XPost: talk.politics.drugs, talk.politics.guns, alt.current-events.usa   
   XPost: talk.politics.misc, alt.fan.rush-limbaugh, alt.politics.usa.republican   
   XPost: alt.politics.bush, alt.law-enforcement   
   From: DEMI_GOD_@SHAW.CA   
      
   More often than not, prison higher-ups ignore the problem. Utah prison   
   officials, for instance, seeking accreditation of the system's medical   
   facilities, maintained that there had never been a single rape in any Utah   
   prison. Among the many nasty facts deflating the claim was a detailed trial   
   transcript in which one inmate was convicted and sentenced to 15 years for   
   raping a fellow prisoner.   
      
   In Massachusetts, following the Boston Globe expose, corrections bureaucrats   
   still felt free to deny reality -- even as a freshly raped convict was in   
   the hospital under going rectal surgery.   
      
   Such denials are perfectly rational: To admit that inmates rape each other   
   is to invite lawsuits. In 1994, the Supreme Court ruled in Farmer vs.   
   Brennan that penitentiary officials are responsible for protecting prisoners   
   from sexual predation. The case was launched by Dee Farmer, a pre-op   
   transgender person serving 20 years for credit-card fraud, who was housed in   
   a tank full of violent male prisoners -- where, to no one's surprise, Farmer   
   was promptly and viciously gang raped.   
      
   Since then, several other inmates have tried to sue for damages after   
   contracting HIV as jailhouse sex slaves. One Illinois case was filed by   
   Michael Blucker, a 28-year-old, married man serving time for a nonviolent   
   crime. Blucker says he was beaten, gang-raped and then coerced into a form   
   of sex slavery. In at least two cases correctional officers allegedly   
   escorted Blucker from cell to cell, where he was raped and forced to service   
   customers who paid his prison-guard pimps with cigarettes, drugs and candy.   
      
   Despite the precedent set in Farmer's case, Blucker was not awarded damages.   
   Upon his release he became a devout born-again Christian who treats his HIV   
   with prayer rather than protease inhibitors.   
      
   The transformation from convict to "punk" usually begins in one of two ways.   
   A younger inmate might be taken under the wing of an older inmate; once debt   
   and dependence are established the older inmate will rape and "turn out" the   
   young prisoner.   
      
   Alternatively, a gang of inmates may attack a weaker prisoner with   
   overwhelming numbers and "punk" their prey. Once the victim has been "turned   
   out," the aggressors announce their control to the general population, which   
   in turn cements the deal through its tacit or active approval of the   
   victim's new status. The freshly minted punk will find himself vulnerable to   
   assault from all sides, as the prison grapevine informs everyone of his   
   subordinate status. In the interests of survival, the targeted prisoner will   
   usually choose one inmate as his "daddy" or "husband." In exchange for   
   control of the punk, the "man" offers protection against other aggressors.   
      
   Although the "daddies" have sex with other men, they are, in the hyper-macho   
   cosmology of prison, not homosexual -- because they are not sexually   
   penetrated themselves. The cult of manhood -- and the struggle to defend,   
   defile and define it -- is the axis around which the prison sex system   
   turns.   
      
   The prison world's other subordinate "gender" is the "queens" --   
   transsexuals and cross-dressers who may embrace homosexual sex and a   
   sexually submissive position in the prison hierarchy. Queens suffer sexual   
   assault, but often they use their sexual powers and feminine charms to play   
   stronger inmates off one another or to find a husband of their own liking.   
      
   By whatever route one arrives, the second sex of the Big House are, like   
   many women outside, forced into roles that range from nurturing wife to   
   denigrated, over-worked "whore."   
      
   The fatalistic logic of the joint explains away the workings of this system   
   with a sort of macho karma: "He must have wanted it or he would have fought   
   it off." The only one path of escape for the punk or potential punk is to   
   kill his persecutor. But for a young man facing only five years it's a tough   
   choice: be raped or commit murder and face a potential life sentence.   
      
   Convict and writer Jack Henry Abbot took the latter path. "I was even told   
   by the pigs who transported me to prison that I was being sent there to be   
   reduced to a punk, to be shorn of my manhood," wrote Abbot in his classic   
   "In the Belly of the Beast." "They felt I would be less arrogant once I had   
   been turned into a cocksucker ... Before I was twenty-one years old I had   
   killed one of the prisoners and wounded another. I never did get out of   
   prison. I never was a punk.   
      
      
   --   
   As Benjamin Franklin advised, "Resistance to tyrants is obedience to God.   
   Empty the coins of your purse into your mind, and your mind will fill your   
   purse with gold"   
      
      
   "Shit-for-bains"  wrote in   
   message news:QC%Eb.1967$Ol1.661@bignews3.bellsouth.net...   
   > Stewie, please explain this statement.   
   >   
   > "Stewart Connor"  wrote in message   
   > news:20031219232026.14163.00001203@mb-m14.aol.com...   
   > > >   
   >   
   > >   
   > > The moral concept of crime implies that your crimes against defenseless   
   > > prisoners is of the highest order crime there is.   
   >   
   >   
      
   --- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05   
    * Origin: you cannot sedate... all the things you hate (1:229/2)