September 04, 2003

Nixon goes to China

Posted by Ted

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.

Posted on September 4, 2003 10:29 PM UTC
Comments

Quite obviously, he’s doing it for Enron and Arthur Anderson executives ;)

Posted by Barney Gumble · September 5, 2003 02:40 AM

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.

Posted by Barry · September 5, 2003 12:24 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)

Posted by daveheasman · September 5, 2003 02:01 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.

Posted by Barry · September 5, 2003 04:27 PM
Followups

→ Some stuff Ampersand is reading lately..
Excerpt: Kip at Long Story; Short Pier warms my geeky heart with the best geek-media news I've heard in a while: there will be a Firefly movie. If we're lucky, the movie will be so successful that they'll make a TV show out of it... Two good links from Kip's po...Read more at Alas, a blog
→ Milestone or Meaningless Gesture?.
Excerpt: The President signed the Prison Rape Elimination Act into law today. The organization Stop Prison Rape is duly optimistic. (Link...Read more at The Curmudgeonly Clerk

This discussion has been closed. Thanks to everyone who contributed.