Behind Bars - 2011 May - City Limits Magazine

IN THIS ISSUE
FIRST FOCUS
04 | Making Waivers: Who Gets A Green Light From 05 | Dening Brooklyn A Celebration In Bed-Stuy 08 | MiddleEastSide New York And Turmoil Overseas e Citys Ethics Board?
Vol. 35, No. 2 May/June 2011
City Limits is published bi-monthly by the Community Service Society of New York (CSS). For more than 160 years, CSS has been on the cutting edge of public policy innovations to support low-income New Yorkers in their quest to be full participants in the civic life of the nations largest city. City Limits 105 East 22nd Street, Suite #901 New York, NY 10010 212-614-5397 CityLimits.org features daily news, investigative features and resources in the citys ve boroughs. Letters to the Editor: We welcome letters, articles, press releases, ideas and submissions. Please send them to magazine@ citylimits.org. Subscriptions and Customer Service: U.S. subscriptions to City Limits are $25 for one year for the print edition, $15 for one year for the digital edition and $30 for both the print and digital editions. Digital and print single issues are $4.95. To subscribe or renew visit www.citylimits.org/subscribe or contact toll free 1-877-231-7065 or write to City Limits, P.O. Box 3000, Denville, NJ 07834-9253. Contributions: City Limits depends on your support to provide investigative journalism and cover the ve boroughs. Contribute at www.citylimits.org/support or contact 212-614-5398 for development opportunities. For Bulk Magazine Orders: Visit www. citylimits.org/subscribe or contact City Limits subscription customer service at 1-877-231-7065 or write to P.O. Box 3000, Denville, NJ 07834-9253.
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CHAPTERS
13 | Sex, Love And Violence
THE FEATURE
Sex, Rape And Love In New Yorks Female Prisons By Kelly Virella Photographs by Marc Fader Illustration by David Senior
Behind Bars:
SIDEBARS
23 | Laughter vs. The Law Rape Jokes Before And A er PREA By Becca Fink 26 | States Of Compliance Prison Systems React To PREA By Catherine Dunn 35 | Male Prisons Not Immune Abuse, Consent And Gray Areas By Ti any Walden 55 | Sparring Over Prison Rules Advocates, DOJ Disagree On Abuse Elimination Guidelines By Isabella Moschen
New York States Prison Sex Abuse Problem 20 | Repeat Offenders Mixed Evidence On e Frequency Of Sexual Abuse 33 | The Bayview Affair Romance Behind Bars And Its Consequences 42 | A Clash Of Rights Decades Of Debate Over Male Guards In Womens Prisons 51 | Corrective Measures State Prisons And Advocates Keep Battling Over SexAbuse Regulations
MORE
58 | Homework An Outside Chance 60 | LookBack ey Stayed
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ON THE COVER (AND BELOW): The guard tower at Bedford Hills Correctional Facility in Westchester County. It is one of seven New York State prisons that serve women, and the only maximum security female facility.
No Laughing Matter
When former WorldCom CEO Bernard Ebbers was sentenced in 2005 to 25 years to life in prison for fraud, the website BSAlert.com had a sardonic tip for the onetime Telecom Cowboy. Dont drop the soap, Bernie! the site proclaimed. Bernard Mado was DaLockerRoom.coms Dont Drop the Soap Person of the Week. A er O.J. Simpson was arrested in 2007 in connection with an alleged Las Vegas robbery, one company sold T-shirts that warned him to hold his Ivory bar tightly. en theres the Facebook page Dont Drop the Soap Lil Wayne. Jokes about prison rape enjoy so much cultural acceptance that those of us who have made them have done so without fully realizing what were laughing about: a persons being subjected, while a ward of the states justice system, to an act that is illegal, violent, humiliating. Even worse, some of the rape talk is not in jest: Many people treat the prospect of sexual abuse as a natural part of the penal system. And it turns out that some of the stereotypes about sex in prison dont match reality. While forcible rapes do occur, much sexual misconduct behind bars isat least on some levelwilling. Inmate-on-inmate sex and rape is part of the picture; so is sexual abuse by prison guards. And while most prison rape jokes make men the punch-line, female inmates also get wronged. In a national survey of inmates in 2008 and 2009 that asked about sexual misconduct, the facility with the highest rate of sexual abuse was a womens prison. In fact, it was a womens prison in New York. Kelly Virellas investigation examines what those reports reveal about how New Yorks prisons track and investigate sexual misconduct, about the history of legal wrangling and labor rules behind current prison policies and about the nuances of sex in womens prisons. Her story not only reveals facts crucial to understandingand preventingprison sex abuse. It is also a reminder of the complexity and tragedy that accompany any incarcerative system.
is report was made possible by a grant from the Fund for Investigative Journalism, for whose support we are very grateful. We are also indebted to attorney Judith Whiting from the Community Service Societys legal o ce for her role in our e orts to obtain documents , Alyssa Misner of the Mintz Group for her research support, and photographer Marc Fader, whose quest for images was not daunted by sixhour drives or run-ins with corrections o cers or police. Sincerely, Jarrett Murphy Editor in Chief March/April Corrections: If independent, Brooklyn would be the nations fourth-largest city, not its h. e poverty rate in Bay Ridge is 12.1 percent, not 40 percent. And my Editors Note mischaracterized our grant from the Ford Foundation: It totals $150,000 for capacity building, although matching grants may substantially augment the nal dollar impact.
The Note
City Limits / Vol. 35 / No. 2
CITY LIMITS STAFF

Director Mark Anthony Editor in Chief Jarrett Murphy Deputy Editor Kelly Virella omas
WHATS NEW AND WHATS NEXT AT CITYLIMITS.ORG
The view from One Hanson Place, Brooklyns tallest building until 2004. The site appealed to developers in the early 1900s as a great crossroads of population and commerce, and thats still its function.
In spite of saying goodbye to our treasures of yesterday, Brooklyn is thriving. e reason is simple: Brooklyn has embraced modernization without forgetting its past and become an economic engine for New York City.
BOROUGH PRESIDENT MARTY MARKOWITZ IN BEEP SAYS BROOKLYN IS NYCS ECONOMIC ENGINE, MARCH 3, 2011
Contributing Editors Neil deMause, Marc Fader, Jake Mooney, Diana Scholl, Helen Zelon Advertising Director Allison Tellis-Hinds Marketing Assistant Nekoro Gomes Creative Direction Smyrski Creative Proofreader Danial Adkison Interns Catherine Dunn, Becca Fink, Isabella Moschen, Ti any Walden
HOUSING
FINISHING FIRST
ENVIRONMENT
WATERFRONT VIEWS
BOARD
The Lower East Sides First Houses were Americas rst public housing. Theyve been awarded landmark status because of their beautiful exterior. But inside, some residents say living in a landmark has its drawbacks.
Photos by Marc Fader, Jarrett Murphy, iStock
The Bloomberg administration just completed a landmark plan for New York Citys 578 miles of coastline. Trying to reconcile the desires of industry, residents, developers, environmentalists and boaters wasnt easy. Does the citys attempt sink or swim?
Mark Edmiston, chair Adam Blumenthal Andy Breslau Michael Connor David R. Jones Andy Reicher Michele Webb
DIGGING DEEPER
GO BEHIND BARS
Read original documentsfrom inmates lawsuits to state statistics on sex abuse in prison to research on prison rapethat City Limits used in reporting this months cover story.
How New Yorks poor make it in spite of the rest of us

