From a reader:

Jonah,
Are “off-color” prison jokes okay with your editor? I believe that he has made the argument that prison rape is one of the truly horrific facts of the penal system and that it’s no joke. I agree with him. You wouldn’t joke about rape in any other context. Why is it funny when some weak guy in prison (probably for some drug offense that did no harm to anyone else) gets raped, possibly infected with AIDS, and becomes a sex slave for the rest of his stay in jail (and then is psychically scarred for the rest of his life)? You might be saying, “hey, lighten up.” But it does seem to me to be one of the largest travesties in the US that this goes on. It really is a human rights abuse that the government does so little about it. You should consider dropping prison rape jokes from your schpiel.

My response: Sigh. Yes, yes prison rape is a real problem. Yes, yes, I think more should be done about it. Yes, Rich has written and published several articles on the subject. And, yes, yes, I am saying lighten up. I won’t get into a big argument about this, but I will note that jokes about how terrible a place prison is — even for poor harmless drug dealers — has some social utility which hardly detracts from the case for making prisons more humane.