[TRIGGER WARNING for rape, sexual harassment]

Kurt Buckman: I can’t go to jail. Look at me, I’ll get raped like crazy.
Nick Hendricks: I’d get raped just as much as you would, Kurt.
Kurt Buckman: No, no—I know you would.

From the movie Horrible Bosses (2011) (source)

Stanley Goodspeed: You enjoying this?
John Mason: Well, it’s certainly more enjoyable than my average day… reading philosophy, avoiding gang rape in the washrooms… though, it’s less of a problem these days. Maybe I’m losing my sex appeal.

From the movie The Rock (1996) (source)

Several good things happened on Friday. As anyone reading this already knows (unless this is the first website you have ever seen, in which case “Welcome!”), a jury in Pennsylvania convicted former Penn State assistant football coach Jerry Sandusky on 45 of 48 charges for sexual abuse of minors.

In another story that the Sandusky case may have overshadowed, a Philadelphia jury convicted Monsignor William Lynn on Friday of one count of child endangerment. Lynn is the highest-ranking Catholic official to be convicted in relation to a child sex abuse scandal.

Two thoughts on this. First, we are taking a long-overdue stand against abuses of power in areas we, as a culture, usually view as sacred (figuratively or literally): sports, especially football; and religion. Neither of these should give anyone, however talented or revered, license to flaunt not only the law, but some pretty elemental notions of humanity.

Second, within moments of the announcement of the Sandusky verdict, the jokes about prison rape started appearing. Refreshingly, quite a few admonitions to STFU about it also quickly appeared, based on a very simple premise that cannot be stressed enough:

Rape. Is. Not. Funny.

Ever.

If your initial reaction to the above statement begins with “Yeah, but…” please stand up from the computer and hit your head against the nearest door frame. Do it until I tell you to stop.

I call this “refreshing” because an issue that is usually the subject of bad jokes and perverse revenge fantasies is finally getting some serious attention. The issue of prison rape was already in the news, remarkably, because of new guidelines issued by the Justice Department, entitled “National Standards To Prevent, Detect, and Respond to Prison Rape.” It is a common grievance among so-called men’s rights activists (MRA’s), who tend to whine a lot on internet forums but do very little actual activism. To see people, let alone the government, take it seriously is nothing short of dumbfounding.

Full disclosure: I have made purportedly-humorous references to prison rape in the past, particularly in reference to a criminal trial that affected people close to me. That was wrong.

if you make a sandusky prison rape joke you’re contributing directly to the culture that allowed him to get away with his crimes for so long

— Bogsanski Čarobnjak (@AKvltGhost) June 23, 2012

Arguments about the shortcomings and/or merits of our expansive prison system are legion. We don’t need to get into a discussion of the moral and philosophical aspects of crime and punishment.

I will not wish for #Sandusky to be raped in prison. I hate rape. That’s why I wanted him convicted.

— Jeff Fecke (@jkfecke) June 23, 2012

There are two common kinds of prison rape, although real, verifiable statistics remain elusive. One, mostly affecting adult male prisoners, involves prisoners getting sexually assaulted by other prisoners. People focus on the victim in these scenarios, as though they are getting something they deserve. But there’s a second (and possibly third, and fourth, and fifth…”) actor in this scenario, and that person is also a prisoner. Is that person no longer subject to the control of the warden and the prison guards? Why does that person get to act with seeming impunity? If this is a system of punishment, it is unconscionably arbitrary. (That, or perhaps some prison officials allow it to happen…)

The second common type of prison rape seems to affect women and juvenile inmates the most. In this type, the perpetrators tend to be guards. Do I even need to explain how wrong this is? I guarantee you rape is not part of that job description.

Prison rape (I can’t believe I have to say this) is neither an effective nor a valid form of punishment. I’ll start with why it is invalid. It is invalid because it is rape. If you need a more detailed explanation than at, ask someone else, because I do not want to know you.

It is ineffective because, basically, it is unevenly applied among convicts. Unless, of course, the goal of our criminal justice system is to punish the smallest or weakest criminals more than the biggest and strongest.

Before last year, the federal government had never bothered to estimate the actual number of rapes that occur in prisons. Its data relied on official complaints filed by prisoners, which in recent years have averaged around 800. One such complaint was filed in 1995 by Rodney Hulin, a boy from Amarillo, Texas, who had been arrested as a 15-year-old after throwing a Molotov cocktail into a pile of garbage. The trash burned, causing about $500 worth of damage to the exterior of an adjacent house. Hulin’s prank was unimpressive, but Texas in the mid-’90s had little tolerance for teenage ruffianism; in 1994, George W. Bush had become governor, defeating Ann Richards, a popular incumbent, by depicting her as soft on crime. Hulin was charged with two counts of second-degree arson. He was a small guy—just five feet tall and 125 pounds—but he got a big sentence: eight years in adult prison.

Within a month of arriving at Clemens Unit, a temporary holding facility outside Houston for juveniles on their way to adult prison, Hulin was raped by another inmate. He asked to be moved out of harm’s way, but his request was denied, and the rapes continued. In a letter to prison authorities, he wrote, “I might die at any minute. Please sir, help me.” Help was not forthcoming: getting raped was not deemed urgent enough to meet the requirements of the prison’s emergency grievance criteria. When Hulin got his mother to complain to the prison’s warden, she was told that Hulin needed to “grow up” and “learn to deal with it.”

Hulin’s method for dealing with it was to kill himself. Ten weeks after his arrival, he was discovered dangling from the ceiling of his cell.

This is the justice system we have wrought. Are you really okay with this?

Incidentally, the Justice Department’s efforts to reduce prison rape rates was already in the news because a right wing group thinks it is too expensive. Since we already spend billions to prosecute and incarcerate nonviolent criminals at ever-increasing rates for increasingly-innocuous offenses, the least we could do is try to keep them from getting raped.

In other news, the highest-ranking enlisted officer on the submarine USS Florida lost his job over a sexual harassment complaint brought by a sailor who endured ridicule and harassment from his shipmates after he reported that someone tried to rape him at knifepoint while in port at Diego Garcia. Because rape is funny, right?

For those of you still hitting your heads against the door frame, go ahead and stop now.

Photo credit: “Rage face” by Smurfy (Own work) [Public domain], via Wikimedia Commons.