The Prison Rape Elimination Act of 2003 (PREA) is the first United States federal law intended to deter the sexual assault of prisoners. The bill was signed into law on September 4, 2003.

Background

Public awareness of prison rape is relatively recent and estimates of its prevalence vary widely.

In 1974, Carl Weiss and David James Friar wrote that 46 million Americans would one day be incarcerated; of that number, they claimed, 10 million would be raped.

In 2001, Human Rights Watch (HRW) released a paper called No Escape: Male Rape in U.S. Prisons, the single event that contributed most to PREA's passage two years later.

Michael Horowitz, a Hudson Institute senior fellow, has been credited with playing a part in passing PREA by helping to lead a coalition of the bill's supporters. These groups were part of a diverse coalition of human rights and religious groups which backed the legislation; other groups which supported the act were: Amnesty International USA, Focus on the Family, Human Rights Watch, the NAACP, the National Association of Evangelicals, Penal Reform International, Physicians for Human Rights, the Presbyterian Church USA, Prison Fellowship, the Salvation Army and the Union of American Hebrew Congregations.

The bill was sponsored, in both houses of the U.S. Congress, by a bipartisan group of legislators. The initial sponsor of the bill in the Senate was Jeff Sessions (R-AL) and, in the House of Representatives the legislation was sponsored by Representative Frank Wolf (R-VA) and Rep. Bobby Scott (D-VA), who was the initial co-sponsor.

Act

Provisions

The Act was passed by both houses of the U.S. Congress and subsequently signed by President George W. Bush in a White House ceremony on September 4, 2003. The act aimed to curb prison rape through a "zero-tolerance" policy, as well as thorough research and information gathering. The act called for developing national standards to prevent incidents of sexual violence in prison. It also made policies more available and obvious. By making data on prison rape more available to the prison administrators as well as making corrections facilities more accountable for incidents pertaining to sexual violence and of prison rape, it would more than likely decrease the crimes.

A major component of PREA was the establishment of a "National Prison Rape Reduction Commission." The panel, known as the National Prison Rape Elimination Commission (NPREC), was charged with undertaking a study on the comprehensive effects of prison rape and its occurrences.

In addition, the law mandated that the U.S. Department of Justice (DOJ) "make the prevention of prison rape a top priority in each prison system".

Representative Danny K. Davis (D-IL) introduced the Second Chance Act of 2007 on March 20 of that year. Among its provisions was an amendment to PREA. The miscellaneous provisions of what was largely a law designed to help reintegrate criminal offenders into the community extended the existence of the NPREC from 3 to 5 years after its inception date. The Senate version was introduced nine days later and sponsored by then-Senator Joe Biden (D-DE). The Second Chance Act passed the House 347–62 on November 13, 2007. The bill passed the Senate by unanimous consent on March 11, 2008, and the life of the NPREC was extended when President Bush signed the Second Chance Act on April 9, 2008. Section 7 deals with access for the NPREC to any federal department or agency's information that it deemed necessary to complete its job. Thus, short-term lockups, such as holding facilities, and local jails, regardless of size, are also subject to the provisions of PREA.

Implementation

Grants

PREA authorizes money in the form of grants for a wide variety of implementation associated activities. The grants can be utilized by state agencies for personnel, training, technical assistance, data collection, and equipment to prevent, investigate, and prosecute prison rape. Each state recipient is required to submit a report within 90 days laying out on what activities the money was spent on as well as the effect of those activities on prison rape within the state. In 2004 Congress appropriated US$25 million dollars for the grant program and in 2005 US$20 million. The Bureau of Justice Assistance (BJA) granted $10 million of the 2004 appropriation in the fourth quarter of that year. The largest grant amount that year, $1 million, was to the Department of Corrections in Iowa, Michigan, New York, Texas and Washington. In December 2006, NPREC held two days of hearings focusing on sexual violence and rape in immigration detention facilities. During the hearings they heard testimony from a female victim of sexual assault in an immigration facility as well as testimony from prison staff. The panel issued a statement reiterating that its policy of "zero-tolerance" applied to federal immigration facilities. In oral statements made by the U.S. delegation to the Committee Against Torture in 2006, Thomas Monheim with the U.S. Department of Justice responded to queries by Nora Sveaass about the implementation of PREA in immigration detention facilities. Monheim asserted that the Department of Homeland Security had taken steps to implement PREA, including the development of a classification system to segregate violent and non-violent offenders, "widespread posting of instructions on how to report sexual misconduct", and PREA training for detention officers in the facilities.

