Politics
More States Comply with Federal Rules to Stop Prison Rape
REBECCA BOONE, Associated Press
BOISE, Idaho (AP) — All but four states have either met or are working toward meeting federal guidelines intended to prevent prison rape, the U.S. Department of Justice says.
Idaho, Arkansas, Alaska and Utah continue to reject the federal rules, according to the department’s latest list of states that are compliant with the Prison Rape Elimination Act.
The updated list, released last week, reports that 10 states say they are fully compliant with the rules: Iowa, Maine, Mississippi, Missouri, New Hampshire, New Jersey, North Dakota, Oregon, Tennessee and Washington. Twenty-five more states have given the federal government formal assurances that they are actively working toward full compliance.
The federal law has several requirements that range from increased training of staff about sex-abuse policies to screening new inmates to determine if they are likely to commit sexual assault or to be assaulted. Inmates must also be able to report assaults to a rape crisis center or other organization outside the prison system, and suspected assaults must be thoroughly investigated and, when possible, perpetrators must be criminally charged.
Several states have changed their stance on the law. Last year, a handful of governors told U.S. Attorney General Eric Holder that they wouldn’t try to meet the federal standards, some arguing the law represented federal overreach or would simply cost too much. Now-former Texas Gov. Rick Perry was one of the most vocal opponents at the time, urging other states to join Texas in rejecting the rules.
But in May, recently elected Texas Gov. Greg Abbott promised that while some of the audits required under the Prison Rape Elimination Act are still underway, the state would use at least 5 percent of its federal prison funding toward becoming fully compliant with the law wherever feasible. Indiana, which also rejected the law last year, has submitted a similar assurance.
Officials in Idaho and Arkansas contend that their states have a zero-tolerance policy toward sexual abuse behind bars, and governors in both states say they support what they consider to be the best practices outlined in the Prison Rape Elimination Act’s rules. But both states have stopped short of agreeing to comply with the federal rules. Idaho corrections officials told the Justice Department last month that the state has created its own new rules that closely mirror — but don’t match — the federal guidelines.
Federal statistics show about 216,000 adult and juvenile inmates are sexually assaulted each year, compared with about 238,000 people living outside of correction facilities in the U.S.
“The continuing effort among states to implement the PREA standards is an encouraging sign. If these states’ implementation is full and meaningful, it will result in a dramatic reduction in sexual abuse behind bars,” Lovisa Stannow, executive director of the prisoner-rights group Just Detention International, said in a prepared statement. “Sexual violence in detention is preventable. It’s the duty of government officials to keep all inmates safe.”
Copyright 2015 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.
Activism
U.S. House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries Speaks on Democracy at Commonwealth Club
Based on his first speech as House minority leader, “The ABCs of Democracy” by Grand Central Publishing is an illustrated children’s book for people of all ages. Each letter contrasts what democracy is and isn’t, as in: “American Values over Autocracy”, “Benevolence over Bigotry” and “The Constitution over the Cult.”
By Linda Parker Pennington
Special to The Post
House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries addressed an enthusiastic overflow audience on Monday at San Francisco’s Commonwealth Club, launching his first book, “The ABCs of Democracy.”
Based on his first speech as House minority leader, “The ABCs of Democracy” by Grand Central Publishing is an illustrated children’s book for people of all ages.
Each letter contrasts what democracy is and isn’t, as in: “American Values over Autocracy”, “Benevolence over Bigotry” and “The Constitution over the Cult.”
Less than a month after the election that will return Donald Trump to the White House, Rep. Jeffries also gave a sobering assessment of what the Democrats learned.
“Our message just wasn’t connecting with the real struggles of the American people,” Jeffries said. “The party in power is the one that will always pay the price.”
On dealing with Trump, Jeffries warned, “We can’t fall into the trap of being outraged every day at what Trump does. That’s just part of his strategy. Remaining calm in the face of turmoil is a choice.”
He pointed out that the razor-thin margin that Republicans now hold in the House is the lowest since the Civil War.
Asked what the public can do, Jeffries spoke about the importance of being “appropriately engaged. Democracy is not on autopilot. It takes a citizenry to hold politicians accountable and a new generation of young people to come forward and serve in public office.”
