...for the people who are trying to stop prison rape?
Found in this Blogfather-collectedarticle about Prison Rape on Slate: (truly outrageous part in bold)
This past July Congress enacted the Prison Rape Elimination Act of 2003, providing $60 million for a two-year survey of state and federal prisons to determine the pervasiveness of prison rape and creating various panels to offer remedies. Congressional sponsors of the bill included the most improbable political allies, and support for the bill ranged from the ACLU and Human Rights Watch to conservative evangelical organizations. (The clear interest of the latter in promoting religion among inmates has helped create a strange-bedfellowship with leftist prisoners' rights groups.)
Yeah, right. It's all about expanding the flock and getting more believers to fill the collection plates. Never mind that these groups believe that no one, no matter what crimes they have committed, should be victimized in this way. Never mind that Christians are called not only to love their neighbors (and this includes the people that they hate). And never mind that, for some Christians, caring for the imprisoned is one of the greatest deeds one can perform. Because working to reduce prison rape is a worthy goal, but not if you do it for (*sniff*) religious reasons. Because we all know that religion is the opiate of the masses. Because showing any form of religiously-motivated compassion is clearly unconstitutional, right?
Of course, the authors of this article work are academics (Stanford Law Professors). To them, organized religion is just one big conspiracy. Sounds like someone needs to get his head out of his ivory tower.
The conclusion of this piece is even more thoughtless.
The truth is that the United States has essentially accepted violence—and particularly brutal sexual violence—as an inevitable consequence of incarcerating criminals...Perhaps every sentencing judge should require that a defendant headed for prison be given extensive "pre-rape counseling" in the hope that he or she can take some small personal steps to reduce the risk of attack. Or perhaps we could require judges to demand data about the differential risks of rape and assault for different types of prisoners in different prisons and begin to factor such data into any sentence. "You committed murder, so let's send you somewhere where you're really likely to be raped." In that way we will be at least as brutally honest with ourselves as we are literally brutal with our prisoners.
In other words, let's do nothing to solve the problem, and make the prison system so bad that no decent judge would dare send anyone to prison, ensuring that no "criminal" can ever be punished by The Man (TM) for his "crime."
Ah yes...a thin veneer of cynicism barely concealing bottomless contempt for America's "biased" and "barbaric" legal system, as well as outright scorn for those who actually get off their asses and try to fix things because they believe in (*sniff*) God, whatever that means. What else to expect from a modern liberal law professor?
Posted by Thief at October 2, 2003 05:01 PM