Prison rape or jail rape is
sexual assault
Sexual assault is an act of sexual abuse in which one intentionally Physical intimacy, sexually touches another person without that person's consent, or Coercion, coerces or physically forces a person to engage in a sexual act against their w ...
of people while they are
incarcerated. The phrase is commonly used to describe rape of inmates by other inmates. It is a significant, if controversial, part of what is studied under the wider concept of
prison sexuality
Prison sexuality (or prison sex or penitentiary sex) consists of sexual relationships between prisoners or between a prisoner and a prison employee or other persons to whom prisoners have access. Since prisons are usually separated by sex, most s ...
.
United States
In the United States, the overwhelming majority of prison rape cases involve men who are raped by other men.
This is due in part to the fact that in the United States the vast majority of
incarcerated people are men. Sexual contact with inmates by prison staff is illegal, regardless of supposed consent.
Public awareness of common prison rape is a relatively recent development, and estimates of its prevalence have varied widely over the past several decades. In 1974, Carl Weiss and David James Friar wrote that 46 million Americans would one day be incarcerated; of that number, they held that 10 million would be raped.
According to a
US Department of Justice
The United States Department of Justice (DOJ), also known as the Justice Department, is a federal executive department of the U.S. government that oversees the domestic enforcement of federal laws and the administration of justice. It is equ ...
report from 2013, an estimated 5.0% of people incarcerated in state and federal prison, and 3.2% of those in jail, reported at least one incident of sexual victimization in the prior 12 months. However, advocates dispute the accuracy of the numbers due to under-reporting of sexual assaults in prison, especially among
incarcerated youths.
In terms of individuals' risk over their entire incarceration, estimates from the 1980s and 1990s range widely. A 1992 estimate from the
Federal Bureau of Prisons
The Federal Bureau of Prisons (BOP) is a Federal law enforcement in the United States, federal law enforcement agency of the United States Department of Justice that is responsible for all List of United States federal prisons, federal prisons ...
suggested that between 9% and 20% of inmates had been sexually assaulted.
Similarly, studies from 1982 and 1996, concluded that the rate was somewhere between 12% and 14%. In New York State
maximum security prisons, a 1986 study put the proportion at around 23%.
By contrast, Christine Saum's 1994 survey of 101 inmates determined that 5 had been sexually assaulted.
The
Prison Rape Elimination Act of 2003 was the first United States federal law passed specifically dealing with the sexual assault of prisoners. The bill was signed into law on 4 September 2003.
Middle East
Rape is regularly used in prisons across the wider
Middle East
The Middle East (term originally coined in English language) is a geopolitical region encompassing the Arabian Peninsula, the Levant, Turkey, Egypt, Iran, and Iraq.
The term came into widespread usage by the United Kingdom and western Eur ...
. Sexual abuse of detained women, children and men is rampant in
UAE,
Saudi and
Bahraini prisons.
Iran
Sexual violence against
political prisoners is prevalent in Iran. It is allegedly ignored or even facilitated by authorities.
Reports issued to the United Nations allege that rape has been used by interrogators in Iran for decades. During the 1980s, following the
Iranian Islamic Revolution, the rape of female political prisoners was so prevalent that it prompted
Hussein-Ali Montazeri, Supreme Leader
Ayatollah Khomeini's then-deputy, to write the following to Khomeini in a letter dated 7 October 1986: "Did you know that young women are raped in some of the prisons of the Islamic Republic?"
Two prominent members of Iran's human rights community, the feminist lawyer and journalist
Shadi Sadr and the blogger and activist
Mojtaba Saminejad published essays online from inside Iran saying prison rape has a long history in Iran.
In the
2009 Iranian presidential election protests, opposition groups reported thousands were arrested and tortured in prisons around the country, with former inmates alleging mass rape of men, women and children by the
Islamic Revolutionary Guards, in prisons such as
Kahrizak and
Evin.
Following the
2009 presidential election, Iranian presidential candidate
Mehdi Karroubi said several protesters held behind bars in Evin Prison had been savagely raped, according to a confidential letter to former president and cleric
Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani. Karroubi said this was a "fragment" of the evidence he had and that if the denials did not stop, he would release even more.