COMING IN JULY
SURVIVAL COURSE
Up Next
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FIRST FOCUS
MAKING WAIVERS: Calls For Tweaking Conicts Rules As City Ethics Board Faces Budget Cut
It was the classic story. She was the outgoing Department of Education bigwig who wanted to get a $1,000a-day consulting gig to continue implement a project she had designed. He was a New York City Fire Department electrician who had his heart set on a moonlighting arrangement with, of course, Avon makeup. What brought them together? In order to comply with city law, they both had to seek waivers from the citys Conict of Interest Board (COIB) before starting their non-city work. Those waiverslike hundreds of others each yearwere made public. But Joel Bondys business with the COIB is secret. In fact, we dont even know if Bondy until recently head of the citys Ofce of Payroll Administration (OPA) and supervisor of the star-crossed CityTime projecthad any business with the board. As our Ali Winston rst reported in 2008, Bondy came to city service in 2004 after working as a subcontractor for a company called Spherionwhich happened to be in charge of quality control for the CityTime system. When someone at a City Council hearing asked about the connection, Bondy said hed received condential clearance from the COIB to oversee Spherion despite his former relationship with the rm. This past December, six people afliated with Spherion were arrested for allegedly embezzling $76 million from CityTime. Without naming Bondy, the federal indictment mentioned the close relationship between the accused and the head of OPA. Bondy resigned. Hoping to see the Bondy letter, City Limits sent a Freedom of Information Law request to COIB The agency denied us, saying that by city law, it can neither conrm nor deny that it ever talked to Bondy about CityTime. COIB then turned down a City Limits appeal, arguing that the city charter trumps the state FOI law. Bondy himself didnt respond to a request to release the letter. So amid one of the biggest alleged government-contracting scams to hit the city in a quarter century, theres no way to know whether Bondy lied to the Council, or whether the citys conict of interest laws actually permitted his supervising a former employer who went on to allegedly rip the city off for eight gures. The Conict of Interest Board works out of an ofce north of City Hall decorated with posters from a Koch-era arts promotion and trinkets from New Yorks East Asian sister cities. Normally operating in obscurity, the board recently has popped into the papers. The Daily News March series on councilmembers nances relied in part on COIB reversing an earlier decision to conceal the street addresses of properties owned by Councilmembers. The New York Times in 2009 reported on the close ties between COIB memberswho monitor hundreds of mayoral appointees and the mayor himselfand Mayor Bloombergs ofcial and philanthropic activities. And after Bloomberg in 2008 got Ron Lauders support for the term-limits suspension by promising to appoint him to a charter revision commission that would revisit the issue, good government groups complained that it was illegal for the
Continued on page 6
The Death Focus Behind Bars: Sex, Rape And Love In New Yorks Female Prisons First and Life of the Neighborhood Store
City Limits / Vol. 35 / No. 2 34 5
DEFINING BROOKLYN
City Limits celebrated the start of its 35th anniversary year with a launch party at the Skylight Gallery of the Bedford-Stuyvesant Restoration Corporation on March 28. Sponsored by Berkeley College, Olivino Wines, Exclusiv Vodka, Brooklyn Historical Society, Amtrak, Brooklyn Tourism, and WABC Channel 7, the event was the rst in a series of community meet-ups well be holding around the city over the next year. Sign up at citylimits.org for information about when the party comes to your neck of the city.
Photos by Adi Talwar and Walter TK.
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And For Their Next Act
A sampling of waivers granted by the Con icts of Interest Board since 2002 permitting current and former city o cials and employees to do work or get payments that could otherwise violate city statutes.
FDNY electrician Granted permission to sell Avon products
Public Advocates Staff Granted permission to raise money for Fund for Public Advocacy
Former DOE special ed ofcial Approved for $1K a day gig at nonpro t running a DOE program she designed
NYPD ofcial Allowed to hire NYPD detective to be his o duty driver
Park Administrator Permitted to get $43K salary supplement from private group
Mayor Bloomberg Allowed to write a new version of Bloomberg on Bloomberg
Recently departed DOE charter school ofcial Approved to lead schools applying for charter status
HPD Worker OKd for a second job, at Staples
Continued from page 4
mayor to use such an appointment for political gain. The COIB cleared the mayors conduct. After Bloomberg nally appointed that charter commission (sans Lauder) in March 2010, the panel spent some time considering changes to the COIB itself. Many who testied before the commission wanted the board to have an independent budget, so that it was not dependent for its life-blood on the ofcials whom it regulates. The board sought subpoena power, so that it could run its own probes and not be dependent on the Department of Investigations. And good government groups wanted the comptroller and public advocate to appoint members of the COIB, which is now composed entirely of mayoral appointees. In the end, the commission, pressed for time, met none of those requests. But
it did proposeand voters approved last Novemberraising the maximum COIB ne from $10,000 to $25,000 per violation and requiring that all city employees get COIB-provided ethics training. Despite that expanded role, Bloombergs preliminary scal 2012 budget actually cuts boards already modest $2 million budget by $36,000not a huge sum, but a fth of the COIBs non-salary expenses. For NYPIRG senior attorney and veteran good government advocate Gene Russianoff, the disparity between the COIBs expanding mission and shrinking budget is troubling. [The COIB staff] would like to do a ton more education. Theres a lack of knowledge out there about what the rules are. They got the mandatory training thing but they failed to get money to make it a reality. Its estimated that the board would need around $140,000 to hire staff to do the training.
But COIB chairman Steven Rosenfeld notes that the board and staff dont have to hire live trainers to carry out the new mandate; they could instead use the Internet, or train staff at city agencies to do the training themselves. Rosenfeld is hopeful, however, that the City Council will take up other parts of the boards annual legislative wish list, which includes expanding the conicts law to cover District Attorneys and to apply to private citizens who induce public ofcials to violate the rules. Twenty years of experience have shown many areas that were vague or internally inconsistent as the law was drafted, have become out of date because there are things in it that dont apply anymore or are incompatible with 20 years of board interpretation and practice, he says. All of these are totally uncontroversial.
The Death Focus Behind Bars: Sex, Rape And Love In New Yorks Female Prisons First and Life of the Neighborhood Store
The COIB was created in the wake of the Koch administration scandals, and since then New York has avoided any major municipal corruption mess. But that doesnt mean the conict of interest laws are performing as well as they could. There is certainly a perception out there, and we hear this in the good government community, that low-level ofcials are not held to the same standard as high-level ofcialsthat the focus is on low-level ofcials, says Alex Camarda, director of public policy and advocacy for the Citizens Union. High-ranking ofcials do get hit with nes sometimes, but someone looking for possible disparities could certainly nd them. In 2010, for instance, the board ned a city clerical worker $1,700 for sending emails from her work account to help her brothers singing careera clear no-no. But in 2007 the board permitted Bloombergs $245,000-a-year rst deputy mayor to make incidental use of city resources while helping to run the mayors personal foundation. But its hard to draw broad conclusions about the boards work because of the condentiality that, for good reason, surrounds much of it. Since it wants to encourage city ofcials to come to them for advice before they do something that violates the law, much of the COIBs interaction with ofcials is never made public. The board received 599 written requests for advice in 2010 and more than 3,000 telephone questions. In 287 cases, the answer it gave to city employees was privatethe kind of advice Joel Bondy may, or may not, have received. In 234 cases, the board issued public waiver letters to folks like the departing DOE ofcial and the FDNY worker mentioned above. Waivers are issued in cases where the board decides that an employees act might violate the letter of city law (for example, a prohibition on working on city-funded projects within a year of leaving ofce) but not its spirit. They are released so theres a public record of deviations from the strict statute. Private advice is offered when something a city employee wants to do is either in keeping withor contrary toboth the spirit and letter of the law. Bondys letter, if it existed, might have said that his overseeing a former employer was A-OK because he no longer had any ownership interest in the company. It might seem odd that a situation like Bondys could remain in the dark when simple moonlighting by city employees has to be revealed to the world. But the latter occurs because the conicts law has a very broad antimoonlighting clause. If nothing else, the waiver process reveals the hidden talents and erce work ethic of hundreds of city employees, whoafter their municipal day jobteach martial arts, write books, help nonprots, instruct college kids and stock shelves at Home Depot. -Jarrett Murphy
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MIDDLE EAST SIDE

