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Dear Editor,
Re: The Gulaging of America, August 29, 1999.

Stop Prisoner Rape, Inc. thanks you for recognizing the horror of prisoner
rape in this country's incarceration system. However, you make some
dangerously simplistic and naive assumptions that "rape" is "sex",
and the way to prevent rape in prison is to "eliminate" sex.

Male-on-male rape and the "gang rape" dynamic is not just manifested by
prisoners. We see it on the outside as well. We see forms of it in all the
"ultra male" groups such as the military, and by fraternities and all male
schools manifested in "hazing", other initiation rites, and sexual assault.

Rape in prison, however, is a common psychological aberration that arises
from extreme overall deprivation.

Society created the depravation, not the prisoner. That society believes a
"criminal" must be deprived in order to be "punished" is the key to
understanding who holds responsibility for prisoner rape. How much
deprivation a human can take without manifesting aberrant behavior should be
of interest to society. With the elimination of rehabilitation, education
and vocation skill training in most prisons around the country these last
twenty years, sexual assaults exponentially  increased. 

The following may help to shed some light on understanding male psychology:

"Man's greatest pain, whether in life or prison, is the sense of personal
insignificance, of being helpless and of no real value as person, an
individual— a Man. Imprisoned and rendered powerless and without any voice
or control in the things that affect him, his personal desires and feelings
regarded with indifference, and treated as a child at best and an animal at
worst by those having control of his life, the existence of the prisoner is
one of acute deprivation and insignificance. The psychological pain involved
in such an existence creates an urgent and terrible need for reinforcement
of his sense of manhood and personal worth. Unfortunately, prison deprives
those locked within the normal avenues of pursuing gratification of their
needs, leaving them nothing but the instruments of sex, violence and
conquest to validate their sense of manhood and individual worth. And they
do, channeling all of their frustrated drives into the pursuit of power,
finding gratification in the conquest and defeat, the domination and
subjugation of each other--the only avenue left to them. Thus the world of
the prisoner is one ruled by force, violence and passions. Since the prison
population consists of men whose sexuality, sense of masculinity and whose
sexual frame of reference is structured around women, weaker inmates are
made to assume the role of "women," serving the strong reinforcing their
sense of manhood and personal importance, and providing them with
gratification (of) their needs that would, in the normal world, be provided by
women. Within that peculiar societal context, an exaggerated emphasis is
attached to the status of "man" and the pursuit of power becomes a thing of
overriding importance because power translates into security, prestige,
physical and emotional fortification, wealth— survival. Rape in prison is
rarely a sexual act, but one of violence, politics and acting out of power
roles." Prison: The Sexual Jungle by Wilbert Rideau and Billy Sinclair (Male
Rape, by Anthony Scacco, 1982, AMS Press, Inc.)

Your solution to prisoner rape is to eliminate "sex". The only way that one
man will not prey on another in prison is though containment in isolation.
We know from observing men in extreme isolation in the nation's "super max"
prisons that they become completely insane. 95% of all inmates are
eventually released.

Can you imagine 1 million insane men turned lose on society? What is the
solution? Lock up every man who commits any crime forever?

As it is, America's prison system is a monster making factory. You'd think
that society would recognize that its prison system is the cause of the
increased violence in the streets and in the home. If society cannot care
about the human toll, think of the financial toll.

It costs $16 dollars a day to provide treatment for a drug user. It costs
$50 day a to incarcerate a drug user. Which "remedy" would we rather pay
for? A man who might be cured or a man who has been repeatedly gang raped
with no counseling who will be released upon us?

Yours,
Roanne Withers, Director
Stop Prisoner Rape, Inc.

P.O. Box 632
Fort Bragg, CA 95437
(707)961-1953
roanne@mcn.org

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