Perhaps the most under-reported crime in the United States today is rape in prison. There has been very little research into the subject, but what research has been done points to a problem far beyond the "official" statistics. This said, there is some rudimentary data available on the incidence of rape in various types of institutions. We will look first at data for jails, prisons, women’s facilities, and juvenile detention facilities separately, then turn to a few points about the problem as a whole and close by recounting how the Supreme Court views prisoner rape.

Using Davis’ numbers, though, generates an estimate that in 1994 there were 14,300 victims in the jails at any time and that 290,000 males were victimized in jail every year. Compare this to the Bureau of Justice Statistics estimate of 135,000 rapes of women every year in the US and the magnitude of the problem becomes clearer.

According to Stephen Donaldson of Stop Prisoner Rape, a non-profit advocacy group, once ""turned out," a victim is earmarked for constant further assaults and 80% of incarcerated rapes involve gang-rape. "With a repeat rate very conservatively estimated at every other day, and counting gang-rapes as a single incident, this gives at least 7,150 sexual victimizations a day in jails."

Donaldson, himself a former convict, asserts that "victims are more likely to be young, small, non-violent, first offenders, middle-class, not ‘streetwise,’ obviously homosexual, not gang-affiliated, not part of the dominant ethnic group in that jail, without major fighting experience, and held in big-city jails. The more of these factors apply, the more likely the victimization. If most apply, rape becomes a probability."

Extrapolating the Nebraska numbers for the country as a whole, Donaldson estimates a total of 197,000 adult male victims in prison. He states that he has "been very conservative in assigning a repeat rate of every third day, and assume[s] that a victim remains in the prison system for the whole year and that a victim of past years continues to be so, which yields an estimate of 65,000 male sexual victimizations a day in prisons."

The problem is not limited to the prisons, though. Once released, the victims return to their communities without ever receiving rape counseling or any other kind of support. Frequently, according to Donaldson (who himself had to resort to these measures) men will become "punks" for a stronger "jocker" who will protect him from attack by other prisoners in return for acting as his lover. This experience emasculates the "punk" who may well seek to regain his masculine identity in the only way he has learned how: by raping some other innocent in the community to which he returns. Or, if he was a "jocker," he has learned to regard coerced sex as a valid means of satisfying "sexual and power needs" and will likely continue to so on the outside.

In a piece published in the New York Times, Donaldson stated that "the fight against rape in our communities is doomed to failure and will remain an exercise in futility as long as it ignores the network of training grounds for rapists: our prisons, jails and reform schools."

1. Victims don’t want to discuss being raped. It means admitting the loss of their "manhood" for one thing. Further, "ratting" on fellow prisoners, which Donaldson found was the usual suggestion of prison authorities, was widely regarded by the prisoners themselves as a sure recipe for far more serious consequences, possibly death.
2. Prisoners soon become convinced that rape is an unstated, but nevertheless accepted, part of their punishment. Society as a whole seems to tacitly accept prison rape as such, too.
3. The prisoners who perpetrate rapes do not like discussing it either. For one thing, they dislike being labeled homosexual. For another, if discovered, they can have time added to their sentences.
4. Prison officials avoid discussing rape for fear it will lead to their being accused of negligence. Also, to the prison official, rape - as much of a problem as it is - is very functional. It divides the prison population, reduces tension and makes inmate control that much easier. Prisoners who are either terrified of every noise through every sleepless night or actively trading for the use of a "punk" are less likely to agitate.
5. Rape in prison is very rarely studied, even by criminologists. In fact, no attempt is made to include prisoner rapes in official rape statistics by any reporting agency, governmental or private.

All of this, and many other factors, make addressing rapes in America prisons a very difficult task. It almost amounts to a conspiracy of silence that begins with the victim who fears reprisal for speaking out and runs all the way to the media who, while giving comprehensive coverage to the crime of rape in the world at large, rarely mention incarcerated victimization. In fact, Davis discovered that only 3.2% of the rapes his investigators uncovered in the Philadelphia survey were reported in official prison records.

The Court ruled that inadequate protection from sexual predation in prison violated Eighth Amendment rights to freedom from "cruel and unusual punishment." Justice Blackmun characterized the responsibility of prison officials to prevent rapes as an "affirmative duty... not to be taken lightly." The majority opinion explicitly recognized that "particular groups of prisoners could face a heightened risk of sexual assault and could sue for protective measures on that basis, rather than having to show vulnerability ‘for reasons personal to’ the complainant" which had been the previous standard.

But a Supreme Court ruling is not enough. As other movements to curb violence in the society as a whole have demonstrated, little will be accomplished until the public at large is better educated about the problem of rape in prison and prison officials come to regard rape prevention (and counseling) as vital parts of their jobs. The Court aided significantly by lowering the standards by which officials can be found "negligible," but it is only a beginning.