Whether its war and peace being debated at the United Nations or immigrant communities reacting to news from home, New York is always connected to events overseas. ats been true this winter and spring as country a er country in the Middle East and North Africa experienced political convulsions ranging from peaceful protest to outright revolution. As our Arturo Conde reported at citylimits.org, New York based Iranian activists, for instance, helped collect testimonies about the protests and government response in Tehran, helping to ll in the gaps created by the regimes restrictions on the press. Not only is New York home to at least 35,000 people from Egypt, Iran, Jordan, Syria or Yemen (according to the 2006 2009 American Community Survey, which did not report Libyan or Tunisian origin for the city), diplomatic o ces of these countries are all located within a few blocks of one another in the general vicinity of the UN. As this map reveals, at these locations, foreign regimes interact with city culture, history, politics, regulations and real estate. JM
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Behind Bars: Sex, Rape And Love In New Yorks Female Prisons First Focus
1. EGYPT
Distance from Cairo to New York: 5,602 miles Number of New Yorkers of Egyptian origin: 14,380 Embassy Location: 1110 Second Ave. Suite 201 According to a tally released last year, Egyptian diplomats topped the list of parking scofaws, with 17,600 unpaid tickets and $1.9 million in overdue nes.
2. YEMEN
Distance from Sanaa to New York: 6,901 miles Number of New Yorkers of Yemeni origin: 7,874 Embassy Location: 413 East 51st Street The Yemeni mission to the UN, which that government owns, has 14 open DOB violations.
3. TUNISIA
Distance from Tunis to New York: 4,358 miles Y Embassy Location: 31 Beekman Place Because Tunisia owns the building housing its UN mission, the city foregoes $485,000 in property taxes on it.
6. SYRIA 4. LIBYA
Distance from Tripoli to New York: 4,649 miles Embassy Location: 309-315 East 48th Street The building, now registered to the Government of the Socialist Peoples Libyan Arab Jamahiriya (Masses), was once owned by Hazard E. Reeves, a pioneer of stereophonic sound. Distance from Damascus to New York: 5,656 miles Number of New Yorkers of Syrian origin: 4,595 Embassy Location: 820 Second Avenue, 15th Floor The building housing Syrias UN mission is also home to missions from Angola, Barbados, Croatia, Madagascar, Micronesia, Nepal, Nicaragua and Peru.
7. IRAN 5. JORDAN
Distance from Amman to New York: 5,715 miles Number of New Yorkers of Jordanian origin: 1,975 Embassy Location: 866 Second Ave., 4th Floor In 2009, 208 boy babies and 41 girl babies born in New York City were named Jordan. Distance from Tehran to New York: 6,121 miles Number of New Yorkers of Iranian origin: 6,900 Embassy Location: 622 Third Avenue, 34th Floor The building, which Iran does not own, has one open DOB complaint, for an illegal sign by the Smoothie King on the rst oor.
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THE FEATURE
Behind Bars:
By Kelly Virella / Photographs by Marc Fader / Illustration by David Senior
Sex, Rape And Love In New Yorks Female Prisons
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Behind Bars: Sex, Rape And Love In New Yorks Female Prisons
CHAPTER ONE
Juniors, a 60-yearold institution, is as Brooklyn as it gets. But the Juniors brand is known well beyond the boroughs borders.
Sex, Love and Violence

New York States Prison Sex Abuse Problem
One day in the visiting room of New York States Albion Correctional Facility, LaTrisa Hyman heard her friend and fellow inmate shriek, He proposed to me! He proposed to me! Looking across the room, she saw her friends elated new anc, still on one knee, saying, She said yes! e bride-to-be was beaming. She had told Hyman, during previous walks in the recreation yard, that she was in love, but Hyman didnt expect her engagement. Hyman and the other inmates jumped up from their tables to rush over to the couple and congratulate them but sank back into their seats when the correctional o cers guarding the room began yelling at them. e o cers needed to maintain order in the room, but their reaction may also have been colored by the identity of the man asking for the inmates hand: He was one of their ownanother correctional o cer. Sit down! they yelled. irty minutes later, when visiting time ended and the inmates queued up to return to their housing units, the newly engaged inmate showed Hyman the ring, a gold band with a sparkling, roughly halfcarat diamond in the center and smaller stones along the sides. e bride-to-be explained that her intended was retiring from his job in
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The Bayview Correctional Facility, a medium security womens prison on West 20th Street in Manhattan. In a recent federal survey of inmates, residents there reported the highest rate of staff sexual abuse of any correctional facility in the United States.
one week, would most likely be able to avoid discipline for having what prison o cials considered an inappropriate relationship with her and was already entitled to his pension either way. e brideto-be also told Hyman theyd never had sex, an act that would have been a crime. Jeanette Perez, also got a ring from a correctional o cer while doing time in a New York State prison, and they did have sex regularly for about two years. She and the o cer, Peter Zawislak, fell in love at Bayview Correctional Facility, a medium-security prison on the West Side of Manhattan. Other inmates knew they were having a romantic relationship. One saw him leaving her room with his shirt untucked and scolded him, Fix your clothes, boy! But by the end, Perez alleges, he was hitting her, and she was afraid to report him to prison o cial out of fear he would harm her more. Sexual encounters between inmates and o cers can also begin violently, with o cers forcing inmates who have never loved them or wanted to have sex with them to submit. ats what a former inmate alleges happened to her at Albion Correctional Facility in 2007, and in August federal judge David G. Larimer agreed. (City Limits isnaming only women and men who have already been
Documents obtained via the Freedom of Information Law indicate that prison ofcials never forward many inmate complaints to the prison systems inspector general.
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named in other media accounts). On two occasions, once in May and once in June 2007, the then o cer, Donald Lasker Jr., asked her to report to a school building to clean it. When she arrived each time, Lasker tried to rape her, the judge found. One time, Lasker succeeded, ripping her clothes and bruising her, the judge said. Citing her substantial emotional and psychological su eringincluding anxiety, ashbacks, hopelessness and trouble resuming a healthy sexual relationship with her husbandthe judge in August ordered Lasker, who never showed up in court, to pay Ortiz $500,000 in damages. In an earlier criminal trial, Lasker pleaded guilty to third-degree rape, not forcible rape. Last month, o cials from the New York State Department of Correctional Services, or DOCS, were summoned to Washington to testify before a federal panel. e subject: inmate allegations of sexual abuse by prison guards. When surveyed anonymously in 2008 and 2009, New York inmates reported among the highest levels of sta sexual abuse. Of the 11 U.S. correctional facilities with the highest rates of inmate-alleged sta sexual abuse, three are New York prisons, and one is a New York jail. One New York State prisonBayview Correctional Facilityhas the highest rate of inmate-alleged sexual abuse in the country. With 11.5 percent of inmates there reporting sexual abuse in 2008 and 2009, the prisons rate of inmate-alleged sexual abuse was more than ve times greater than the national average for womens prisons, 2.2 percent. About 57 percent of the participating Bayview inmates alleged being forced into the sex or threatened with force. Also calling on DOCS to account for its prevalence of sta sexual abuse are the inmates themselves. e state of New York is embroiled in at least ve inmate-initiated federal or state lawsuits about the issue, and for the past eight years, two New York City Legal Aid Society attorneys have been demanding, through a federal lawsuit they led on behalf of 15 female prisoners, that DOCS implement changes. rough spokesperson Peter K. Cutler, DOCS o cials declined to comment for this story, but they have defended their policies and practices in various forums. A 1996 New York State Law holds that any person in custody in a New York State correctional facility cannot consent to any sex act with an employee who provides custody, medical or mental health services, counseling services, educational programs, or vocational training for inmates. A 2007 law expanded the de nition of employee to include any person, including volunteers and contract employees, providing direct services to inmates. DOCS has sought another expansion that would apply the law to all DOCS employees. DOCS has taken action against several o cers who have broken this law. According to the agency, between 1996 and 2002, 19 male prison employees were convicted of violating it. In addition, DOCS has attempted to combat sta sexual
abuse by implementing several new measures over the years, including the placement of surveillance cameras in prisons. DOCS has maintained in court proceedings that it appropriately hires, supervises, trains and res prison employees who dont follow the rules and the law. And data that the agency has reported to the federal Bureau of Justice Statistics, or BJS, suggest that DOCS keeps o cers in line. e bureau de nes sta sexual abuse as all sexual contactincluding that in which an inmate is a willing participantand all verbal sexual harassment and voyeurism. According to DOCS, abuse is rare in the states facilitieswith only 79 substantiated incidents from 2005 through 2009and rarely involves force or threats of forcesix incidents during that time period. At Bayview, DOCS reports that there were two substantiated incidents of sta sexual abuse during this time, and one of them, in 2005, involved physical force. But a City Limits investigation found that DOCS o cial numbers may not tell the whole story. Documents obtained via the Freedom of Information Law indicate that prison o cials never forward many inmate complaints to the prison systems inspector general, who is o cially responsible for investigating them. And when DOCS substantiates a romantic relationship between an employee and an inmate, it does not include that relationship in its annual federal tally unless sexual contact has also been substantiated, o cials say. e practice of excluding such incidents complies with BJS guidelines, but critics say it masks the states real prevalence of sta sexual abuse. In addition, DOCS handling of its one years sta sexual abuse reports casts doubt on the accuracy of the data it gave the federal government that year. In 2007, the agency reported 47 incidents of sta sexual abuse, then withdrew 23 of them, saying they didnt meet BJS criteria. (DOCS did not allow City Limits to review those 23 cases, preventing us from con rming that they didnt belong in their annual federal tally.) Advocates for prisoners also criticize DOCS approach to determining whether allegations of sta sexual abuse are true, saying the burden of proof is too high and that investigators dont give ample consideration to the history of complaints against certain employees. e 79 substantiated cases of sta sexual abuse from 2005 to 2009 came from a pool of 1,100 inmate allegations. Critics also charge that DOCS fails to appropriately discipline many employees involved in substantiated incidents of sexual abuse. While DOCS points to its record of prosecuting sta who break the law, many employees found to have engaged in sexual contact with inmates appear to have remained in their jobs, City Limits found. In 15 out of the 60 incidents in which sexual contact occurred between 2005 and 2009, the employee wasnt red and didnt resign the year that the incident was substantiated. In one case, the only sanction applied was discipline or reprimand. In womens facilities, the levity or lack of sanctions was more pronounced. ere,
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Rare Cases?
In reports to the Department of Justice, the New York State prison system said only 78 substantiated cases of staff sexual abusewhether physical misconduct or verbal harassmenthad occurred from 2005 to 2009. But a condential survey of inmates by federal researchers, and City Limits own investigation, call these numbers into question.
Females Males
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Sexual Misconduct
Number of substantiated incidents 2005-2009
Sexual Harassment
Substantiated Incidents Of Abuse In Female Prisons, 2005-2009

