Thank you AdSense!
Didn’t read the whole thread so maybe someone already said this but sex in prison is more about power and control than about attraction.
Those who rape don’t see themselves as gay, but rather merely exerting their power and satisfying their very masculine sexual urges with a weaker/dominated person. With women obviously not readily available, by circumstance this involves sex with other men
Somebody already said that. But you’re probably too busy to read my reply.
Here’s a nice story about a cool superintendent in another beyond third world standards US prison.
You’re resurrecting the thread two weeks later to ask me that?
The answer is: No. I stopped replying to you because there wasn’t any point in talking to you anymore. You asserted that European prisoners are sexually assaulted much less than American ones. Another poster and I asked you for evidence. You said we should have to provide evidence that you were wrong. I asked you again for evidence. You said you “assumed” there was no sexual assault in European prisons because you hadn’t heard anyone talking about it and “a single prisoner raped” would make the news. Which I guess to you means it never happens, right?
I asked for evidence again and you posted a link to an article from the Economist putting the rate of all sexual assaults (rape and lesser; inmate and guard) in American prisons at 3-4%, and then for some reason threw in a passive-aggressivey crack about how we’ll never get the system fixed because “lawyers” (OMG I am one!) think prison rape is “normal” and doesn’t need fixing.
I asked yet again whether you had any evidence of the rate in Europe so that we could see whether your original claim was right or not. You said you were “not going to bother” looking for that evidence. You later said you had looked for any sort of comparable European statistics and couldn’t find any, which is the same result that I had had when I looked into it. You took that as proof that people in European prisons simply aren’t assaulted. You then went off-topic accusing the US of incarcerating too many people (I agree) and housing “non-violent offenders in with the worst of the worst,” which I think is not true (at least here in CA) except in the general sense that they are housed in the same facility (but separate sections), and then told me to “educate myself.”
You then posted a link to a paper, which I read, from a British journal. Although the paper is pretty clearly pushing the view that rape is more prevalent in American prisons than British ones, it does it the same way you do: by simply asserting that it’s so, noting that people talk about the problem more in America, and then saying there’s no actual research regarding comparative statistics. One part of the paper that’s interesting, though, notes that people’s perception of rape in American prisons was very high (“near universal”, “epidemic”, “constant”), but studies put the actual American prison rape rate at 1.3% in the state system and 0.3% in the federal system. The authors found essentially no studies for Europe, but noted a couple of very small studies for the UK that put the rate for prisoner sexual assault (I assume this is more than just rapes but they’re not clear) between zero and 2%. Although this is pretty much the same as the US, I freely concede that the studies are way too small to tell us anything useful. The paper then finishes up with a frankly bizarre couple of pages asserting that there are lots of rapes in US prisons because black inmates are raping white ones to get revenge for slavery and lynchings.
Right after that the thread turned into a bunch of people posting photographs of prison cells, and then you posted the devastating one-two punch argument that people convicted for pot go to pound-you-in-the-ass prison (not true, although I doubt you care) and that I must be wrong about prison rape, because if I knew what I was talking about I would have stopped all crime in Los Angeles. AMIRITE?!?
So, if at this point you’re still with me and wondering why I stopped replying to you, it’s because (a) you obviously not only didn’t have any evidence to back up your assertion when you made it, you couldn’t even find any afterwards (and neither could I); and (b) you’re one of those internet-argument people, which is not what I’m looking for on Qt3.
I am in no way an expert on American prisons, much less on the comparison between American ones and European ones. When you made that claim about how much better the prisons in Europe are, I looked to see if that was true, and couldn’t find anything. Like I said before, if anyone can find the statistics, I’d be interested in seeing them.
Boy I hope that’s not a hostage.
/Hans gets killed
You just got ass-pounded in the prison of QT3, Hans.
Obviously he went to a US prison, AMIRITE?
Obviously.
US unique (satisfying statistics obviously don’t exist).
How nice, a cheerleading team.
At least you admit you’re no expert on the prison system you send people to. I’ll admit that I did make some broad claims. But the rest of your summary is wildly inaccurate.
At least I found a paper backing my claim, and as predicted you dismissed it. I Said that it was hard to prove the absence of something, but that any search on the issue made it pretty clear that it’s not a wild claim that I am alone in making - something your reply gloss over. You latch on to the issue about peoples perception, but you fail to offer an explanation as to why the perception is so (according to you, but not backed up by any links) wildly inaccurate and why the people, governments and human rights organisations of Europe are so blind to the abuse taking place in our prisons (again according to you).
I know that I’ve made generalizations and it’s also important to note, that there is no such thing as an European prison - a prison in Greece is not like a prison in Sweden (but both are probably still nicer than most US prisons). I also know that not all US prisons are alike, but would like to point out that both the popsicle prison in the article above and the tent prisons of Arizona would result in cases before the European Human Rights Court if any EU member state tried that. But how do I prove the non-existence of such prisons to you?
