A little while ago, Kos asked for good things Bush has done. (Specifically, he asked for three good things.) Whatever your list looked like, there’s a new addition:
WASHINGTON D.C. – President George W. Bush signed into law the Prison Rape Elimination Act of 2003 today, marking the first time the U.S. government has ever passed a law to deal with sexual assault behind bars…
The law calls for the gathering of national statistics about the problem; the development of guidelines for states about how to address prisoner rape; the creation of a review panel to hold annual hearings; and the provision of grants to states to combat the problem.
Also due for praise are the sponsors of this bill, Sen. Jeff Sessions (R-AL) in the Senate and Frank R. Wolf (R-Va) in the House.
Iain at Grim Amusements is a little less hopeful, noting that it’s an unfunded mandate and that states will have an incentive to minimize evidence that the situation exists. Still, I agree with Glenn Renolds that “It’s not like it’s going to solve the problem, but at least it puts it on the table.” Kudos.
{ 4 comments }
Barney Gumble 09.05.03 at 2:40 am
Quite obviously, he’s doing it for Enron and Arthur Anderson executives ;)
Barry 09.05.03 at 12:24 pm
Of course, if Glenn didn’t like it, he could quite plausibly denounce it as a typical liberal pretense at solving a problem. He could claim that liberals thought that because they set up a group to study a problem, that that would solve it. That prison rape was a clear effect of big government.
Not that he’d do that, of course – he’d link to an article which did, and say ‘heh’, or ‘indeed’. Then, if the article was thoroughly debunked, he’d claim not to have actually read it.
daveheasman 09.05.03 at 2:01 pm
If there are no figures currently available about this, what does it tell us about US violent crime statistics? Or about the assiduity with which they are collected? (I assume prison rape is considered a crime of violence, but one never knows)
Barry 09.05.03 at 4:27 pm
There was an article in The New Republic back in the mid/early 1990’s. The author tried get figures on how many inmates in the California penal system had been murderd in each year. He was unable to do so.
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