This article reports on a national study, research solicitations, research methodological issues, and a research review related to the U.S. Justice Department's National Institute of Justice's (NIJ's) efforts to enhance the implementation of the Federal Prison Rape Elimination Act (PREA) of 2003.
PREA calls for the development and institutionalization of national standards for preventing, detecting, and reducing sexual violence in prisons; making data and information on sexual violence more available to correctional administrators; and making prisons more accountable for inmate safety. In response to PREA, NIJ--the research, development, and evaluation arm of the U.S. Justice Department--has undertaken a number of studies and related activities designed to provide more information on prison rape, including its relationship to prison culture, the effectiveness of sexual victimization prevention programs, and ways to assess the risk of sexual violence. NIJ will also be studying how perpetrators of sexual violence are investigated and prosecuted, as well as the impact of sexual violence on victims. Once collected, this information will be used to help improve correctional facilities' policies and practices in addressing inmate sexual violence. This article describes a NIJ-funded national study by Mark Fleisher, which is one of the first national research projects on prison rape. This research is examining prison rape in medium- and maximum-security prisons for men and women across the United States in terms of inmate culture and the social and sexual climate found in prisons. NIJ research solicitations are described in the areas of prevention, risk assessment, and the medical-psychological impact on inmate victims of sexual violence. The article also briefly discusses the protection of human research subjects in the course of such research, and it reports on a NIJ publication entitled, "Prison Rape: A Critical Review of the Literature." 4 references