Prisoner rape is not a pleasant subject. It seems the only time it is mentioned is as a joke on late-night TV, although it is not a joke. Sexual abuse in our prisons and jails is rampant. It is a national scandal.

A Bureau of Justice Statistics study found that one of every 20 inmates was sexually assaulted in the previous year. For juveniles, it is even worse: 12 percent of juvenile detainees have been victims of sexual assaults. On an average day, 115 adults and 9 juvenile prisoners are sexually assaulted — each and every day of the year. It is shocking that it is not only inmates who are committing these rapes; the BJS found that 44 percent of the perpetrators of substantiated sexual assaults on inmates were prison staff! (READ MORE: FBI Spy Robert Hanssen Dies in Prison)

However, statistics don’t begin to reveal the horror of these assaults. Here are just two accounts of the sexual abuse that plagues America’s prisons and jails.

No Criminal Deserves Rape

Rodney Hulin set a dumpster on fire in his neighborhood. For that prank, that 16-year-old was sentenced to eight years in an adult prison. He was repeatedly beaten and raped from the day he arrived. 

He begged the staff to help him. They told him to fend for himself. When Hulin went to the lieutenant and asked him to intervene, the officer told him that he had two choices: “Fight or f*ck.” Depressed and unwilling to face the remaining years of his sentence at the mercy of sexual predators, young Hulin committed suicide. Suicides like Hulin’s have occurred in jails and prisons across the United States.

At the California State Prison at Corcoran, the guards locked inmate Eddie Dillard in a cell with Wayne Robertson, who was known as the “booty bandit.” Robertson had a history of beating and sodomizing at least 15 smaller and younger cellmates. The guards wanted to punish Dillard for kicking a female officer. So, they forced the diminutive Dillard into the cell with Robertson, who was more than twice his size.

Robertson said he kicked the smaller inmate in the stomach and knocked the wind out of him, “I told him I’d break his neck. He banged on the door and hollered for staff, and nobody came,” So, Robertson was free to sodomize Dillard “all night,” Robertson testified. Robertson alternately beat and raped Dillard for the next two days. (READ MORE: All Politics Are Local — And So Is the Cheating)

In a later interview, Dillard, the victim of this horror, asked, “How can you expect for a person to be subjected to that type of cruelty and then expect them to come back out, back into society, and be productive after being scarred like that?” How, indeed.

Rapes in prisons are a stain on our nation’s character. It is a scandal that the government does not protect persons in its custody from sexual violence. As troubling as the incidence of rape is, equally disturbing is the attitude of many government officials who turn a blind eye to it. When asked about prison rape, Massachusetts Department of Correction spokesman Anthony Carnevale said, “Well, that’s prison . . . I don’t know what to tell you.” In that offhand remark, he expressed what many feel in their hearts but are loathe to admit — “they deserve it.”

But, no, they don’t deserve it. Regardless of the crimes they have committed, no offender’s sentence includes being raped. By its very nature, imprisonment means inmates have no control over the environment in which they live. They cannot choose their cellmates, cannot shower alone, cannot arm themselves, nor take other steps to protect themselves. The government has total control over where and how inmates live. So, it is the government’s responsibility to ensure they aren’t harmed while in custody.

The reality that rape is still rampant in America’s lockups is disheartening. It has been 20 years since President Bush signed the Prison Rape Elimination Act (PREA), which established strict standards to hold prison officials accountable for ending prison rape. PREA required that sexual assaults be treated as crimes, with full investigations and prosecutions of those who sexually assaulted prisoners, whether the perpetrators were fellow inmates or prison staff.

So, 20 years later, why are prisoners still being raped in American prisons and jails? Two reasons: bureaucratic resistance to change and lack of consequences for wardens in whose facilities inmates continue to be raped.

The Fox Guarding the Hen House

To understand why I find the lack of attention to prison rape so infuriating, you should know a little of my background. I was a leader of the broad coalition that drafted and built support for PREA over a span of over five years. After PREA passed, I was selected to serve as one of seven members of the National Prison Rape Elimination Commission to propose the standards to hold prison officials accountable for ending prison rape.

We made a major miscalculation when we drafted PREA: We assigned the Department of Justice to oversee its implementation in prisons. It turns out we left the fox to guard the hen house.

I guess we were naïve to think that simply because PREA was passed unanimously by both houses of Congress and was strongly supported by leaders of groups from Left and Right, it would be vigorously enforced. We underestimated the tendency of all bureaucracies to resist, undermine, and even obstruct accountability. (READ MORE: What’s Up With All the Labor Strikes?)

A good example is the troubled federal prison complex at Coleman, Florida. Two days before the scheduled PREA audit, prison officials transferred all female prisoners to other prisons. Thus, when the PREA auditors showed up, there were no women inmates for them to interview. Isn’t that convenient? We will never know how many instances of correctional staff misconduct the PREA auditors would have uncovered had they been able to interview the women.

I should note that in 2021, the federal government paid over $1.2 million to 15 female inmates from the Coleman complex for sexual abuse by six officers over many years. The women were coerced into sex with threats that if they didn’t comply, they would be put in solitary confinement or even transferred to distant prisons. Six officers admitted to sexually assaulting the inmates in statements given to the Department of Justice. However, they were never prosecuted. Worse, they were allowed to retire with their pensions!

The purpose of this article is not to merely complain about the problem but to suggest ways to put teeth back into PREA so that inmates are protected from rape and violent sexual assaults. Here are the four most important reforms:

First, PREA needs to be amended to place oversight in the hands of an agency that is independent of the Department of Justice.

Second, revitalize the Review Panel on Prison Rape that PREA established. The panel is responsible for holding public hearings to review the rankings of each prison on its success at fighting prison rape. The legislation requires the panel to hold public hearings each year for each calendar year to question the wardens of the three prisons with the worst record of prison rape in each category of facilities as well as the two prisons in those same categories with the best record of deterring prison rape. I am sure that no warden wants to be required to testify in front of a committee to explain why they were not able to reduce prison rapes while their peers were successful in doing that.

However, the legislation should remove the power of appointment to the Panel from the Attorney General, who has an inherent interest in burying the failures of the prisons he oversees. Instead, the oversight committees in the House and Senate should be responsible for convening those public hearings.

Third, wardens who fail to protect prisoners from being raped should be fired. The NPREC Commissioners made clear in our report that strong leadership is necessary to change the culture that has tolerated prison rape for so long. Wardens should be graded and promoted on the basis of their success in running safe prisons. Perhaps if some heads were to roll, it would get the attention of other wardens.

Fourth, the audit survey must be revised. The current survey failed to detect the rape culture at Coleman prison. Nor did the survey uncover the rampant staff-on-inmate abuse at the federal prison in Dublin, California, where four BOP employees, including the warden, have been convicted of sexually abusing at least eight female detainees. The victims told the Associated Press the staff ran the prison as a “rape club.”

Please join me in asking Congress to put some teeth into PREA. A prisoner who had been severely beaten after refusing demands for sex from another inmate wrote, “The opposite of compassion is not hatred; it’s indifference.” We must not remain indifferent to the scourge of prison rape in America.

Pat Nolan is the Director Emeritus of the Nolan Center for Justice at the American Conservative Union Foundation. He served on the seven-member National Prison Rape Commission established by the Prison Rape Elimination Act as well as the Commission on Safety and Abuse in America’s Prisons