Sexual Abuse In U.S. Federal Women's Prisons

The following is part of an article by Ja'han Jones at MSNBC.com:

On Tuesday, a Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs subcommittee held a hearing on its investigation into the disturbing raft of sexual abuse against women at facilities operated by the Federal Bureau of Prisons. In his opening statement, the chair, Sen. Jon Ossoff, D-Ga., said the BOP “is failing systemically to prevent, detect and address sexual abuse of prisoners by its own employees.”

The findings are the result of an eight-month investigation. According to the subcommittee, over the past decade Bureau of Prisons employees sexually abused incarcerated women in at least 19 of the 29 federal facilities — about two-thirds — where women have been held. Investigators found at least 134 cases to be substantiated, but Ossoff added a caveat.

“Given the fear of retaliation by survivors of sexual abuse; the apparent apathy by senior BOP officials at the facility, regional office and headquarters levels; and severe shortcomings in the investigative practices implemented by BOP’s Office of Internal Affairs and the Department of Justice inspector general, I suspect the extent of abuse is significantly wider.” 

Here are some of the other key findings in the investigative report:

• The BOP has failed to prevent, detect and stop recurring sexual abuse in at least four federal facilities — including abuse by senior prison officials. (For example, at FCI Dublin, a federal prison in California, both the warden and the chaplain were among several employees who were found to have sexually abused incarcerated women.)
• The BOP has failed to effectively implement the Prison Rape Elimination Act, a 2003 law meant to establish better standards and oversight to prevent sexual abuse in federal prisons — whether committed by incarcerated people or prison officials. (Just last week, the officer at FCI Dublin whose job was to ensure the prison complied with PREA was convicted of sexually abusing incarcerated women.) 
• The failures have been systemic. Prisons were able to pass mandatory PREA audits during a time when officials there said there was a “culture of abuse” in the facilities. 
• The BOP has a backlog of about 8,000 internal affairs cases that has built up over more than five years, including hundreds of sexual abuse allegations against staff that haven’t been investigated.