>>URL: http://www.blackcommentator.com/95/95_cover_prisons.html
>>
>> Issue 95 - June 17, 2004
>>
>> Cover Story
>>
>> Mass Incarceration and Rape
>
>[I'm sorry, I forgot to mark at the end that this is only half the article
>-- it continues onto a second elephant that hides in plain sight, prison
>rape, a systematic sexual humiliation that is has become so nonchalantly
>acceptable that prison rape jokes are standard fare in mainstream sitcoms.
>And yet when the prison guards from that system revel in sexually
>humiliating the "sand n-words" in Iraq, we are shocked. Where did they
>ever get such ideas?]
>
>Michael
http://talkleft.com/new_archives/003275.html Congress Passes Prison Rape Law
Congress unanimously passed legislation targeting prison rape on Friday. The bill is the Prison Rape Elimination Act of 2003.
[The bill] establishes a system of grants and reforms that will cost $60 million a year. The centerpiece is an annual survey by the U.S. Department of Justice that will be the most sweeping study ever made of sexual assault in prisons, congressional sponsors and criminal justice experts said.
"It's been a long, strange battle, but I think everyone has come to understand that a prison sentence in the United States should not include rape as added punishment," said Rep. Frank R. Wolf, (R-Va.), a House co-sponsor of the bill, along with Rep. Robert C. "Bobby" Scott (D-Va.).
Michael Pugliese