7 Albion 2 Bayview 0 Beacon 6 Bedford Hill
Data Source: DOCS
1 Lakeview 5 Taconic 0 Willard 21 Total
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in 7 out of 14 cases from 2005 to 2009, the employee wasnt red and didnt resign that year. O cials from the states two corrections unions the New York State Correctional O cers & Police Benevolent Association and the New York State Law Enforcement Employees Union, Council 82 did not respond to requests for comment. Hyman doesnt know whether her friend and the o cer ever married, but if they did, they would be the exception to the rule. Inmates in romantic relationships with sta o en date or have sex with them in exchange for relatively benign and inexpensive contrabandsuch as gum, food from the outside and sneakers. But sex and romance between inmates and sta can have disastrous consequences. An employee in love with or sleeping with a prisoner compromises his authority to discipline and control her. He may start to show her preferential treatment, bringing her contraband and allowing her to break rules for which he disciplines others. (Or allowing him to break rules for which she disciplines otherseither set of pronouns works, since female guards also fall in love with inmates.) Such favoritism
can foment violence between inmates. Mental health experts have argued that sta -inmate romantic and sexual relationships arent good for the inmates either. If the relationship sours, the inmate cant always physically distance herself from the employee and is subsequently at his or her mercy. For at least 35 years, legal advocates, prison o cials and corrections unions have wrestled over how to protect female inmates from sexual abuse when male o cerswho dominated the profession in New York State in 2010, making up 75 percent of prison guardsare given vast control over female inmates lives and bodies. While sta sexual abuse occurs in mens and womens prisons and jails, it disproportionately a ects female inmates, who are a stark minority in the states prison system. According to DOCS, 25 percent of all substantiated incidents involved female inmateswho constituted a mere 2,500, or 4 percent, of the 58,000 people in custody on Jan. 1, 2010. According to DOCS data, when female inmates are sexually abused, the perpetrator is almost always a male o cer. From 2005 to 2009, all but one substantiated incident involving a female inmate involved a male employee.
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Trouble at the top

New York lockups rank high in the Bureau of Justice Statistics sexual abuse survey. Most of the New York inmates who reported misconduct say they were pressured, rather than physically forced, into sex.
Facilities with high reported rates of sta sexual abuse

Bayview Correctional Facility (NY) Caroline County Jail (MD) Eastern Shore Regional Jail (VA) Crossroads Correctional Facility (MO) Attica Correctional Facility (NY) Elmira Correctional Facility (NY) Ferguson Unit (TX) Clallam County Correctional Facility (WH) Fluvanna Correctional Facility (VA) Orleans County Jail (NY) Cook County Jail, Division 6 (IL) Average U.S. Prison Average U.S. Jail
11.5% 10% 9.9% 8.2% 8.1% 7.7% 7.6% 6.1% 6% 5.6% 5.5% 2.8% 2%
Inmates Reporting Sexual Abuse And What Caused It

