My friend David Yin makes the argument to "Start Counting Prison Crime in National Crime Statistics" in his most recent post on the Harvard Law & Policy Review Blog.
Yin deftly argues that if one justifies "incarceration based on a prospective net decrease in societal harm and not punishment for its own sake," then we are simply redistributing where crime, notably rape, takes place, rather than decreasing its frequency.
Rape should never be an acceptable punishment for any crime, and as a society we have a strong moral obligation to halt its occurrence in any form or place. Think of the men (and women) age 16 or younger inside the New York State prison system and how particularly vulnerable they may be to sexual assault while in state custody. In my mind, it does not matter what they were arrested for, but imagine it was for a non-violent crime. Inside prison or jail, many people have limited resources to assist them following the assault. Furthermore, rates of sexually transmitted infectious diseases, notably Hepatitis C and HIV, disproportionately affect the incarcerated population and are more likely to be transmitted during a traumatic sexual act.
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