JDI Statement on the Shuttering of the PREA Resource Center

Los Angeles and Washington, D.C., April 23, 2025 — In a devastating blow to the fight to stop prisoner rape, the National PREA Resource Center is closing its doors after its federal funding was abruptly cut late yesterday. Since its launch in 2010, the center has served as a one-stop shop for essential training and information for advocates and corrections officials dedicated to ensuring the dignity of incarcerated people. The PREA Resource Center also oversaw the PREA audits, the nation’s only oversight tool monitoring compliance with federal rules to end sexual abuse behind bars.

“The shuttering of the National PREA Resource Center is, quite simply, catastrophic for incarcerated people,” said Linda McFarlane, Executive Director of Just Detention International. “Its programs were a gamechanger for corrections agencies, while also helping to shed light on the conditions inside prisons and jails across the country. Without the PREA Resource Center, corrections agencies will be left on their own when it comes to best practices to stop sexual abuse — and the public will be left in the dark about what goes on inside detention facilities. But the worst outcome is that this closure means incarcerated children and adults will be decidedly less safe.”

The cuts to the PREA Resource Center’s funding were part of the Department of Justice’s sweeping cancellations of grant programs that were announced yesterday. The PREA Resource Center, which was funded by the Bureau of Justice Assistance, had been tasked with ensuring the meaningful implementation of the national Prison Rape Elimination Act standards in a range of detention facilities, from youth facilities, to large state and federal prisons, to county jails and one-cell police lockups. The PREA regulations were the crowning achievement of the 2003 statute of the same name, and drew widespread support from both Republicans and Democrats. While the standards were not implemented evenly nationwide, corrections agencies that have taken them seriously have seen marked improvements in safety. The PREA Resource Center was crucial to those efforts, helping corrections leaders build safer ways for incarcerated people to report sexual abuse, set up robust programs to educate incarcerated people about their rights, and establish partnerships with local rape crisis centers to support incarcerated survivors.

“Prisoner rape is, and has always been, a devastating crime that people on the left and right abhor. Both parties worked together to create the PREA standards and increase sexual safety, and many corrections officials embraced that work. By eliminating the PRC, this administration has sent a clear signal that it is okay with sexual abuse in detention, and it has completely pulled the rug out from under corrections officials who were working to end it. And now roughly 2 million people in custody will be in greater danger of sexual abuse,” said McFarlane.

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Just Detention International is a health and human rights organization that seeks to end sexual abuse in all forms of detention.