Rape is only funny if it happens to an incarcerated man

The other day Ezra Klein posted about prison rape. As a result, the blogosphere has erupted in almost unanimous support of putting a stop to rape in prison. It is incredibly rare to see an issue that gets support from liberal bloggers as well as blogs that link Stop the ACLU. Amp has a great blog round-up of the various reasons to support ending violence in prison.

I felt this was significant in light of the recent report on Alternet entitled "Pot Prisoners Cost Americans $1 billion per year".

According to the new BJS report, "Drug Use and Dependence, State and Federal Prisoners, 2004," 12.7 percent of state inmates and 12.4 percent of federal inmates incarcerated for drug violations are serving time for marijuana offenses. Combining these percentages with separate U.S. Department of Justice statistics on the total number of state and federal drug prisoners suggests that there are now about 33,655 state inmates and 10,785 federal inmates behind bars for marijuana offenses. The report failed to include estimates on the percentage of inmates incarcerated in county and/or local jails for pot-related offenses.

This amounts to more than 40 000 non-violent offenders being locked up for the "crime" of using, possessing or selling a plant that kills less people than baby aspirin. I wonder how many of them suffer the indignity of rape as well as incarceration? Instead of recognizing that rape is a horrible crime, we respond with apathy and bad jokes about dropping the soap. Cultural references that make light of references to prison rape are rampant. It's interesting that we can make light of prison rape and yet it is not OK to make light of rape against women.

My favorite quote from Amp's round-up comes from Brendan Nyhan reads as follows:

If you asked me what issue Americans will see in retrospect as the greatest unacknowledged barbarity of our time, I would nominate prison rape, which is not only tolerated but frequently encouraged within our prisons and is still the subject of jokes in popular culture and politics.

UPDATE: Make sure to watch this video of Rodney Hulin's story. It is very sad. Make sure to check out the report put out by Human Rights Worldwide. The abuse of prisoners is one more good reason to object to the war on drugs, which is filling jail cells with non-violent offenders.