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June 20, 2002, 9:35 a.m. No Joke Prison rape is finally taken seriously. By Eli Lehrer

rison rape, the only violent sex crime that late-night comedians joke about, might finally get the attention it deserves thanks to a new bill winding its way through Congress. The bill, (introduced last week in the house by Virginia Republican Frank Wolf and the Senate by Ted Kennedy (D., Mass.) and Jeff Sessions (R., Ala.)) would dedicate the federal government to studying and mitigating America's most ignored crime problem. A sensible, well-funded middle-ground effort, the Prison Rape Reduction Act would set up a commission to study prison rape, devote $60 million to research, data collection, and prevention, and develop national standards for preventing the crime. The bill has already drawn support from an impressive spectrum of political activists: groups ranging from the NAACP and National Council of La Raza to conservative prison-reform crusader Chuck Colson. It emerges from a campaign begun by Hudson Institute fellow and human-rights crusader Michael Horowitz; and it's a good first step.

While some prison administrators like to minimize the problem, the facts about prison rape should horrify anyone with compassion. Every day, hundreds of men — many of them pre-trial detainees or misguided small-time crooks — get raped behind bars. Prison serial rapists search out "punks" (rape targets) for daily male-on-male rape. Since 1992, the combination of effective policing and long sentences for wrongdoers has made the United States the safest large Western nation. Every violent crime has declined save one: prison rape.

As a result of a swelling inmate population — now a shade below 2 million — and an increasingly chaotic correctional system, prison rape has actually gotten much worse. According to groups like Stop Prisoner Rape, over 240,000 men get raped in prison or jail each year. In the outside world, men rape about 140,000 women. In many cases, prison rape can literally result in a death sentence. Writing in the journal AIDS, Centers for Disease Control and Prevention researchers Hazel Dean-Gaitor and Patricia Fleming find that prisoners have nearly six times the AIDS-infection rate of the population as a whole.

While some on the left — most prominently the group Human Rights Watch — have proposed anti-prison-rape solutions such as expanding prisoners' rights to sue corrections officials, the new proposal represents a sensible middle-ground solution. It provides ample funding but doesn't create any new federal crimes or make it harder to run facilities. By setting standards, encouraging research, and keeping records, it will hold prison administrators accountable for their actions when rape spirals out of control behind bars.

More accountability makes sense. While inmate rapists bear the ultimate responsibility for their crimes, prison administrators are complicit in the prison-rape epidemic. A divided inmate population living in fear and is easier for administrators to manage. Some hugely negligent prisons even encourage rape: Staff at one California facility sent troublesome inmates to live with a serial rapist.

America's investment in incarcerating wrongdoers has made the nation's streets much safer. But allowing rape to continue unmitigated behind bars represents a serious black mark on America's human-rights record. While comic movies such as Norm McDonald's Dirty Work and even a recent 7 UP commercial have made light comedy out of prison rape, it's not a joking matter. The mere possibility of being raped represents a serious form of torture for nearly all inmates and a prison punk's daily reality is not something that any civilized nation should wish on even its most wayward citizen.

While prison rape may never disappear altogether, a strong national commitment to research and prevention could reduce it significantly. For less than the federal government spends paying for agribusiness' marking, Congress has a chance to make a big dent in a serious crime problem. There's no excuse for delay.