Articles+and+Citations

The Silent Horror.Source:Economist; 8/6/2005, Vol. 376 Issue 8438, p25-25, 1/4p, 1 colorDocument Type:ArticleSubject Terms:RAPE -- Investigation PRISONERS -- United States UNITED States. Dept. of Justice SURVEYS PRISONERS -- Sexual behavior FEMALE rape victims MALE rape victims PRISON discipline PRISON conditionsGeographic Terms:UNITED StatesAbstract:The article reports on prison rape in the United States. On July 31st, the Department of Justice released its first statistical report on rape behind bars. Based on a sample of 2,730 jails, the department's statisticians estimated that there were 8,210 reported allegations of sexual violence in American jails last year. Welcome though it is, the report has captured only a fraction of the problem. Even outside jail, most rape victims do not report the crime. In jail, "snitches" are often murdered, which may explain why more prisoners in the report complained of being molested by prison staff than by other inmates. In state prisons, most cases of warders molesting inmates involved women molesting men. But 90% of the victims and perpetrators of convict-on-convict sexual offenses were male. The survey was required under the terms of the Prison Rape Elimination Act, a bipartisan law passed in 2003. The next step is to start distributing anonymous questionnaires to prisoners, which the Department of Justice will start doing later this year.Full Text Word Count:554ISSN:0013-0613Accession Number:**//17865289//**Database: MasterFILE Select

Article? 2 The cause of the New Mexico Prison Riot of 1980 was the corrupt ways of the authority figures. The prison had been ignored for years, creating an overcrowded, filthy, and uncomfortable living environment. At last prisoners became extremely angered at the lack of attention and the use of snitches by the administration and started a riot. The leaders of the riot were unorganized and ruthless. They showed no mercy for those who had "snitched." Men were raped, dismembered, and burned, thirty three will killed and hundreds more injured in unimaginable ways. Mike Rolland states in "Descent into Madness: An Inmate's Experience of the New Mexico State Prison Riot", the riot was "a futile attempt at nothing...all for nothing." The men who headed the riot ended up right back where they started, and were now deemed as more vicious and dangerous than ever. Those who survived the riot are forever scarred with the images of their fellow inmates being beaten and tortured before them, images that even convicted felons should not have to remember.

Sifakis, C (2003). New Mexico Prison Riot. Encyclopedia of American Prisons, Retrieved March 8, 2009, from []

Hamm, M (July 1998). Descent into Madness: An Inmate's Experience of the New Mexico State Prison Riot. Contemporary Sociology, 27, Retrieved March 8, 2009, from []