The Marshall Project published a pair of extraordinary 20-minute videos about what inmates must do in order to avoid becoming victims of sexual abuse. The videos, which were produced through a federal grant under the Prison Rape Elimination Act of 2003, will be shown in institutions across New York state and feature incredibly detailed advice from inmates, some of whom have been sexually assaulted, about how to protect oneself from predators while incarcerated.
Informal surveys put a prisoner’s chances of rape at 90%.
The orientation videos are an attempt to confront that legacy and to change a prison culture in which sexual assault, and the code of silence surrounding it, remain all too common.