But it is a fact that the US prison system is often compared to countries like Iran and China and that you guys have many records amongst Western Nations that I wouldn’t be proud of. Prison rape is just one. Instead of nitpicking details in the one paper actually provided, perhaps you should be spending the time finding numbers actually disproving those assertions or numbers proving there’s an equal problem in Europe.
But apparently you’re one of those internet people who’ll rather attack a poster than admit you’re wrong.
But I’ll quit. I am at a disadvantage here. I’m not a native speaker, you’ll keep asking me to prove the absence of something and you’re a lawyer. Trained to use your eloquence when facts are in short supply.
There is definitely sexual assault in European prisons, I know offhand of a few British studies documenting sexual assault in British prisons, at rates comparable to the US. One of them is “Coercive Sexual Behavior in British Prisons as Reported by Adult Ex-Prisoners” which is available online if you have access to a good library.
I don’t. Hopefully somebody with access can quote it.
If the rates are comparable, then I’m somewhat in the wrong - but would like to point out that early on, I pointed out that there’s no such thing as an European prison. Afaik England and Ireland has the highest incarceration rates in Europe (or in the EU).
But I’d still like to see the numbers, before I believe it.
Oh, and I never said that there wasn’t any sexual assaults in European prisons. Or claimed that all Europeans prisons where like the Scandinavian examples above - we were specifically talking about the extent of prison rape.
Well it’s hard to compare numbers. The “Coercive Sexual Behavior in British Prisons” study found that around 5% of participants in the survey reported “sexual coercion” of some kind. This includes, but is not limited to, actual penetrative rape. The US studies report sexual assaults at somewhere between under 1%, to like 40%. I think the consensus tends to be around 3-5% of US prisoners are sexually assaulted. Of course different studies use different definitions of sexual assault, and the extent and validity of studies vary widely.
It is difficult to quote since the text refers to tables, and since copy-pasting from PDFs makes a hash of the formatting. Nevertheless:
Participants
With reference to Ta b l e 4(b), 5.3% were victims of coerced sex. This group reported being sexually coerced within four months of being incarcerated. 2.9% of ‘victim’ participants reported multiple perpetrators; 1.9% more than one perpetrator and 0.5% a single perpetrator. 2.9% reported that the perpetrators were unknown other prisoners; 1.9% reported known other prisoners and 0.5% reported prison staff. All victim participants reported multiple coercive sexual incidents where 5.3% reported that no safer-sex materials had been used during the coercive sexual incident. Victim participants had been predominantly coerced sexually in a prison cell (3.4%) during the evening (1.4%) and night time (1.9%). No incident was reported to the prison authorities. A
number of psychological complications had been reported and included: 51.4% depression; 12.5% anxiety; 5.3% shame and guilt; 3.8% nightmares; 2.4% exacerbated drugs use and 1.0% anger, rage and aggression. Those who suffered from more than one of the stated psychological complications included 5.3%. 18.3% of participants reported that they did not suffer from any of the stated psychological problems. Finally, of the 211 victims, 34 (16.1%) reported being a perpetrator. An additional eight perpetrators contributed to this study who had not been prior victims of sexual coercion, producing a total of 42 perpetrators.
and compared to US prison studies:
Results determining the prevalence of sexual coercion have ranged from 0.3% (McGurk et al. 2000) to 29% (Nacci and Kane 1984). According to Struckman-Johnson and Struckman-Johnson (2000a, 2000b) the rate of sexual coercion varied across the different institutions in their study ranging from 4% to 21%.
Of course this study did not attempt to do a proper review of US studies so the above should be taken with a grain of salt.
Man, after thinking about this, if I had jail staring me in the face I might just look at suicide. I don’t believe in it in most cases, but I just don’t think I could deal with it. I’m not a huge guy so I doubt I could fend off many of those muscle-machine dudes in there for long.
A really horrifying thought to say the least…
Oh, hello old thread.
Just found this bit from QI linked on BoingBoing. No talk of prison rape, just the staggering incarceration rates and modern slave labour (a take I hadn’t even considered). The panel is so aghast they have a hard time making jokes.
Hai thread, I missed you (and the wild claims that everywhere must be like the US, because…?!)
One of you guys linked to this Cracked article on Facebook. Idea #3 is about how not letting prisoners getting assraped might help improve recidivism rates.
The funny article cites this and this, which is interesting. But of course won’t satisfy certain people because neither sets out and proves a negative. Perhaps Norway’s nice prisons are full of unreported prison rape…
America - land of the 99% free.
99.257%, to be accurate.
Edit: I had replied, but on reflection, there’s no point in perpetuating this any further. NINJA DELETION!
Technically British prisons (in the study) isn’t the same as European prisons; it wouldn’t surprise me if continental Europe was significantly different.