Sexual assaults greater in Ohio prisons

Inmates in three of five Ohio prisons surveyed — including Lebanon Correctional Institution and the Ohio Reformatory for Women — reported higher rates of sexual assault by staff or other inmates last year than the national average of 4.4 percent, according to a federal study released Thursday, Aug. 26.

The study by the Justice Department’s Bureau of Justice Statistics also found that 1.4 percent of Montgomery County Jail inmates reported being assaulted by another inmate during the study period, October 2008-December 2009, slightly higher than the national average of 1.3 percent for jail inmates. All of them said the sex was not consensual. Montgomery County Jail inmates reported no staff-on-inmate misconduct to bureau researchers in anonymous surveys.

The study contradicted some stereotypes: Inmates at prisons for women were more than twice as likely as male inmates to report sexual victimization by other inmates, and the most common form of prison sexual misconduct was perpetrated by female staff against male inmates.

“The (national) average is shockingly high,” said Melissa Rothstein, senior program director for the human rights group Just Detention International.