Juvenile facilities

NPREC held hearings focusing specifically on the elimination of juvenile prison rape victims on June 1, 2006. Individual states have sought to comply with the mandates of PREA concerning juveniles, for instance, the Massachusetts Department of Youth Services worked with consultants from The Moss Group, Inc. to develop PREA policies and training.

Research and studies

Annual reports

In December 2007 United States Department of Justice published its 2006 report about rapes and sexual violence in American prisons. The report, which included information obtained from about 1.3 million prisoners, reported 60,500 cases of sexual violence ranging from unwanted touching to rape in 2006.

Congressional findings

The U.S. Congress, within the text of PREA, conservatively estimated that at least 13 percent of the inmates in the United States have been sexually assaulted in prison. These numbers were derived based on the "testimony of social scientists and penologists". Fleisher released a substantially revised version of the report in November 2006, and Stop Prisoner Rape (now Just Detention International) stated it was "still plagued by many of the same fundamental flaws as the initial version."

Robert Weisberg, co-writing with David Mills, argued in Slate in October 2003 that PREA did little more than collect data. They argued that the bill's original title, the "Prison Rape Reduction Act", was probably a more likely predictor of its outcome. A similar position was put forth by Mike Farrell, writing in The Huffington Post, where he stated, "the National Prison Rape Elimination Commission meets periodically to 'study the impact of prisoner rape.' While they study, rape continues."

In addition, Dean Spade has written about PREA in relation to prison abolition. He noted that the Act has been used to enforce imprisonment and lengthen sentences, and has been more clearly successful in reinforcing incarceration than in reducing sexual violence.

See also

  • Farmer v. Brennan
  • Prison rape in the United States
  • Sexual abuse of women in American prisons

References

Further reading

  • Beck, Allen J., et al. (August 2007). "Sexual Violence Reported by Correctional Authorities, 2006" (PDF), Bureau of Justice Statistics, accessed on June 5, 2008.
  • Fleisher, Mark and Krienert, Jesse (November 2006). "The Culture of Prison Sexual Violence" (PDF), National Institute of Justice, accessed June 5, 2008.
  • Mariner, Joanne, et al. (2001). No Escape: Male Rape in U.S. Prisons, Human Rights Watch, , accessed June 5, 2008.
  • Ristroph, Alice (1 January 2006). "Sexual Punishments", Columbia Journal of Gender and Law, Vol. 15, No. 139,, accessed June 5, 2008. .
  • Smith, Brenda V. and Yarussi, Jamie M. (Spring 2008). "Prosecuting Sexual Violence in Correctional Settings: Examining Prosecutors' Perceptions", Criminal Law Brief, American University: Washington College of Law, WCL Research Paper No. 2008-50, accessed June 5, 2008.
  • Thomas, Dorothy Q., et al. (1996). All Too Familiar: Sexual Abuse of Women in U.S. State Prisons, Human Rights Watch, , accessed June 5, 2008.
  • National PREA Resource Center, Office of Justice Programs, U.S. Department of Justice, accessed July 1, 2021.
  • Prison Rape Elimination Act Resources, Office of Justice Programs, U.S. Department of Justice, accessed July 1, 2021.
  • The Prison Rape Elimination Act, Just Detention International, accessed July 1, 2021.
  • National Prison Rape Elimination Commission, archived site, accessed July 1, 2021.