Abstract
Congress passed the landmark Prison Rape Elimination Act (“PREA”) in 2003 with unanimous support from both the Senate and House of Representatives. After the rampant sexual violence occurring behind the closed doors of prisons and jails (much of which was perpetrated by the staff of these institutions) was brought to light by human rights organizations, news media, lawyers, and activists in the late 1990s, lawmakers crafted this unprecedented federal law to establish a zero-tolerance policy for what it described as an “invisible epidemic.” At the law’s twenty-year mark, justice-involved individuals are still being sexually victimized in carceral settings, day after day, frequently at the hands of state actors. As but one example, three women testified about how they were subject to repeated sexual abuse by the warden of a federal women’s prison in California. The warden also served as the facility’s PREA Coordinator, ironically meaning he trained prison staff on how to prevent sexual violence and educated inhabitants upon entry about how to report abuse they might endure. The abuse was so widely known that the prison was referred to as a “rape club.” This anecdote is supported by broader statistics that suggest prison rape has not abated, revealing serious shortcomings of PREA and providing persuasive fodder in support of the abolition of the carceral state. Despite labeling prison rape an epidemic, Congress did not actually create a corresponding comprehensive public health response to address the crisis. Nor did it create a human rights response, despite much of the human rights work that went into revealing the atrocities that were occurring in the nation’s carceral settings. So, what did PREA do? This Article offers a retrospective analysis of the past twenty years under the PREA-centered legislative regime and analyzes some of the law’s most significant successes and failures in light of the public health context in which Congress situated it. If indeed an epidemic, prison rape is a seemingly endless one whose responses and remedies require retooling. We query whether a human rights framework, layered together with a true public health response, might offer a way forward. There is a rich history of marrying public health and human rights to address an array of social issues, and we advocate for such a union here. This shift—reframing and reconceptualizing the response by further merging public health and human rights—is a critical step toward ensuring the eradication of sexual violence in carceral settings in the most timely and effective way possible. While we laud the work to abolish the carceral state for all its flaws—systemic racism, sexism, abuse, and beyond—we cannot abandon the individuals who are incarcerated today, forced to endure sexual violence at the hands of the state.
Recommended Citation
Darcy, Kathleen M. and Johnson, Hannah Brenner
(2025)
"Prison Rape: An Endless Epidemic?,"
University of Memphis Law Review: Vol. 55:
Iss.
1, Article 1.
Available at:
https://digitalcommons.memphis.edu/um-law-review/vol55/iss1/1