"I Think It's Mostly a Joke": Prison Rape Reform & the Myth of Sexual Safety

• In Event: Victims’ Experiences in the Criminal Justice System

Abstract

For decades, feminist criminologists have grappled with the state’s role in effective sexual assault intervention. Yet, few studies have closely examined the impact of rape law within carceral contexts. In recent years, policymakers and advocates have lauded the Prison Rape Elimination Act (PREA) as a bipartisan criminal justice reform that detects, prevents, and responds to claims of sexual misconduct in correctional facilities. While legal interventions such as PREA “on the books” claim to protect incarcerated survivors, in practice, practitioners struggle with gendered, sexed, and raced implications of PREA “on the ground” that often delegitimize incarcerated people’s experiences of sexual harassment and abuse. Drawing upon interviews with 76 legal actors—including formerly incarcerated survivors and correctional practitioners—I show that while several practitioners credit PREA for disrupting the longstanding culture of sexual violence, both survivors and practitioners contend that PREA also under-protects survivors of state-sanctioned sexual abuse while criminalizing sexuality—particularly among incarcerated people who engage in mutually desired sexual contact. I argue that this institutional sexual exploitation points to the state failures of both rape law and mass incarceration more broadly.

Author

• Amber Powell, University of Iowa