10.8% 7.1% 6% 2.8% 2.5% .6%
Bayview Attica Elmira Physical force Pressure No force or pressure
6.5%
6.4%
1.3%
1.6% 1.8% 1%
Average U.S. Prison
Data Source: BJS
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Over the years, many corrections o cers and DOCS o cials have been sued in connection with the allegations, though the inmates o en lose. But occasionally inmates win, as did Laskers victim in August. Another former Albion prisoner won in federal court in February, when she negotiated a $75,000 settlement in a lawsuit alleging she was raped in 2005 by a corrections o cer who pled guilty to sexual misconduct and o cial misconduct. And in a 2001 inmate victory, a New York State Court of Claims judge found that DOCS was 100 percent liable for the repeated forcible rape of a woman by an o cer at Bedford Hills Correctional Facility in Westchester County. e state settled the case by agreeing to pay the woman $225,000. e trial in one of the other ongoing lawsuits, the one about the a air between Jeanette Perez and Peter Zawislak, ended in November. e parties are waiting for a judge to decide whether New York State bears any responsibility for what happened to Perez. Two more pending cases are expected to go to trial this year. A major ruling could also be issued this year in Amador v. Andrews, an eight-year-old federal lawsuit led on behalf of 15 New York State women demanding policy changes within
DOCS. e pending suit alleges that the sexual abuse of women in New York State prisons isnt just a series of unrelated incidents perpetrated by prison employees. e Southern District lawsuit alleges numerous ways in which it says DOCS system for hiring, training, supervising, monitoring, investigating and ring o cers fails to protect women. e parties are waiting for an appeals court judge to issue a ruling that could determine whether the case has a chance of securing any changes or will be con ned to assessing whether individual o cers violated individual inmates civil rights. e federal government, meanwhile, is close to issuing national guidelines for preventing sexual abuse in prisons. But states are not required to follow them, and New York State prison o cials have taken issue with several of the dra regulations. In a May 2010 letter to the U.S. Department of Justice, DOCS commissioner Brian Fischer wrote, Unfortunately, the proposed standards are based more on academic research than on operational practicalities and will likely contribute to many more years of debate and litigation.
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Repeat Offenders
Mixed Evidence On
n 2000, Dori Lewis and Lisa Freeman, two attorneys with New York Citys Legal Aid Society, began going to New York State womens prisons in search of inmates who were experiencing sexual abuse. Soon a er their interviews began, they started to see some patterns. e more the women talked to Lewis and Freeman, the more the names of certain perpetrators recurred. What made the womens stories all the more credible to them was that many of the repeat perpetrators operated according to a distinctive modus operandi and had a clear preference for women with a particular hair color, stature, shape or other physical feature. A young woman at reception taken into the laundry room, was one modus operandi. O en, the women had reported these repeat perpetrators. One o cer had been reported seven times, Lewis and Freeman found. e interviewing went on for about three years. ey encountered one woman soon a er she had been raped at Albion in early August 2001, by an o cer that multiple women had allegedly complained to DOCS o cials about. e rape resulted in a pregnancy and severe bleeding during bowel movements. e woman reported the incident
20 Behind Bars: Sex, Rape And Love In New Yorks Female Prisons
e Frequency Of Inmate Sexual Abuse
CHAPTER TWO
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within a few weeks of its occurrence. e perpetrator corrections o cer Dean Schmidtpleaded guilty to rape in the third-degree, not forcible rape, in July 2002. (Schmidt served almost three years. He could not be reached for comment.) Another female inmate had also allegedly been recently raped at Bedford Hills by an o cer whom multiple inmates had allegedly identi ed to prison o cials as a perpetrator. In October 2001, she alleges, a correctional o cer fondled her, grabbing her breasts. en later that month, while the inmate was cleaning the kitchen area during a head count, the o cer allegedly attacked her again, this time more violently, sodomizing her and raping her, causing her to seek medical attention. In mid-November 2001 he allegedly abused her again, fondling her while everyone else was at the head count. e o cer allegedly told her that if she reported him, hed punish her. She alleged that when word got back to him that she had been crying in the mess hall, he threatened her again and started locking her in her cell during her free time. Nevertheless, she gathered the nerve to report his alleged transgressions. She wrote CRIME & PUNISHMENT the superintendent of her More coverage of prison twice. She also wrote criminal justice to her counselor at the Family www.citylimits.org Violence Program and met with that counselor. She told a captain at the prison what had happened. en she noti ed sta from the inspector generals o ce. Finally, she led a formal grievance with the New York State Department of Correctional Services. She was waiting for a resolution when she met with Lewis and Freeman. ( e o cers attorney declined to comment, but said via-email e allegations against [my client] are categorically denied.) Of the 300 women Lewis and Freeman talked to, 15 initially met their criteria for joining the lawsuit and agreed to participate, including the two alleged victims described above. e women led their suit, Amador v. Andrews, in 2003, contesting DOCS system for hiring, training, supervising, monitoring, investigating and ring o cers, alleging that it failed to protect them from sexual abuse. In addition to suing 12 correctional o cers from four prisons, the lawsuit (named Amador for one of the alleged victims) targets 12 high ranking DOCS o cials, including the then Superintendent of the Albion prison, Anginell Andrews. Lewis and Freeman tried but failed to get certi ed as a class action lawsuit. Two of the original plainti s have since withdrawn from the case to pursue
separate actions. While interviewing New York States female inmates, the attorneys concluded that sexual abuse in New Yorks prisons involves a few highly egregious o cers, whom Lewis calls complaint magnets. I dont think theres a zillion bad o cers, Lewis says. Its certainly a minority, Freeman says. In some instances, theres groupthink, a small cadre of individuals who are just covering for each other, and in other instances there are a couple of lone bad o cers here and there. Indeed, the DOCS data re ect what Bu alo attorney George Muscato has to come to believe a er representing several correctional o cers in connection with allegations of sexual abuse, as well as one current client who maintains he is innocent: 99.5 percent of them are doing a great job, he says. eyre doing what theyre supposed to be doing each day. ey go to work every day, and they do a good job. Mike Notto, a New York State Police investigator who conducts criminal investigations of o cers at Albion, agrees. He says prison employees are no more susceptible to corruption than are people in any other profession. No matter where you go, theres always gonna be a bad element, he says. When Walmart opens a new store, they create loss prevention programs because some employees will steal. eres a certain percentage of reporters who get in the corner and twiddle their thumbs while everyone else is working. And some former inmates concur that abuse was rare at their facilities. A formerly incarcerated woman, Chrystal Reddick, says she didnt see or hear reports or rumors of sexual abuse during her time at Lakeview Shock Incarceration Correctional Facility, a prison boot camp in Brocton, about 28 miles from Bu alo, that serves both men and women. Since then, the district attorney with jurisdiction over Lakeview has prosecuted a case involving one o cer accused of sexually abusing two to three female inmates. But Reddick says that during her six-month incarceration there for forgery 15 years ago, sexual contact with anyone on the premises didnt seem remotely possible. Even if you try to have a personal conversation with a DI [drill instructor], they snap back, in revulsion, she says. In the facility, you dont just stand there and have a conversation with a DI. And you never look them in the eye. You look them in the shoulder. It was always, Sir, yes sir. But Michelle Davenport, who served a 19-month sentence for attempted robbery at the all-female Taconic Correctional Facility beginning in 2007, takes a di erent view. She says some o cers at Taconic were full of integrity and tried to avoid corrupt co-workers because they didnt want to become entangled in investigations. What I did
22
Laughter vs. the Law

