The Ominous Sound of Keys: Enabling Sexual Assaults in Prisons

Abstract

When incarcerated for crimes for which they have been convicted, prisoners do not expect to be raped by those entrusted with their care, nor to be abandoned by those who have the power and authority to help. But that is what is happening in jails and prisons across the United States. Sexual assault in female correctional institutions in the U.S. costs an estimated $1 billion per year. The sexual abuse of female inmates at Federal Correctional Institute (FCI) Dublin has been extensive, pervasive, and well-known and documented since the mid-1990’s. This article, based on extensive interactions with former inmates, psychologists, guards, and Bureau of Prison officials will take the reader into FCI Dublin. A “content warning” applies as the article contains accounts of sexual assault and sexual abuse. Through the voices of survivors, prison officials and psychologists the reader will understand how the system failed some of the most vulnerable members of our society. On their behalf, and those that suffer a similar fate, we present the argument for Congress to pass federal legislation criminalizing enablers whose role in these terrible crimes demands holding them accountable.

Keywords: Sexual Abuse, Institutional Abuse, Prison Rape Elimination Act, (PREA); Criminalizing Enablers, Bureau of Prisons (BOP), Financial Impact of Enablers, Federal Correctional Institute Dublin