American Civil Liberties Union

So much has been said about Rep. Todd Akin in the past few days and yet there’s so much more I still want to say. But I won’t (except for a little bit at the end) because, Todd Akin is just a piece of the story

In 2003, Congress took an important first step in addressing a national tragedy: epidemic levels of rape and sexual abuse in our nation’s prisons, jails and youth detention centers. The Prison Rape Elimination Act (PREA), passed unanimously in Congress and signed into law by President George W. Bush, called for the development of binding national standards for the prevention, detection, response and monitoring of sexual violence behind bars. After nine years, these standards were finally released by the U.S. Department of Justice earlier this month. They represent the first national effort to hold correctional facilities accountable for abuse while at the same time instituting policies and procedures that will help prevent abuse in the first place.

The Prison Rape Elimination Act was passed by a unanimous Congress in 2003, with regulations due by June 2010. It was clearly intended to cover all detainees, civil and criminal. Two years later, the Obama administration at last released the final implementing rules for PREA. Commendably, the Department of Justice reversed its prior position that PREA doesn’t cover all immigration detainees. Yet the Department of Homeland Security – despite an abysmal track record of preventing and investigating sexual abuse and assault in its facilities, which was recently exposed on PBS’s Frontline – got a 360-day extension on PREA compliance.