Inmate advocates worry about fate of prison-rape law

When Jan Lastocy was repeatedly raped by a Michigan state prison guard, she felt she’d become invisible. There was no rape crisis center hot line. She had been warned that inmates were never believed over guards.

She was among about 216,000 prison rape victims not included in America’s national rape statistics.

So when Congress passed a law in 2003 aimed at ending sexual assault in U.S. prisons, jails and juvenile detention centers, Lastocy and other survivors hoped that it would help solve the long-ignored problem.

Lastocy and a coalition of inmate advocacy groups and evangelical groups had worked for years to convince policy-makers and corrections officials that rape behind bars shouldn’t be accepted, even if the public had little sympathy for its victims.

“I felt vindicated because I had been fighting so hard, and for so long, to bring attention to this issue and get justice for myself and for all survivors,” said Lastocy, who was repeatedly raped by a guard while serving time for embezzlement.

Now, some advocates worry that a proposal to reduce the law’s financial penalties will severely damage it. The measure failed this fall, but its sponsor, Sen. John Cornyn, R-Texas, has pledged to re-introduce it in the new GOP-controlled Congress.

Cornyn said the money includes grants for worthy programs, such as ones that support rape and domestic violence victims, but that the law should be more narrowly tailored to affect money for prison construction, operations and administration.

The law’s backers said Cornyn’s proposal would essentially gut the penalty because little, if any, federal grant money actually goes toward prison administration, operations and constructions. Those are funded by state and local governments. To take the provision out “would totally obliterate the incentive states have to comply with” the law, said U.S. District Judge Reggie Walton, the chairman of the former National Prison Rape Elimination Commission.

The commission developed the law’s requirements, which range from increased training of staff about sex abuse policies to screening new inmates to determine whether they’re likely to commit sexual assault or to be assaulted.

The proposal has put some prison rape survivors on the opposite side of those who survived sexual assault on the outside.

Slow pace of change

Nearly two dozen organizations, including prison industry groups and the Rape, Abuse and Incest National Network, have lauded Cornyn’s efforts. They say they trust prison officials to work vigorously to reduce rapes without financial penalties.

“There’s no desire to do anything less than help victims,” said Rebecca O’Connor, RAINN’s vice president of public policy, adding that her organization wants to make sure the law is applied in a way that doesn’t harm existing programs.

Advocates say the measure is the latest sign that the law’s implementation is too slow.

Federal statistics show about 216,000 adult and juvenile inmates are sexually assaulted each year, compared with 238,000 people living outside of correction facilities in the U.S. Allen Beck, a statistician with the U.S. Department of Justice who researches the incidence of prison rape, said the biggest indicator of prisoner sexual assault is the culture of the facility.

“Really, it’s about how the facilities are managed,” Beck said.

When Lastocy stepped into Camp Branch, a minimum security women’s prison in Michigan, in 1998, she was facing up to 10 years in prison for attempting to embezzle several thousand dollars from her employer, ABO Security.

Rape quickly became a fact of life.

Like many prison rape survivors, she feared that the guard who raped her could extend her prison stay by writing her false tickets for breaking rules if she reported him. He was later convicted of sexually assaulting several inmates, including Lastocy.

When she learned that she may have been his first victim, she felt guilt for not speaking up, said Lastocy, who now is an advocate for prison rape survivors.

The passage of the law, however, gave her hope that there would be fewer victims. But like other advocates, she has been frustrated by the pace of change at correctional institutions throughout the country.

Compliance and training

So far, seven states have opted out of the law, and stand to lose 5% in federal money that goes toward prisons. Two states — New Jersey and New Hampshire — say they are in compliance, and 41 others are working to meet the law’s requirements.

In Texas, which has six facilities among those nationally with the highest prevalence rate of sexual assaults, officials used nearly $2.6 million in federal money to install extra cameras in some facilities and develop a sexual assault awareness curriculum.

The state has since opted out, and faces an $800,000 loss in federal funding.

Many states have trained staffers and educated inmates about how to spot and report sexual assault. But Jason Clark, a corrections spokesman, said a requirement to prevent guards from seeing inmates of the opposite sex naked in the showers or during strip searches wouldn’t work because 40% of the correctional officer workforce is female.

Still, addressing sexual assault and caring for victims “decreases the likelihood of an offender becoming a victim again and committing a violent act once he or she returns to the community,” said Norah West, Washington state’s corrections spokeswoman.

Eight state correctional facilities comply with the federal law, West said. Nine more are set to be audited this year.

For Lastocy, the trauma didn’t end when she left prison. She struggled with terror as she watched her teenage daughter begin to navigate the dating scene. She worked to repair her marriage, trying to explain to her husband why she didn’t tell him, or anyone, about the rapes.

She still has nightmares, 15 years after her ordeal.

“I know the judge did not sentence me to be raped,” said Lastocy. “As much as I despise him, I don’t even wish my rapist would be raped while he is in prison, because nobody deserves it.”

Originally posted here