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| More than 50 per cent of all women in American prisons have been sexually abused |
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Monday, August 11, 2008
By Kaleem Omar
The United States government never tires of lecturing countries around the world on their human rights record, which is what President George W. Bush chose to do in the case of China en route to Beijing on August 8 to attend the opening ceremony of the Olympic Games. Yet the US government often turns a blind eye to gross human rights violations in its own country. A case in point is the government’s apathy towards the sexual abuse of women in US prisons, which has been rampant for years.
According to current estimates, more than 50 per cent of all female prisoners in the United States have experienced some form of sexual abuse. The number of women incarcerated in the United States is ten times more than in Western Europe, whose female population is equal to that of the United States. African-American women are eight times more likely to be incarcerated than white women; Hispanic women are four times more likely. Seventy per cent of guards in the 170 state prison facilities for women across the United States are men. In Canadian women’s prisons, 91 per cent of the guards are female.
An Amnesty International report says, “Sexual abuse is virtually a fact of life for incarcerated women in the US.” The report’s findings are reinforced by a study conducted by the US-based Human Rights Watch, which says that “being a woman prisoner in American prisons can be a terrifying experience.”
It can be examined in terms of powerlessness, humiliation, retaliation and fear. If a woman is sexually abused, she cannot escape from her abuser. Grievances or investigatory procedures, where they do exist, are often ineffectual, and correctional employees continue to engage in abuse because they believe they will rarely be held accountable, administratively or criminally.
According to Amnesty International, female prisoners often experience sexual abuse during routine searches. This includes rape, sexual extortion and groping. There are often male correctional officers watching women undressing and showering. The women are often afraid to report such incidences. Not only do the guards frequently threaten to take away visitation rights to keep them quiet, they also have complete access to each inmate’s file, which includes any reports against the guards. If a guard is reported and punished, the punishment usually only consists of his transfer to another facility.
As well as rampant sexual abuse, medical neglect is common for women in US prisons. Amnesty International lists a number of issues involving medical neglect. One such example is the failure to treat seriously ill inmates. This includes treatment for diseases ranging from diabetes to AIDS. Another example is the lack of qualified medical personnel in the prisons. This means that frequently non-medical staff is used in medical situations.
The United States has the dubious distinction of incarcerating the largest known number of prisoners of any country in the world (well over two million), of which a steadily increasing number are women. Since 1980, the number of women entering US prisons has risen by almost 400 per cent, roughly double the incarceration rate increase of males. According to Human Rights Watch, 52 per cent of these prisoners are African-American women, though African-American women constitute only 14 per cent of the US’s total female population.
The custodial sexual misconduct documented in the Human Rights Watch report takes many forms. The study found that male correctional employees have vaginally, anally and orally raped female prisoners and sexually assaulted and abused them. The study found that in the course of committing such gross misconduct, male officers have not only used actual or threatened physical force, but have also used their near total authority to provide or deny goods and privileges to female prisoners to compel them to have sex or, in other cases, to reward them for having done so.
In other cases, male officers have violated their most basic professional duty and engaged in sexual contact with female prisoners. According to Human Rights Watch, male correctional officers and staff have also engaged in regular verbal degradation and harassment of female prisoners, thus contributing to a custodial environment in the state prisons for women, which is often highly sexualised and excessively hostile.
The report says that no one group of prisoners appears to suffer sexual misconduct more than any other, although those in prison for the first time and young or mentally ill prisoners are particularly vulnerable to abuse. Lesbian and transgenedered prisoners have also been singled out for sexual misconduct by officers, as have prisoners who have in some way challenged an officer, either by informing on him for inappropriate conduct or for refusing to submit to demands for sexual relations.
In some instances, women have been impregnated as a result of sexual misconduct, and some of these prisoners have faced additional abuse in the form of inappropriate segregation, denial of adequate health care, and/or pressure to seek an abortion, says the Human Rights Watch report.
One of the clear contributing factors to sexual misconduct in US prisons for women is that the United States, despite authoritative international rules to the contrary, allows male correctional employees to hold contact positions over prisoners, that is, positions in which they serve in constant physical proximity to the prisoners of the opposite sex.
Under the United Nations Standard Minimum Rules for the Treatment of Prisoners (Standard Minimum Rules), which constitute an authoritative guide to international law regarding the treatment of prisoners, male officers are precluded from holding such contact positions. However, since the passage of the US Civil Rights Act of 1964, US employers have been prohibited from denying a person a job solely on the basis of gender unless the person’s gender was reasonably necessary to the performance of the specific job.
In the absence of unusual circumstances, US federal courts have been unwilling to recognise a person’s gender as meeting this standard with respect to correctional employment. As a result, most restrictions on male officers working in women’s prisons that predated the Civil Rights Act have been removed and, by some estimates, male officers working in women’s prisons now outnumber their female counterparts by two and in some facilities, three to one.
Human Rights Watch says its investigation revealed that where state departments of correction have employed male staff or officers to guard female prisoners, they have often done so without clear prohibitions on all forms of custodial sexual misconduct and without either training officers or educating prisoners about such prohibitions.
Female officers have also sexually abused female prisoners and should, without exception, receive such training. However, in the state prisons for women that Human Rights Watch investigated, instances of same-sex misconduct were relatively rare.
Under both international and US national law, states are clearly required to prevent and punish custodial sexual misconduct. The International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights (ICCPR) and the International Convention Against Torture and Other Cruel, Inhuman and Degrading Treatment of Punishment (Torture Convention), both of which the United States has ratified, require state parties to prohibit torture and other cruel, inhuman, or degrading treatment or punishment and to ensure that such abuse is investigated and punished.
The ICCPR further guarantees prisoners a basic right to privacy, which has been interpreted to preclude strip searches by officers of the opposite sex. These rights are further enumerated in the Standard Minimum Rules, which call on governments to prohibit custodial sexual abuse, provide prisoners with an effective right to complain of such misconduct, ensure appropriate punishment, and guarantee that these obligations are met in part through the proper training of correctional officers.
In addition, the United States Constitution expressly protects prisoners from cruel and inhuman punishments and has been interpreted to accord prisoners limited privacy rights as well as to guarantee them access to the courts.
The United States is thus clearly bound under its own Constitution to prevent and punish custodial sexual misconduct. It is equally bound by international human rights law to take these steps, although in ratifying the ICCPR and the Torture Convention, the United States attempted to limit its treaty obligations in ways that were particularly adverse to the elimination of custodial sexual misconduct.
These efforts by the United States to shirk its full international human rights obligations are legally indefensible, as well as being morally reprehensible.
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ISSN 1563-9479 
