Photo Illustration by Erin O’Flynn/The Daily Beast/Getty
As if the Federal Bureau of Prisons (BOP) doesn’t have enough problems with facility overcrowding, criminal recidivism rates in the stratosphere, as well as the seemingly endless Jeffrey Epstein saga—along comes two more scandals to further sully the bureau’s already damaged reputation.
Just this past week, three female inmates testified during Senate hearings that through coercion and blackmail, they’d all been sexually assaulted by corrections officers on multiple occasions while incarcerated. The Senate subcommittee assigned the task of investigating the issue found the Bureau gridlocked with thousands of complaints and, as a result, very few of the offenders were being held accountable for their alleged surreptitious and serial predation.
The federal government has always been well aware that prison rape and sexual assault have been a reality in the system, which is why the Prison Rape Elimination Act drew bipartisan support when it was proposed and enacted in 2003.