The New York Times posted an editorial in today's paper to which it is worth paying attention for those who share my interest in reforming the U.S.'s shameful prison system:
Children Can Never Be Safe in Adult Prisons
April 8, 2012
- After an unconscionable delay of nearly three years, the Justice Department needs to issue the final, mandatory rape-prevention policies for federal prisons and state correctional institutions that receive federal dollars. They must improve on the proposed rules issued last spring.
Those rules included more effective ways to investigate alleged attacks, report assaults, and improve medical and psychiatric help for the victims. But they notably failed to call for an end to the barbaric practice of placing children and youths in adult jails and prisons. Children will never be safe without that change.
Thirty-two members of Congress made exactly this point last week in a letter to Attorney General Eric Holder Jr., noting that "such a prohibition would be consistent with Congressional intent" as embodied in the federal Prison Rape Elimination Act of 2003.
An estimated 10,000 youths under 18 can be found in adult jails or prisons on any given day, according to federal statistics. As the members pointed out, data from a 2005 study showed that youths made up only 1 percent of the inmates in jails and prisons, but 21 percent of the victims of sexual violence.