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Prison rape orjail rape issexual assault of people while they areincarcerated. The phrase is commonly used to describe rape of inmates by other inmates. It is a significant, if not controversial, part of what is studied under the wider concept ofprison sexuality.
In the United States, the overwhelming majority of prison rape cases involve men who are raped by other men.[1][2] This is due in part to the fact that in the United States the vast majority ofincarcerated people are men. Sexual contact with inmates by prison staff is illegal, regardless of supposed consent.[3]
Public awareness of common prison rape is a relatively recent development, and estimates of its prevalence have varied widely over the past several decades.[citation needed] In 1974, Carl Weiss and David James Friar wrote that 46 million Americans would one day be incarcerated; of that number, they held that 10 million would be raped.[4]
According to aUS Department of Justice report from 2013, an estimated 5.0% of people incarcerated in state and federal prison, and 3.2% of those in jail, reported at least one incident of sexual victimization in the prior 12 months.[5] However, advocates dispute the accuracy of the numbers due to under-reporting of sexual assaults in prison, especially amongincarcerated youths.[6]
In terms of individuals' risk over their entire incarceration, estimates from the 1980s and 1990s range widely. A 1992 estimate from theFederal Bureau of Prisons suggested that between 9% and 20% of inmates had been sexually assaulted.[4] Similarly, studies from 1982 and 1996, concluded that the rate was somewhere between 12% and 14%. In New York Statemaximum security prisons, a 1986 study put the proportion at around 23%.[4] By contrast, Christine Saum's 1994 survey of 101 inmates determined that 5 had been sexually assaulted.[4]
ThePrison Rape Elimination Act of 2003 was the first United States federal law passed specifically dealing with the sexual assault of prisoners. The bill was signed into law on 4 September 2003.[7]
Rape is regularly used in prisons across the widerMiddle East. Sexual abuse of detained women, children and men is rampant inUAE,[8][9]Saudi[10] andBahraini[11][12] prisons.
Sexual violence againstpolitical prisoners is prevalent in Iran.[13] It is allegedly ignored or even facilitated by authorities.[14]
Reports issued to the United Nations allege that rape has been used by interrogators in Iran for decades.[15] During the 1980s, following theIranian Islamic Revolution, the rape of female political prisoners was so prevalent that it promptedHussein-Ali Montazeri, Supreme LeaderAyatollah Khomeini's then-deputy, to write the following to Khomeini in a letter dated 7 October 1986: "Did you know that young women are raped in some of the prisons of the Islamic Republic?"[16] Two prominent members of Iran's human rights community, the feminist lawyer and journalistShadi Sadr and the blogger and activistMojtaba Saminejad published essays online from inside Iran saying prison rape has a long history in Iran.[16]
In the2009 Iranian presidential election protests, opposition groups[who?] reported thousands were arrested and tortured in prisons around the country, with former inmates alleging mass rape of men, women and children by theIslamic Revolutionary Guards, in prisons such asKahrizak andEvin.[17][18]
Following the2009 presidential election, Iranian presidential candidateMehdi Karroubi said several protesters held behind bars in Evin Prison had been savagely raped, according to a confidential letter to former president and clericAkbar Hashemi Rafsanjani.[19] Karroubi said this was a "fragment" of the evidence he had and that if the denials did not stop, he would release even more.[20][21]
On 9 August 2009, in a letter to the Chairman of theExpediency Discernment Council of Iran, Mehdi Karroubi demanded investigation of Iranian prisons for possible torture and, in particular, sexual harassment of men and women.[22][23] On 19 August, he wrote to parliament speaker Ali Larijani, asking to meet with him, PresidentMahmoud Ahmadinejad, judiciary chiefAyatollah Sadiq Larijani, former president Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani and the state prosecutor to "personally present my documents and evidence over the cases of sexual abuse in some prisons specially Kahrizak."[24]Ali Larijani andSadiq Larijani (Judiciary committee) both officially rejected his claims andAli Khamenei's representatives, and Vice Chairman of National Security Commission of the parliament demanded Karroubi's arrest.[25][citation needed]
Human Rights Watch andAmnesty International have both released reports of widespread rape and abuse of prisoners inTurkey spanning multiple decades.[26][27] Kurdish prisoners have also been specifically targeted for rape and other forms of sexual violence.[28]
In February 2021,BBC News reported eyewitness accounts of systematic rape ofUyghur women in theXinjiang internment camps.[29][30]
Multiple women who were formerly detained in the Xinjiang internment camps have publicly made accusations of systemic sexual abuse, including rape.[29] Sayragul Sauytbay, a teacher who was forced to work in the camps, told the BBC that employees of the camp in which she was detained conducted rapesen masse, saying that camp guards "picked the girls and young women they wanted and took them away".[29] She also told the BBC of an organized gang rape, in which a woman around age 21 was forced to make a confession in front of a crowd of 100 other women detained in the camps, before being raped by multiple policemen in front of the assembled crowd.[29] Tursunay Ziawudun, a woman who was detained in the camps for a period of nine months, told the BBC that women were removed from their cells "every night" to be raped by Chinese men, and that she was subjected to three separate instances of gang rape while detained.[29] Qelbinur Sedik, an Uzbek woman from Xinjiang, has stated that Chinese police sexually abused detainees during electric shock tortures, saying that "there were four kinds of electric shock... the chair, the glove, the helmet, and anal rape with a stick".[29]
According to a 2023 report inThe Observer, there were almost 1000 rapes in prisons in England and Wales between 2010 and 2023.[31]
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