Rape Jokes Before and After PREA
introduced, it received a great deal of support, with co-sponsorship in the Senate by Ted Kennedy, D-Mass., and Jeff Sessions, R-Ala., and in the House of Representatives by Frank Wolf, R-Va., and Bobby Scott, D-Va. There was no truly organized opposition to this bill. It was really a matter of getting people to care about it, says Stemple, adding that the passage of PREA was accomplished by humanizing the issue and discussing with the general public what had been happening to prisoners. It helped that the cause attracted a wide array of supporters, from Prison Fellowship Ministry to Human Rights Watch to the conservative Hudson Institute. There was a signicant coalition that included a broad range of faithbased leaders and civil and human rights organizations and prison conditions [advocates] and criminal justice folks and researchers who were really advocating for [PREA], says Melissa Rothstein, the senior program director at Just Detention International. In Congress, there was strong bipartisan support. Rothstein says that while prison rape jokes still get told, they began to ebb after the passage of PREA. I think within the general community that this is something that people sort of knew and heard about and may have had preconceptions about but isnt something that people were necessarily confronted to thinking about, she says. I think more people have given it thought because there has been this federal law, and through this federal law theres been more attention to this problem. Becca Fink
President Bush signing the Prison Rape Elimination Act in 2003. Photo: White House.
In 2003, Congress voted unanimously for the Prison Rape Elimination Act, or PREA, which President Bush signed on Sept. 4 of that year. PREA was the rst federal law to address rape in prison. It requires a zero-tolerance policy on all sexual acts for all forms of detention. It came after years of advocacy, research and lawsuits. The 1984 Georgia case Cason v. Seckinger featured women who claimed they were forced into sexual acts with staff, and one who woman claimed she was made to have an abortion after a staff member impregnated her; it led to consent decrees that changed prison policies in Georgia. A 1996 decision in Lucas v. White, a case involving women in a federal prison who said they were sexually assaulted physically and verbally, sexually abused and harassed, subjected to repeated invasions of privacy and subject to threats, retaliation and harassment when they complained about this wrongful treatment, prompted the Federal Bureau of Prisons to issue a plan aiming to eliminate sexual abuse.
Later that year Human Rights Watch released a report highlighting the sexual abuse of women in U.S. prisons, as did Amnesty International in 1999. In 2001, Human Rights Watch released another report, this time focusing on male-prisoner rape, No Escape: Male Rape in U.S. Prisons. Compiled after several years of research, this rst-ever survey of male-prisoner rape not only described the abuse to which prisoners were subjected but also outlined a plan of action for prisons to implement in order to end this mistreatment. No Escape was covered on the front page of the Sunday New York Times, above the fold, so it doesnt get any more prominent than that, says Lara Stemple, the former executive director of Just Detention International (known until 2008 as Stop Prisoner Rape), which was one of the leaders of efforts for a federal law aiming for the elimination of prison rape. Congress hadnt supported a 1998 effort to address prison rape. But two years after No Escape, when the more comprehensive PREA legislation was
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Michelle Davenport, a former inmate, says some guards at Taconic Correctional Facility didnt countenance sexual contact with inmates. But others did: She claims to have been propositioned by four female guards during her stay.
learn about o cers is, if youre having sex with an inmate, some o cers aint with that shit, she says. I done seen o cers be like, Man, take that shit somewhere else. But Davenport says the number of incidents that DOCS substantiates at Taconic is much too lowonly ve from 2005 to 2009. BJS has never surveyed Taconic inmates about the issue. Davenport says four female o cers there propositioned her, but she never had sexual contact with prison sta . Inmates admit that other inmates sometimes fabricate allegations. But there is also substantial reason to believe that many sexual encounters in prison go unreported, either to prison o cials or to inmate advocates. In 1999 a DOCS prison superintendent acknowledged that she might not know the real prevalence of sta sexual abuse in her prison. Elaine Lord, the then superintendent of the all-female Bedford Hills Correctional Facility, testi ed in a deposition that she believed the number of unreported incidents at her facility during the previous 12 months was greater than the roughly 30 allegations that had been reported to her. Some women denied outright any involvement with an o cer during their rst interviews with Lewis and Freeman but admitted it during their second or third. e women were reluctant to talk because they feared the attorneys might be undercover DOCS o cials and didnt want to become embroiled in an investigation, the lawyers suspect. Women thought that we would judge them, says Freeman. We learned to say, We dont judge you. Sometimes women are unwilling to report sexual abuse with sta because they perceive it as advantageous, says Davenport. A friend of hers, she claims, got pregnant from a Taconic correctional o cer with whom she had willingly had a sexual relationship. e friend refused to identify the o cer when prison sta confronted her, Davenport claims, because the o cer gave money to her and her family. But sometimes inmates dont report sexual contact with o cers because theyre ambivalent about it, the attorneys say. For some, this ambivalence is a result of prior sexual victimization. A 1999 study of inmates at Bedford Hills found that 82 percent had been sexually abused before their incarceration. One of the women Lewis and Freeman met had been badly sexually abused by her brother for years. She kept a metal can of tuna beside her bed to fend o an o cer who she alleged had propositioned her. But when he irted with her, she sometimes irted back, they say. According to Lewis and Freeman, her rationale was, Part of me wants to say yes. Im a convicted felon. I dont have any job skills. I have hepatitis. Im sick. Nobodys gonna want me. Lewis and Freeman decided to le their lawsuit when they realized that alleged perpetrators o en had been complained about repeatedly. It appeared to them that DOCS took action against an o cer only when the inmate was able to supply
The ofcer allegedly told her that if she reported him, hed punish her. She alleged that when word got back to him that she had been crying in the mess hall, he threatened her again and started locking her in her cell during her free time.
physical evidencesuch as bodily uids, a pregnancy test or an incriminating letterof the sexual abuse. ey believed that because few o cers were stupid enough to leave such traces, perpetrators were generally able to operate with impunity. Some of these doubts about DOCS handling of sexual abuse allegations concerned not DOCS policies, but labor contracts that governed the agencys dealings with prison o cers. In April 2002, Freeman and Lewis wrote to then Commissioner Glenn Goord asking the department to explain, among other things, whether it ever suspended or reassigned o cers whom they allege had multiple prior complaints. A June 2002 reply from DOCS said it prohibits sexual contact between inmates and sta , trains sta to avoid it and investigates it when the agency receives complaints. In addition, the letter denies requiring that inmates corroborate allegations of sta sexual abuse with physical evidence or a sta members confession. Further, the letter says, DOCS cant suspend or reassign an o cer before nishing its investigation of the allegations against him, because the union contract prohibits that. According to the corrections o cers union contract then in place, suspensions could occur only when an o cer was facing criminal charges or when there was probable cause to believe the o cer was a danger. If an o cer was suspended because DOCS believed he was a danger, DOCS was required to issue a notice of discipline within seven days of the suspension specifying the infractions alleged. e o cer also could not be reassigned to another prison or another location within the same prison, , because the contract prohibited reassignment in connection with discipline. Data DOCS provided to City Limits indicates that one female o cer who worked at Green Haven, a mens prison 70 miles
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States of Compliance
Prison Systems React To PREA
The Prison Rape Elimination Act of 2003, or PREA, has required the Bureau of Justice Statistics (BJS) to conduct annual statistical analyses of such incidents, leading to an unprecedented review of rape and sexual abuse in prisons nationwide. The 2008-2009 National Inmate Survey, the second of its kind, was administered to 81,566 adult inmates in 167 state and federal prisons, 286 jails and 10 special connement facilities. In addition to the survey s wide scope, experts say its anonymity allows for trends to surface that might not be captured by ofcial records. Sexual assault is one of the most underreported crimes in the community at large, and in a closed system like a prison, reporting barriers can be even higher. The survey asks inmates about a set of very personal, stigmatized, emotional kinds of victimization experiences they may have had, says Richard Tewksbury, a professor of justice administration at the University of Louisville. He has also served as a visiting fellow at the BJS and has worked as a staff member on the National Prison Rape Elimination Commission. In social science, there is a strong belief that the only real way to get the reliable data on that is to condentially query people about their own experience. Institutional culture operates in a feedback loop: If prisoners are discouraged from reporting abuse to ofcialswhether because they see that complaints are never investigated or they fear retaliation of some kind they lose trust in the formal procedures available to them and stop using them. In turn, lack of reporting impedes response to potential abuse, fostering a vicious cycle. Researchers and proponents of reform can compare the incidence of abuse reported in these anonymous surveys with the incidence of abuse reported to prison ofcials. The gap between those gures may indicate that inmates are not coming forward with allegations of staff sexual misconduct. The BJS surveys conrm that very few sexual assaults in prisons and jails are actually reported, which is not that surprising, says Linda McFarlane, deputy executive director of Just Detention International, a prisoners rights advocacy group. The fact that there were some prisons and jails with National Inmate Survey results of staff sexual misconduct at or near zero means that there are facilities that are more effective at addressing this, says McFarlane. She believes that some of these successful facilities have less overcrowding, some have better grievance systems, and some have better oversight. Of course, even with the condentiality afforded by the National Inmate Survey, some inmates still might be reluctant to share. In facilities with low rates of reported abuse, says Jamie Fellner, senior counsel for the U.S. Program at Human Rights Watch, that could be because these facilities have never had a culture of much violence. It could be because the inmates are too terried to say anything, even on a survey. Or it could be that the staff is really doing its damnedest to keep inmates safe. You just dont know. As for the high-incidence facilities in New York, she says, You do know that if inmates have overcome the normal reticence of reporting, and theyre reporting high numbers ... then something must be going on. PREAs emphasis on data collection is intended to foster the kinds of policies and procedures that would prevent system-wide abuse. Some states have already begun to implement laws, programs and new policies that address the proposed PREA standards on curtailing sexual violence. Innovative approaches have yet to become denitive best practices. But the BJS numbers are a jumpingoff point for further research that simply has not been done. Sexual violence has been the hidden topic in corrections practice and criminal justice research, says Faye Taxman, director of the Center for Advancing Correctional Excellence and a professor of criminology, law and society at George Mason University. The Bureau of Justice Statistics did a great job at trying to demonstrate that you could capture sensitive information. Catherine Dunn
Attorney General Eric Holder is eyeing new prison regulations that aim to reduce sexual abuse, but some advocates say the emerging guidelines do not go far enough.
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away from New York City, was transferred to another facility for engaging in sexual misconduct with a male inmate in 2005. So the department has made an exception. But the most recent union contracts for corrections o cers still prohibit DOCS from even temporarily reassigningto another facility or to a similar job within the same facilityan o cer under investigation, even one who allegedly forcibly rapes an inmate. e contracts still restrict DOCS ability to suspend o cers too. Indeed, the constraints that the union contracts impose on DOCS are illustrated by the di culty that DOCS faced when trying to re an o cer and a lieutenant in connection with substantiated incidents. e inspector generals o ce substantiated an inmates allegations that Taconic correctional o cer Frederick Brenyah had sexually abused her after she provided investigators with an intimate physical description of the o cer that they believed was incriminating. But during the 2003 trial, Brenyah testi ed that she might have learned the information coincidentally, by hearing him and other o cers discussing it. e jury exonerated him. Because the union contracts say an o cer facing termination has the right to appeal that termination to an arbitration panel which consists of three people picked by the o cer and DOCSBrenyah appealed it. In 2004, the arbitrators ruled in Brenyahs favor, prohibiting DOCS from ring him. Brenyah returned to work, only to be arrested again in September 2010 in connection with charges of sexually abusing a di erent inmate. at case is pending. Brenyahss attorneys did not respond to multiple requests for comment. In another case, the inspector generals o ce substantiated allegations that former Bedford Hills Lieutenant Glenn Looney sexually abused a female inmate whose name is not included in court records; in fact, according to records from a New York State Supreme Court case, Looney confessed. e inmates testimony corroborated the confession, and facility records show that the inmate was escorted to some unrecorded destination for 40 minutes at approximately noon on July 4, 2002. But arbitrators ruled that DOCS couldnt re Looney because DOCS had not proven that the admitted sexual contact occurred at the charged date and time, according to the 2005 opinion of New York State Supreme Court judge Guy P. Tomlinson, who heard the case a er DOCS appealed it. Tomlinson sided with DOCS, ruling that the arbitrators had overstepped their authority by requiring DOCS to prove the charges against Looney beyond a reasonable doubt. e victory ultimately helped DOCS secure the right to re Looney. Looney could not be reached and the states two corrections unions did not respond to requests for comment. News reports indicate Looney was arrested but the outcome of his case is not known. e union contracts and the arbitration process arent
Cell Phone Radiation Controversy v ve Revisited

