A major study of the sexual abuse and rape of prisoners includes an Alabama juvenile facility. The report from The National Prison Rape Elimination Commission includes some common sense findings...that smaller, younger, gay or female prisoners are more likely to be victims. One of the institutions studied by the commission was the residential juvenile detention facility in Chalkville, Alabama. The commission report includes an incident there in which a minor juvenile was forced to a hotel by a staff member...
L.C. submitted a written complaint reporting the abuse to the facility superintendent, but he wrote back that “he could not control the actions of Chalkville Campus’ employees when they were off-site.”
The Commission is fully aware of the roadblocks in the way of reducing prison rape:
Congress conferred upon the Commission an enormous responsibility: developing national standards that will lead to the prevention, detection, and punishment of prison rape. Yet Congress also and appropriately required us to seriously consider the restrictions of cost, differences among systems and facilities, and existing political structures.
I imagine those financial and political difficulties will be especially pronounced here in Alabama, where nobody especially wants prison rape to occur, but because of those "political structures", few elected officials will stand up and endorse the spending of sparse tax dollars to reduce it either.
The Commission's full report is online.
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