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US juvenile detention facilities plagued by sexual abuse: report

By Bernard Hibbitts (editor) and University of Pittsburgh School of Law students.

[JURIST] About 12 percent of youth held in US juvenile detention facilities reported being sexually abused in the past year, according to a report released Thursday the Bureau of Justice Statistics (BJS). According to the report, about 2.6 percent of youth reported an incident involving another inmate, while 10.3 percent reported an incident involving staff. The BJS identified 13 facilities as having a "high rate" of sexual abuse, where the rate was nearly one in three youth. In response to the report, Human Rights Watch (HRW) urged the US Department of Justice (DOJ) "to swiftly issue national standards to end prison rape. The DOJ Office of Justice Programs Review Panel on Prison Rape will review and conduct hearings on the BJS report, as required by the Prison Rape Elimination Act of 2003 (PREA). In June, the National Prison Rape Elimination Commission (NPREC) reported that prison rape continues to be a widespread problem across the US, in both adult and juvenile facilities. Also in June, the US Court of Appeals for the First Circuit ruled that a Massachusetts regulation prohibiting prisoners from receiving sexually explicit mail is constitutional. The Massachusetts prison commissioner defended the regulation on the grounds that it was designed to promote prison safety and security. The DOJ reported in 2006 that sexual violence in US prisons often goes unreported because victims fear further abuse or do not trust prison staff. In 2005, the DOJ released its first report on prison rape in accordance with the PREA, but admitted that most incidents were probably never reported and that their numbers could not be reliably estimated.

Full post as published by JURIST - The Paper Chase on January 07, 2010 (boomark / email).