Join us as Dr. Davis discusses her latest book about how r r. the most popular gadget of our age has been shown to damage DNA, break down the brains defenses, and reduce sperm count while increasing memory loss, the risk of Alzheimers disease and even cancer. As this eye-opening r r. call to action shows, we can make safer cell phones now.
Tuesday, April 12, 2011 ay, ay A y

6:00 PM to 7:30 PM NYU Langone Medical Center
550 First Avenue (at 31st Street) Alumni Hall B
Presenter
Devra Lee Davis, PhD, MPH, Founder and av a President, Environmental Health Trust
Closing Remarks
Richard Hayes, DDS, MPH, PhD, Professor, a ay r r, Department of Environmental Medicine
T To RSVP, call 212-263-2266, P P, email: NYUCIcommunityprograms@nyumc.org ny NYU Y n or reserve online at www.nyuci.org/rsvp. v ve www n ww. v vp
Please provide your name, phone number, the name r r, of the lecture and the number of people attending.
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Understanding cancer. And you.
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Lockup Locations
New York States 2,500 female inmates are housed in facilities from the edge of the Great Lakes to Chelsea in Manhattan
1 3
5/6
1. Albion Correctional Facility Albion, Orleans County Medium Security Population: 782 2. Lakeview Shock Incarceration* Brocton, Chautauqua County Minimum Security Population: 93 3. Willard Drug Treatment Campus* Willard, Seneca County Drug Treatment Population: 29 4. Beacon Correctional Facility Beacon, Dutchess County Minimum Security Population: 135 5. Bedford Hills Correctional Facility Bedford Hills, Westchester County Maximum Security Population: 780 6. Taconic Correctional Facility Bedford Hills, Westchester County Medium Security Population: 316 7. Bayview Correctional Facility West 20th Street, Manhattan Medium Security Population: 144
*Both Lakeview and Willard serve men as well as women; the population gure shown is the female population. Data Source: DOCS
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Unique People Services, Inc.

Administrative Ofce 4234 Vireo Avenue, Bronx, NY 10470 Phone:(718) 231-7711; Fax: (718) 231-7720 www.uniquepeopleservices.org
Yvette Brissett-Andre, Executive Director Cheryelle Cruickshank, Assoc. Executive Director Unique People Services provides residential and supportive services to people living with HIV/AIDS, individuals formerly homeless with a mental illness, and individuals with developmental disabilities in the Bronx, Queens and Manhattan.
Unique People Services celebrates 20 years of providing social services to people with special needs. Join us at our premier gala on Thursday, October 13, 2011 at Assembly Hall, The Riverside Church, New York City. Leading up to the October gala event, we are hosting a community brunch forum focusing on services to people with developmental disabilities at 9:45AM on Thursday, May 12, 2011 at Crowley Place, 83-34 58th Avenue, East Elmhurst, NY 11373.
For more information and to RSVP: mayopenhouse@uniquepeopleservices.org
the only shields bad o cers hide behind, critics say. ey also hide behind DOCS approach to determining whether allegations of sta sexual abuse merit substantiation, critics say. It seems as though women have to prove beyond a reasonable doubt that an incident occurred in order for DOCS to substantiate it and refer it to a prosecutor, Freeman and Lewis say. With that high burden of proof, investigators dont give proper weight to credible testimony from inmates, they say, requiring the women to supply corroborating physical evidence or produce employee eyewitnesses. Lord testi ed in her 1999 deposition that about 20 times during the previous decade she believed that an allegation of sexual abuse should have been substantiated but didnt have the proof necessary to con rm it. DOCS investigative methods have defenders. Among them are two district attorneys who each have jurisdiction over a New York State correctional facility housing women and say they are pleased with the way the inspector generals o ce executes investigations. e district attorney of Orleans County, Joe Cardone, has jurisdiction over the Albion prison. DOCS does a great job,
he says. It usually starts from an inmate making a complaint. It gets to the administration at the facility. I frankly have yet to see a situation where the administration buried an investigation. (Cardone, however, was under the impression that DOCS forwards each allegation of sexual abuse to the New York State Police for investigation, because thats what DOCS does before refering substantiated incidents to district attorneys. Told that was not true, he agreed that he might be wrong.) A June 2010 federal report produced by a consulting rm that interviewed DOCS o cials contended that DOCS inmates are not required to prove beyond a reasonable doubt the allegations they make. e report says DOCS requires inmates only to prove that according to the preponderance of the evidence, it is more likely than not that an incident occurred. Cardone says he receives referrals from Albion all the time without physical evidence. But the description that three deposed investigators with the inspector generals o ce gave of the burden of proof they apply to investigations sounds very similar to the beyond a reasonable doubt standard. In 2007 and 2008, the investigators testi ed that to substantiate an incident investigators have
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to be able to prove that it happened and that discipline is imposed only when investigators establish that it de nitely happened. And in November, an inspector general investigator testi ed in Perez v. New York State that without corroborating evidence such as semen or a letter she would not substantiate sexual abuse allegations made by inmates alone. In addition, during investigations, the inspector generals o ce still doesnt give adequate weight to similar prior complaints of sexual misconduct made against the same sta member, critics say. Inspector generals records indicate that correctional o cer Donald Lasker Jr. allegedly sexually abused another inmate before sexually abusing Anna Ortiz in 2007, says her attorney, Terence Kindlon. As a result, he was transferred to another area of the prison, Kindlon alleges. e depositions clearly, unequivocally, indicate to me without a doubt that the state did have notice that this guy was doing this stu , Kindlon says. When she testified in 2005 before the U.S. Justice Departments Commission on Safety and Abuse in Americas Prisons, former Bedford Hills superintendent Lord concurred that failure to heed multiple complaints
caused problems. Wardens and administrators need to take a lead in identifying and dealing with predatory sta . eir names appear over and over in use-of-force reports or complaints and grievances, Lord said. Of course, this issue is complicated by the fact that inmates can lie and misrepresent, the same as anyone else. However, at some point, administrators must move beyond denying that any information from inmates cant be true because of denials by sta . DOCS has implemented some new measures to combat sexual abuse since Lewis and Freeman led their lawsuit. In 2004, for example, Bedford Hills completed a two-year, $3.6 million project to design and install 300 cameras, one of the reforms Lewis and Freeman recommended. In 2005 the department also began requiring that all employees (including non-uniform employees) receive initial and in-service training at least every three years about the prevention, detection and investigation of and response to sta sexual abuse, Lewis and Freeman say. In June 2010, the agency reported a 54 percent compliance with proposed federal standards regarding sta sexual abuse,
Portrait of a population
As of January 1, 2010, there were 2,480 women in New York states corrections system. This is what that population looks like: 44%
2%
White Black
19%
Latino Other
35%
Age range of New Yorks Female Prisoners