On 9 August 2009, in a letter to the Chairman of the
Expediency Discernment Council of Iran, Mehdi Karroubi demanded investigation of Iranian prisons for possible torture and, in particular, sexual harassment of men and women. On 19 August, he wrote to parliament speaker Ali Larijani, asking to meet with him, President
Mahmoud Ahmadinejad
Mahmoud Ahmadinejad (born Mahmoud Sabbaghian on 28 October 1956) is an Iranian Iranian principlists, principlist and Iranian nationalism, nationalist politician who served as the sixth president of Iran from 2005 to 2013. He is currently a mem ...
, judiciary chief
Ayatollah
Ayatollah (, ; ; ) is an Title of honor, honorific title for high-ranking Twelver Shia clergy. It came into widespread usage in the 20th century.
Originally used as a title bestowed by popular/clerical acclaim for a small number of the most di ...
Sadeq Larijani, former president Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani and the state prosecutor to "personally present my documents and evidence over the cases of sexual abuse in some prisons specially Kahrizak."
Ali Larijani and
Sadeq Larijani (Judiciary committee) both officially rejected his claims and
Ali Khamenei's representatives, and Vice Chairman of National Security Commission of the parliament demanded Karroubi's arrest.
Israel
Turkey
Human Rights Watch
Human Rights Watch (HRW) is an international non-governmental organization that conducts research and advocacy on human rights. Headquartered in New York City, the group investigates and reports on issues including War crime, war crimes, crim ...
and
Amnesty International
Amnesty International (also referred to as Amnesty or AI) is an international non-governmental organization focused on human rights, with its headquarters in the United Kingdom. The organization says that it has more than ten million members a ...
have both released reports of widespread rape and abuse of prisoners in
Turkey
Turkey, officially the Republic of Türkiye, is a country mainly located in Anatolia in West Asia, with a relatively small part called East Thrace in Southeast Europe. It borders the Black Sea to the north; Georgia (country), Georgia, Armen ...
spanning multiple decades. Kurdish prisoners have also been specifically targeted for rape and other forms of sexual violence.
China
In February 2021,
BBC News
BBC News is an operational business division of the British Broadcasting Corporation (BBC) responsible for the gathering and broadcasting of news and current affairs in the UK and around the world. The department is the world's largest broad ...
reported eyewitness accounts of systematic rape of
Uyghur women in the
Xinjiang internment camps.
Multiple women who were formerly detained in the Xinjiang internment camps have publicly made accusations of systemic sexual abuse, including rape.
Sayragul Sauytbay, a teacher who was forced to work in the camps, told the BBC that employees of the camp in which she was detained conducted rapes ''en masse'', saying that camp guards "picked the girls and young women they wanted and took them away".
She also told the BBC of an organized gang rape, in which a woman around age 21 was forced to make a confession in front of a crowd of 100 other women detained in the camps, before being raped by multiple policemen in front of the assembled crowd.
Tursunay Ziawudun, a woman who was detained in the camps for a period of nine months, told the BBC that women were removed from their cells "every night" to be raped by Chinese men, and that she was subjected to three separate instances of gang rape while detained.
Qelbinur Sedik, an Uzbek woman from Xinjiang, has stated that Chinese police sexually abused detainees during electric shock tortures, saying that "there were four kinds of electric shock... the chair, the glove, the helmet, and anal rape with a stick".
England and Wales
There have been almost 1000 rapes in prisons in England and Wales since 2010.
Revealed: almost 1,000 rapes in prisons in England and Wales since 2010
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See also
* Sexual assault of LGBT people in prison
* Sexual assault of women in prison
* Teardrop tattoo
* T. J. Parsell
References
Further reading
*
*Goodmark, Leigh and Flores, Juanita and Goldscheid, Julie and Ritchie, Andrea and SpearIt, Plenary 2 – Redefining Gender Violence—Transcripts from Converge! Reimagining the Movement to End Gender Violence (9 July 2015). University of Miami Race & Social Justice Law Review, Vol. 5, p. 289, 2015. Available at SSRN: http://ssrn.com/abstract=2628984
{{abuse
rape
Rape is a type of sexual assault involving sexual intercourse, or other forms of sexual penetration, carried out against a person without consent. The act may be carried out by physical force, coercion, abuse of authority, or against a person ...
Rape by type
Sex crimes
Violence against men