§30303 National Prison Rape Statistics, Data, and Research

Summary

The Bureau of Justice Statistics must do a full yearly study of how often prison rape happens and what effects it has. The study must look at who the victims and offenders tend to be and which prisons or systems have high rates. The Bureau must decide how to define rape for the study, how to collect reports about staff-on-inmate assault and sources beyond inmate self-reports, how to group and adjust the data, and whether to run a smaller test study first. It must ask for input from state corrections, jails, juvenile facilities, former inmates, victim advocates, researchers, and other experts. The study will use a random or other scientific sample of at least 10 percent of all Federal, State, and county prisons, a representative sample of municipal jails, and at least one prison from each State. The Bureau will survey current and former inmates, keep answers confidential except when state law requires reporting child abuse, and officials must allow access and participate when asked. A three-member Review Panel on Prison Rape, appointed by the Attorney General with input from the Secretary of Health and Human Services, will hold public hearings each year about prisons with the highest and lowest rape rates and about the top Federal or State prisons with the highest rates. The Panel can call witnesses, request officials and victims to testify, issue subpoenas, and ask courts to enforce them. By June 30 each year the Attorney General must send a report to Congress and the Secretary of Health and Human Services with statistical, social, and psychological data on effects; incidence data by Federal, State, system, and prison; ranked lists of sampled prisons and those that seem to deter rape; and any prisons that did not cooperate. The report must use standard statistical methods to adjust for differences like mission, security level, size, and jurisdiction, and must explain each adjustment. Prisons will be divided into three categories, one of which is all Federal and State prisons. The Attorney General may fund research through the National Institute of Justice or other contracts or grants. There is authorization of $15,000,000 for each of fiscal years 2004 through 2010 to carry out these duties.