Is prison rape designed as a crime deterrent? I often wonder if it is. There's probably many of us that could tolerate a prison sentence if it only involved solitary confinement: that's the life a monk or hermit lives, after all. But when you factor in the probability of violent rape while incarcerated, tolerance for the experience goes way down.
Louisa Stannow of Reason magazine discusses prison rape in an article for the July issue: Rape Factories.
update: fixed typo. Thanks to Walt for pointing it out.
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3 comments:
This is entirely beside the point, but what the heck. The difference between solitary confinement and a monk's life is one of freedom. Chosen solitude is entirely different from enforced solitude. It's the exact equivalent of those fools who say CIA agents "practice" waterboarding all the time and it's no big deal.
@walt: I think the personality type that would be attracted to monastic life would shrug at enforced solitude. Just my opinion. And while in modern times a monastic vocation could be laid aside with no recrimination, in past centuries that was not always the case.
Well, let's just take it as a given that when I make an assertion, I'm referring to the present, not past centuries:)
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