Sexual Violence in Adult Prisons and Jails

Starting in the late 1960s, researchers attempted to estimate the number of inmates who experienced some form of sexual assault in prison, but estimates varied tremendously. In 2001, Human Rights Watch released a report titled No Escape: Male Rape in U.S. Prisons portraying and detailing the dehumanizing condition of inmates who experience sexual assault while incarcerated. In the face of evidence suggesting that 13% of inmates in the United States had been sexually assaulted at some point during their incarceration, a bipartisan coalition of over 100 entities organized to pass the Prison Rape Elimination Act (PREA) that was signed into law in 2003. Utilizing the research that has derived from the PREA, this entry addresses the prevalence of sexual violence in prisons; the development of ...

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