With a Republican-led White House, Senate, House and Supreme Court, Democrats must “work to find bi-partisan common ground and push back against far-right extremism.”
He also described how he is shaping his own leadership style while his mentor, Speaker-Emeritus Nancy Pelosi, continues to represent San Francisco in Congress. “She says she is not hanging around to be like the mother-in-law in the kitchen, saying ‘my son likes his spaghetti sauce this way, not that way.’”
Activism
MacArthur Fellow Dorothy Roberts’ Advocates Restructure of Child Welfare System
Roberts’s early work focused on Black women’s reproductive rights and their fight for reproductive justice. In “Killing the Black Body: Race, Reproduction, and the Meaning of Liberty 1997)”, she analyzes historical and contemporary policies and practices that denied agency to Black women and sought to control their childbearing—from forced procreation during slavery, to coercive sterilization and welfare reform—and advocates for an expanded understanding of reproductive freedom.
Special to The Post
When grants were announced Oct. 1, it was noted that eight of the 22 MacArthur Fellows were African American. Among the recipients of the so-called ‘genius grants’ are scholars, visual and media artists a poet/writer, historian, and dancer/choreographer who each receive $800,000 over a five-year period to spend as they see fit.
Their names are Ruha Benjamin, Jericho Brown, Tony Cokes, Jennifer L. Morgan, Ebony G. Patterson, Shamel Pitts, Jason Reynolds, and Dorothy Roberts. This is the eighth and last in the series highlighting the Black awardees. The report below on Dorothy Roberts is excerpted from the MacArthur Fellows web site.
A graduate of Yale University with a law degree from Harvard, Dorothy Roberts is a legal scholar and public policy researcher exposing racial inequities embedded within health and social service systems.
Sine 2012, she has been a professor of Law and Sociology, and on the faculty in the department of Africana Studies at the University of Pennsylvania.
Roberts’s work encompasses reproductive health, bioethics, and child welfare. She sheds light on systemic inequities, amplifies the voices of those directly affected, and boldly calls for wholesale transformation of existing systems.
Roberts’s early work focused on Black women’s reproductive rights and their fight for reproductive justice. In “Killing the Black Body: Race, Reproduction, and the Meaning of Liberty 1997)”, she analyzes historical and contemporary policies and practices that denied agency to Black women and sought to control their childbearing—from forced procreation during slavery, to coercive sterilization and welfare reform—and advocates for an expanded understanding of reproductive freedom.
This work prompted Roberts to examine the treatment of children of color in the U.S. child welfare system.
After nearly two decades of research and advocacy work alongside parents, social workers, family defense lawyers, and organizations, Roberts has concluded that the current child welfare system is in fact a system of family policing with alarmingly unequal practices and outcomes. Her 2001 book, “Shattered Bonds: The Color of Child Welfare,” details the outsized role that race and class play in determining who is subject to state intervention and the results of those interventions.
Through interviews with Chicago mothers who had interacted with Child Protective Services (CPS), Roberts shows that institutions regularly punish the effects of poverty as neglect.
CPS disproportionately investigates Black and Indigenous families, especially if they are low-income, and children from these families are much more likely than white children to be removed from their families after CPS referral.
In “Torn Apart: How the Child Welfare System Destroys Black Families—and How Abolition Can Build a Safer World (2022),” Roberts traces the historical, cultural, and political forces driving the racial and class imbalance in child welfare interventions.
These include stereotypes about Black parents as negligent, devaluation of Black family bonds, and stigmatization of parenting practices that fall outside a narrow set of norms.
She also shows that blaming marginalized individuals for structural problems, while ignoring the historical roots of economic and social inequality, fails families and communities.
Roberts argues that the engrained oppressive features of the current system render it beyond repair. She calls for creating an entirely new approach focused on supporting families rather than punishing them.
Her support for dismantling the current child welfare system is unsettling to some. Still, her provocation inspires many to think more critically about its poor track record and harmful design.
By uncovering the complex forces underlying social systems and institutions, and uplifting the experiences of people caught up in them, Roberts creates opportunities to imagine and build more equitable and responsive ways to ensure child and family safety.
Activism
Oakland Post: Week of December 18 – 24, 2024
The printed Weekly Edition of the Oakland Post: Week of December 18 – 24, 2024
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