Righting the Record on Prison Rape

Report of how Alex Friedmann, the associate editor of Prison Legal News who once served six years at a private prison run by the Corrections Corporation of America (CCA), the country's largest for-profit prison company, is now a stockholder in that company. His sole purpose is to introduce a proposal that CCA’s board of directors provide biannual reports to their stockholders about the company's efforts to reduce incidents of rape and sexual abuse in their facilities. The company claims to "take a zero tolerance approach to prisoner sexual abuse." They also claim to have taken "a leadership position on eliminating prisoner sexual abuse," but a report by the Bureau of Justice Statistics revealed that the CCA facility in Torrance, New Mexico, had one of the highest levels of sexual victimization of any prison in the country. The State of Hawaii withdrew all female inmates from Otter Creek Correctional Center in Kentucky because of charges of sexual abuse by guards. The State of Kentucky followed suit.