JDI was instrumental in securing passage of the Prison Rape Elimination Act (PREA) in 2003, the nation's first civil law addressing sexual violence behind bars. Working closely with members of Congress on both sides of the aisle as well as a broad coalition of non-governmental organizations, JDI helped to ensure that Congress passed PREA unanimously.

On September 4, 2003, President George W. Bush signed the Prison Rape Elimination Act into law. JDI helped secure unanimous biparisan passage of this pivotal legislation. JDI's then-President, Tom Cahill (fourth from the left), and prisoner rape survivor Hope Hernandez (fifth from the left), were present at the Oval Office signing ceremony.

PREA implementation reached a milestone on June 23, 2009 with the release of the first-ever national standards addressing sexual violence in detention, developed by the National Prison Rape Elimination Commission (NPREC). During its tenure from June 2004 to August 2009, JDI worked closely with the Commission, providing first-hand survivor accounts and expert analysis. In particular, JDI guaranteed that the concerns of prisoner rape survivors remained central to the Commission's work by enabling them to testify at public hearings and events, offer recommendations, and meet with the Commissioners and NPREC staff.

Under PREA, U.S. Attorney General Eric Holder was given until June 23, 2010 to ratify the standards -- a deadline that he missed. More than 10,000 individuals signed JDI's petition urging Holder to enact the standards swiftly and without weakening, including over 100 survivors of prisoner rape. Despite this setback, JDI will continue to press the Attorney General to take action on the standards as quickly as possible. Once finalized, the standards will be immediately binding on all federal detention facilities. State prisons and local jails will have one year to show compliance with the standards or risk losing a portion of their federal funding. With the dissolution of the NPREC in August of 2009, JDI’s work for full implementation of the standards is especially critical.

The standards release was a turning point in the struggle to end sexual abuse in detention. After decades of institutional denial, downplaying, and flippant repetition of stereotypes, government agencies and corrections officials have finally begun to describe the problem of sexual abuse behind bars as a serious violation of human rights -- something JDI has recognized for the past three decades. The language used by the NPREC, and throughout the media coverage of the standards, echoed positions that for many years JDI was almost alone in taking.

As part of the effort to support full application of the NPREC standards, JDI has begun supporting state and local corrections agencies to become early adopters of the standards. These projects show that the standards are basic and achievable, can be implemented without significant expense, and will effectively address and prevent sexual abuse behind bars. In Oregon, where JDI staff members have worked with the Department of Corrections to incorporate the standards into the agency's work, corrections officials and inmates have praised the measures. Max Williams, Director of the Department of Corrections, estimates that his system had achieved compliance with 70 percent of the standards as of early 2010, with minimal costs, as they have "retrained and repurposed existing staff." JDI also is working with the California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation and the Macomb County, Michigan, Jail to implement the standards, and is currently discussing expanding the work to other jurisdictions.

Unfortunately, some corrections leaders remain opposed to the standards. They claim the measures are too expensive and are pressuring the Attorney General to weaken them. In response to this criticism, the Justice Department commissioned a problematic cost projection study. The study asks corrections departments to estimate how much it would cost them to implement the standards, without considering potential savings or the financial and moral benefits of these measures. But cost and other corrections concerns figured heavily into the Commission's development of the standards -- the recommendations under review by the Attorney General already represent a compromise between advocates and corrections. The cost study further delayed the already slow‐moving review process. As a result, Attorney General Holder missed the June 2010 deadline. In response to the delay in standards formalization, JDI mobilized a coalition of diverse organizations to urge Holder to enact the measures swiftly and fully.

JDI Survivor Speakers List members pose after testifying at the Department of Justice on the PREA standards in January 2010.

In addition to the standards, PREA mandates a zero-tolerance approach to sexual violence in detention, the gathering of information about the problem, and the provision of grants to states to combat it. As a result, far more is now known about the extent of sexual violence behind bars and the policies and practices that best prevent and respond to it.

In a study released in August 2010, the Bureau of Justice Statistics (BJS) surveyed inmates across the country about their experience with sexual victimization in detention . Based on these anonymous interviews, the BJS estimated that at least 88,500 adults held in U.S. prisons and jails were sexually abused at their current facility in the preceding year alone These surveys are snapshots, reaching only inmates present on a particular day. As the annual number of admissions to county jails is significantly higher than the jail population on any given day, these BJS data represent just the tip of the iceberg.

In January 2010, the BJS released the findings of its survey of youth in juvenile corrections facilities. Shockingly, 12 percent -- almost one in eight -- of detained youth reported being assaulted in the previous year. In the worst facilities, one in three kids had been victimized. Such widespread abuse of vulnerable children caused uproar in the media, and drew attention to the Attorney General's sluggish process for finalizing the NPREC standards.

PREA instructs the BJS to identify the facilities with the highest and lowest percentages of assaults and rank them. In turn, the Review Panel on Prison Rape conducts hearings with these best performing and worst performing facilities, in order to gain insight into effective policies and practices for addressing sexual assault. After conducting sessions with prisons and jails in 2008, the Review Panel was reconstituted in 2010 in order to hear the testimony from the best and worst performing juvenile facilities.

JDI has helped the BJS to finalize its survey instruments and worked to include prisoner rape survivors at Review Panel hearings. Both the survey findings and the hearings have confirmed JDI's long-held understanding that sexual abuse in detention is not inevitable and occurs significantly more often than is reported to officials.

To make certain that the promise of PREA is realized, JDI continues to monitor and engage with relevant government agencies and disseminates information about the law and its implementation to policymakers, government officials, advocates, reporters, and the general public.

For more information about JDI's PREA implementation work, please contact Senior Program Director Melissa Rothstein at mrothstein@justdetention.org.