a totally different narrative, more
readily identified as the sexual-violence-to
prison pipeline. According to the Office of
Juvenile Justice Delinquency and Prevention,
<http://www.ojjdp.gov/pubs/236477.pdf>approximately
600,000 girls are arrested in the U.S. annually.
<http://www.aclu.org/blog/womens-rights/not-isolated-case>Most
of these girls are remanded for non-violent
offenses such as truancy, running away,
loitering, alcohol and substance use, and
violations to prior court orders for non-violent
status offenses. Moreover, evidence shows that
<http://womensissues.about.com/od/girlsteensyoungwomen/a/Girls-In-Juvenile-Justice-System.htm>73
percent of girls in juvenile detention have
previously suffered some form of physical or
sexual abuse. This abuse is often the factor
that propelled the child into the juvenile
justice system, as it is often the abuse that is
the root cause of the girls running away,
becoming truant, substance abuse, etc.
Once inside, girls are forced to maneuver a
system that does not address their specific
needs or take into account the complex trauma
they have endured. Family court judges and
detention center staff are rarely provided
appropriate trauma training and are generally
unaware of the damaging impact of policies such
as strip searches, physical restraints, and
particularly solitary confinement on survivors
of physical and sexual abuse and trauma.
There is a growing body of evidence that
demonstrates the severe psychiatric consequences
of placing individuals, and particularly
children in solitary confinement. Prisoners who
have experienced solitary confinement have been
shown to engage in self-mutilation at much
higher rates than the average population. These
prisoners are also known to attempt or commit
suicide more often than those who were not held
in isolation. In fact, studies show that
juveniles are
<http://www.campaignforyouthjustice.org/Downloads/Jailing_Juveniles_Take_Action_Kit.pdf>19
times more likely to kill themselves in
isolation than in general population and that
juveniles in general, have the highest suicide rates of all inmates in jails.
Despite all these facts, when girls in the
juvenile justice system express evidence of or
the desire to self harm, the
<http://www.aclu.org/blog/human-rights-prisoners-rights-womens-rights/exposing-secret-punishment-incarcerated-children>typical
response is to put them in solitary confinement.
While these girls are being placed in solitary
for their own protection, there is no
consideration given to the fact that such
practices deepen existing trauma. When subjected
to isolation, these youth are often locked down
for
<http://www.campaignforyouthjustice.org/Downloads/Jailing_Juveniles_Take_Action_Kit.pdf>23
hours per day in small cells with no natural
light. This confinement can
<http://www.aclu.org/blog/womens-rights/not-isolated-case>last
several days, weeks or even months, which leads
to severe anxiety, paranoia, and further
exacerbation of mental distress. The ACLU
<http://www.aclu.org/blog/womens-rights/strip-searching-and-solitary-confinement-girls-texas-state-school>has
reported that in certain juvenile detention
facilities, girls are restrained with brutal
force and are regularly locked up in solitary
confinement a punishment used for minor
misbehaviors as well as for girls who express wanting to hurt themselves.
For example, after conducting
<http://www.aclu.org/blog/womens-rights/not-isolated-case>interviews
with a number of girls in juvenile detention,
the ACLU uncovered that some of the reasons
behind girls solitary confinement were as
trivial as giving their crying friend a hug and
singing Happy Birthday. The
<http://www.aclu.org/blog/womens-rights/strip-searching-and-solitary-confinement-girls-texas-state-school>report
goes on to say that [n]ot receiving proper
treatment and left alone with their emotions,
many girls are driven to cut themselves, bang
their heads against the concrete walls, and
attempt suicide, which often lead detention
facility staff to respond with physical
restraint, pepper spray, and further solitary
confinement. These approaches are simply
unacceptable when you take into account the
abuse suffered by the vast majority of these
girls and their dire need for services and interventions.
This week, the Senate Judiciary Subcommittee on
the Constitution, Human Rights, and Civil Rights
is holding the first-ever Congressional hearing
on the issue of solitary confinement in U.S.
prisons and jails. One of the issues that we
hope is brought to light during this hearing is
the practice of solitary confinement of girls in
the juvenile justice system. Numerous studies
show the damaging effects of solitary
confinement on children and particularly
children with proven histories of mental and
physical trauma. Due to the fact that such a
large percentage of girls entering juvenile
detention have endured sexual and/or physical
trauma, isolation techniques are not an
appropriate disciplinary or protective measure
on this vulnerable population of children. This
abuse of abuse victims must stop. It is time to
finally look at this invisible population. A
population of girls in need of services not
further victimization under the guise of rehabilitation.
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Keith Hudson, Saltford, England http://allisstatus.wordpress.com
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