All Too Familiar: Sexual Abuse of Women in U.S. State Prisons, and: Nowhere to Hide: Retaliation Against Women in Michigan State Prisons

I. Introduction

The United States incarcerates the largest percentage of its population of any country in the world. ¹ Even more disturbing is that the prison population will continue to grow as a result of recent shifts in crime policy. ² At the heart of this prison boom are US women who have become the fastest growing segment of the prison population. Since 1980, the number of women entering US prisons has risen by almost 400 percent, roughly double the increase for males. ³ This exponential growth has resulted in a situation where thousands of women are trapped in a system that is designed for and dominated by men. Consequently, the system fails to address the often vastly different concerns of women prisoners.

Critics of the US prison system argue that it is largely invisible to the general public. Within this already invisible system, women are consistently forgotten and suffer devastating consequences as a result. The discrimination that women face in society as a whole is not only mirrored within the prison walls, but compounded by the way in which the prison system is organized to exploit and utilize women’s oppression. When compared to their male counterparts, for example, women prisoners face discriminatory treatment in educational and vocational programs, work-release and job-training, access to social services, and access to visitors. ⁴ Moreover, incarcerated women face psychological and physical abuse that is specific to them as women. Most seriously, this abuse takes the form of sexual assault by prison guards and staff.

The situation of women prisoners is beginning to receive increased attention. ⁵ Among the efforts to make incarcerated women’s experiences visible are the Human Rights Watch report All Too Familiar: Sexual Abuse of Women in U.S. State Prisons and its follow-up report Nowhere to Hide: Retaliation Against Women in Michigan State Prisons. Both studies concentrate on sexual misconduct in women’s prisons, including pervasive sexual harassment, sexual abuse, and privacy violations by guards and other corrections employees. The studies expose the failure of states to respond to women’s reports of sexual abuse and harassment. This failure was two-fold: states failed to investigate allegations of sexual abuse, and they failed to protect women who reported these abuses to prison authorities, leaving the women vulnerable to retaliation by guards. It is this second element that marks the major distinction between the two reports. While All Too Familiar takes a look at the incidence of sexual misconduct nationally, the follow-up report concentrates on the use of retaliation against women prisoners in the state of Michigan after they had reported sexual misconduct.

II. The Initial Report: Sexual Abuse of Women in US State Prisons

All Too Familiar examines the prevalence of sexual abuse in women’s prisons across the United States. The report is based on two-and-a-half years of research and interviews conducted at eleven state prisons located throughout the United States. ⁶ The findings indicate that being a female in US prisons can be a terrifying experience: If a woman is sexually abused, she cannot escape her abuser. ⁷ Grievance or investigatory procedures, where they exist, are often ineffectual, and correctional employees continue to engage in abuse because they believe that they will not be held accountable, either administratively or criminally.

According to the report, one of the clear contributing factors to sexual misconduct in women’s prisons is that the United States allows male correctional employees to hold contact positions (positions that require constant physical proximity) over female prisoners. Such a policy, however, raises concerns under both international and US domestic laws. For example, the policy is in direct violation of the United Nations Standard Minimum Rules for the Treatment...