RI has 28 Alleged Cases of Prison Rape over 3 Years
Thursday, June 04, 2015
Rhode Island state authorities recorded 28 cases of rape and other sexual assaults in state prisons and were able to confirm eight of them over the last three years, according to documents provided in response to a public records request.
The 20 cases that were not confirmed were considered either unsubstantiated, unfounded, or still under investigation, according to Jeff Renzi, the Associate Director of Planning and Research at the state Department of Corrections.
The documents put numbers to a reality that has long been known to afflict the prison system nationally but has been hard to put a face to because of the reluctance of current and former prisoners to discuss the incidents—due to the shame and stigma associated with being a rape victim and the fear of reprisals from offending inmates, among other factors.
GET THE LATEST BREAKING NEWS HERE -- SIGN UP FOR GOLOCAL FREE DAILY EBLAST“You’d have to have your eyes closed totally … to not know it takes place,” said Bob Mann, a Providence-based criminal defense attorney with 40 years of experience under his belt.
And yet, Mann could think of just one client over that period who had told him that he or she was the victim of sexual assault. Though victims are hesitant to share their experiences, Mann said the reality of sexual assault in prison is apparent to him in his work as criminal defense lawyer. He said concerns that a client’s youth or physical characteristics might make them vulnerable to sexual assault in prison is an issue often raised between defense attorneys and prosecutors.
New numbers reveal extent of problem
Sol Rodriguez, the executive director of Open Doors, an advocacy and resource center for ex-offenders, was surprised by the data provided to GoLocalProv. Last time she had looked into the issue, about a decade ago, Rodriquez said she was aware of just one or two incidents of rape in the state prison system.
“That seems like a fairly large number,” Rodriguez said.
Like Mann, Rodriguez knows firsthand how difficult it is to get prisoners to talk about rape. About 10 years ago, she says her organization was hired by the Department of Corrections as a subcontractor on a federal grant intended to help the state keep better track of incidents of sexual assaults in prison. Rodriguez and her staff interviewed more than a dozen inmates at the time. Not a single one admitted to being a victim. Nor did any of them admit to ever witnessing such an assault.
Likewise, in her 12 years at the helm of Open Doors, Rodriguez said just one former inmate had confided in her about experiencing a sexual assault.
The uptick in reported cases coincides with a new federally-driven effort to combat the problem. In 2003, U.S. Congress enacted the Prison Rape Elimination Act, or PREA, for short. Though the law has been on the books for more than a decade, the standards for implementing it and determining how local prisons are to comply did not take effect until August 2012.
The data provided to GoLocalProv represents the first cases collected under the new system.
The 28 cases include any incidents of any kind of coercive sexual contact. Only two were in one of the women’s facilities and just one of those was substantiated. The rest were all male-on-male incidents. There were no reported incidents of a guard or other staff member sexually assaulting an inmate.
Two facilities were tied for the greatest number of incidents: the intake facility in 2013 and the medium security prison in 2014 each had four reported cases. Two of the intake facility cases were substantiated; just one of the medium security alleged incidents has been verified.
Investigations into two of the 28 cases were still ongoing as of publication.
How Rhode Island compares nationally
Relative to nationwide figures, Rhode Island actually has a lower incidence of rape cases.
According to the National Institute of Justice, between 2011 and 2012 about 4 percent of state and federal prison inmates said they had been the victims of a sexual assault by a fellow inmate or prison staff member in the last year or at least since entering prison. Those figures are in line with a prior 2007 U.S. Justice Department report which pegged the rate at about 4.5 percent, or 70,000 out of 1.5 million prisoners on average each year.
Rhode Island, with an average of 9.3 (alleged) cases a year and a current average prison population of 3,176, has a potential sexual assault rate of 2.9 percent among inmates. (And, if the incidents of rape are weighed against the total number of individuals that pass through state correctional facilities in a year—not the average population at any given point in the year—the rate would be even lower, dipping below one percent.)
The lower rate is typical for Rhode Island, according to Renzi. “Historically this has been the case. Reasons for this would be that the staff practice good core correctional practice in terms of communication with prisoners. Staff are aware of the boundaries in terms of staff on prisoner incidents. If there are incidents that are reported, then the RIDOC will utilize our Office of Inspections to investigate any alleged incidents of staff on prisoner sexual misconduct,” he said.
“Last, the RIDOC Code of Ethics also emphasizes that staff on prisoner incidents will not be tolerated. The RIDOC has been emphasizing this going back to the mid 1990s when policy was developed around sexual harassment,” Renzi added.
The state’s commitment received an added boost with the passage of the Prison Rape Elimination Act in 2003. After the law passed, the state received a two-year federal grant that Renzi said was used to educate inmates about reporting mechanisms and create a position in the Special Investigation Unit solely dedicated to implementing and ensuring compliance with the new law. (The grant, which was for almost $500,000, lasted from 2005 to 2007.)
This year, the Department of Corrections received a second federal grant which will be used for more inmate education and training of law enforcement officers and prosecutors. “We are also using some funds for programming a risk assessment instrument used to better identify potential victims of sexual assault as well as perpetrators,” Renzi said.
Brad Brockmann, the executive director of the Center for Prisoner Health and Human Rights at The Miriam Hospital, praised the state’s efforts to comply with the federal law.
“The PREA team there is being extremely conscientious about implementing and complying with PREA standards,” Brockmann told GoLocalProv. “They’re moving forward with this. They’re doing what they’re required to do. No law is perfect [but] this law is a vast improvement.”
Brockmann said he could not answer whether Rhode Island’s figures are underreported, but he said implementation of the new law should help to identify more of the cases that go unreported.
“This should make it better in general,” Brockmann added.
Tips on potential corruption at the local or state level, misspending, abuse of power, and other issues of public interest can be sent to [email protected]. Follow Stephen Beale on Twitter @bealenews
Related Slideshow: Prison Rape in RI
Below are figures on the number of reported rapes in Rhode Island’s state prison system over the past three years. Data is broken down by facility and year. Each slide lists the formal facility name when available, the current population, the total number of rape cases that were reported and investigated in that facility, and the breakdown of how many of those cases were substantiated and how many were not confirmed. Facilities are listed in order of year, starting with the oldest. The last slide lists the total number of cases across all years for all facilities. Data were provided by the Rhode Island Department of Corrections in response to a public records request.
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