In one year, sexual assaults in state and federal prisons in the United States rose 16 percent, according to a federal study of sexual assaults in prisons for 2005. In Utah, however, a Corrections spokesman says incidents of misconduct have fallen in the state's prison system.
According to a national study issued by the U.S. Department of Justice's Bureau of Justice Statistics, 6,241 allegations of sexual violence were reported in 2005. That is up from 5,386 in 2004. Sexual violence does not include consensual sexual contact and is separated from reports of sexual harassment.
The survey covered 1,866 adult correctional facilities, which house more than 1.7 million inmates, or 78 percent of all inmates in the United States.
Some 38 percent of sexual violence against
prisoners involved prison staff members, while 35 percent involved another inmate as the perpetrator. Some 17 percent involved sexual harassment by staff, which includes sexual touching and verbal comments, and 10 percent of harassment cases involved another inmate.
Statistics from the study show that white males between 18 and 24 are by far the most likely to be the victim of a prison rape. Perpetrators of prison rape are about 90 percent male. They petty evenly span age groups and are 43 percent white, 39 percent black with only about 15 percent Hispanic. Overall, only 15 percent of reported cases were substantiated by prison officials.
Utah's prison system reported 14 allegations of inmate-on-inmate sexual violence. Of those, three were deemed substantiated. There were also five allegations of staff-related misconduct, of which none were substantiated.
Jack Ford, spokesman with the Utah Department of Corrections, said Utah's prison system takes steps to prevent sexual violence from taking place.
Ford said incidents of misconduct have dropped since the Utah Legislature made it a felony for guards to become personally involved with inmates. "We do training on the new law involving sexual harassment and sexual misconduct with inmates," Ford said.
The prison also cuts down on groups gathering. Ford said inmates are fed in their cells and inmates shower a section at a time. The largest opportunity for a rape to take place is in a cell. "Every place in prison is double-bunked," Ford said. After "lights out" guards do check cells to monitor behavior. Ford admits there is some consensual sexual contact among inmates that often does not get reported.
Ford said the majority of complaints of sexual assault arise from what officials call "manipulating of housing" where an inmate makes an unfounded allegation simply because he doesn't like a cell mate and wants a new one. "We do investigate every one of them," including medical examinations, Ford said, but many times inmates fail polygraph tests over the allegations.
The largest problem in Utah's prison system, Ford said, is guards running off with inmates once they are paroled.
Last year, Ford said one male officer and three female officers quit their jobs and ran off with paroled inmates, having become romantically involved.
Although over the past few years, female guards have been more likely to become romantically involved, female guards are also the best at "talking down" a violent inmate and diffusing tense situations.
Ford said guards do report one another if they see inappropriate conduct, but once an inmate is paroled, it's out of the hands of prison officials.
E-mail: gfattah@desnews.com