16-18 19-20 21-24 25-29 30-34 35-39 40-44 45-49 50-54 55-59 60-64 65+ 20 85 49 152 323 312 409 39% 23% 22 69 288 395 356 11% 26%
Race / Ethnicity
New York City Surburban New York Upstate Urban Other upstate
Where they were tried

30
In 2005 New York prisons began requiring that all employees receive training at least every three years about the prevention, detection and investigation of and response to staff sexual abuse.
according to a report commissioned by the U.S. Department of Justice. But critics say the prevalence of sta sexual abuse is still too high, citing BJS inmate surveys. In the inmate survey BJS conducted from October 2008 to December 2009, 630 inmates at just six New York State prisons reported being sexually abused during the previous 12 months. Because inmates arent allowed to consent to sex with prison sta , the culpability of the sta member is always clear. But some inmates are, at least initially, willing participants. ats how the relationship between Jeanette Perez and Peter Zawislak began. ey got involved more than 10 years ago, in 1999, but because critics say the vast majority of DOCS policies havent changed since then, their story, which is still unresolved, is still relevant. eir ill-fated nearly two-year a air followed a predictable pattern. Initially they began discussing their families and other personal matters. en he started visiting the inmate during his break, sending her letters, bringing her gi s, and contacting her family. Pretty soon, they were having sex and declaring that they were in love.
Marital Status
Never Married Married Seperated/Divorced Widowed Common law Unknown 14 14 84 251 468 1,649 None One Two Three Four or more Unknown
Number of Living Children

702 513 467 301 475 22
Minimum Sentence (In Years)

Less than to years Two to four years Four to 10 years 10 to 15 years 15 to 20 years More than 20 years Life without parole 6 107 175 243 129 662 1,158
Nature of Crime
Violent Felony Coercive Act Drug Offense Property Youthful Offender Junevnile Offender 46 2 239 601 589 1,003
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CHAPTER THREE
The Bayview Affair

Romance Behind Bars And Its Consequences
eter Zawislak got his rst job as a correctional o cer in 1996, when he was a burly 6-foot-tall, 210-pound 24-year-old. About the same time he became an o cer, the then 25-year-old Jeanette Perezshort and full gured at 5-2 and 170 poundsstarted her six-to-12-year sentence for robbery. She had been using drugs and alcohol for at least 12 years, eventually including heroin and cocaine, with her longest period of abstinence being eight months. She also had four children.. When the two met at Bedford Hills, a maximum-security prison about 50 miles north of New York City in 1996, Zawislak knew that DOCS policy barred him from having overly familiar relationships with inmates, he testi ed in August at their trial, Perez v. New York State. But a er they met, Perez started to see him as a friend, she testi ed at their trial. When she was transferred to Albion in 1997, she sent two letters to a friend of hers who knew him, saying, Tell him I said hi, she testi ed. In December 1998, when Perez and Zawislak were both coincidentally transferred within weeks of each other to Bayview, they started to become more familiar with each other.
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Patterns of Abuse
The women who told the Bureau of Justice they had been victims of (or participants in) sexual misconduct involving staff said the incidents were most likely to occur in a closet or locked space, and only after theyd been behind bars for a month or more.
Attica Correctional Facility. Photo by TK.
Characteristics of Alleged Abuse Incidents

Number of incidents 1 2 3 to 5 6 to 10 11 + 9.5% 19.3% 15.5% 13.9% How Long After Arrival Within 24 hours 1 to 3 days 4 to 30 days More than 30 days 5% 13.8% 12.6% 68.5% 32%
Coercion No pressure or force Pressure Force/threat of force 38.8% 29.8% 81.9%
Time of day 6am to noon Noon to 6pm 6pm to midnight Midnight to 6am 31.1% 32% 29.5% 29.1%
Data Source: BJS
For the rst several months, Perez and Zawislak considered each other platonic friends. During his breaks, he would always come see her, Perez testi ed. I was attered cause I was incarcerated for God knows how many years, and he was the rst o cer that would pay mind to me. So yes, I was attered, she testi ed. I was incarcerated for many years, and I had long hair. I was always stated down [dressed in a state-issued prisoners uniform]. I never wore makeup, and he was the rst o cer in many years, a man, that actually paid mind to me. But on April 5, 1999, their relationship started to become sexual, according to a statement Perez gave investigators. at day, Zawislak asked her to come to the stairway next to the mess hall, stairwell C, to clean it. ere, for the rst time, they kissed and petted each other. In August 1999, they started having sexual intercourse, Zawislak testi ed, while the two were in stairwell C, ostensibly to clean it. Soon a er Perez and Zawislaks rst sexual encounter in August 1999, they started having sex in her room, in the honor dorma small housing unit on the third oor reserved for inmates whom prison o cials deemed mature enough to handle more freedom. By March 2001, Perez and Zawislak had had sex at least 15 times in her room, he testi ed in August, in a trial about their a air. Eventually they also had sex in the o cers stationrisking the discovery of any potential passersbyon the roof of the building and in the gym, he testi ed. e two engaged in sexual activity whenever Zawislak worked in the honor dorm during the 11 p.m. to 7 a.m. shi or when he was the roundsmana correctional o cer who doesnt have a xed post and makes security rounds throughout the facility. ey also did it whenever he was the extraa surplus o cer without a speci c assignment on a particular shi and whenever he otherwise had the chance to come to Perezs room. When Zawislak got there, he would turn o his radio, reducing disturbances, she testi ed. Zawislak would be in Perezs room for an hour or more with the door closed when he was the o cer on duty in the honor dorm, according to a statement inmate Allavy Hill made to investigators. eir encounters would last ve to 10 minutes and never involved condoms, because he didnt want to bring them into the facility for fear he would be caught, according to a statement Perez gave investigators. For part of the timeat least until November 2000she was taking o cially authorized birth control pills to regulate her menstrual cycle. Other inmates were aware of the a air. One, Audrey Pleasant, told investigators that she saw Perez sitting on Zawislaks lap and Zawislak going into her room and closing the door. Perez and Zawislak both testi ed that
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Male Prisons Not Immune

Abuse, Consent and Gray Areas
The Department of Correctional Ser- Ofce Review Committee of the Inmate male because of the stigma that goes vices Directive 4910, Control of and Grievance Program (CORC) accepted with being sexually abused by a man, Search for Contraband, mandates Robles grievance partly. Robles did says Glenn E. Martin, vice president of that inmates must endure a pat-frisk not possess enough evidence for the Development and Public Affairs at the search upon returning from outside ofce to substantiate the allegations, Fortune Society. work details. The type of pat frisk that but Purcell was ordered to complete Misconduct is often not a simple case Rafael Robles allegedly experienced additional ofcer training as Robles of guards as predators and inmates on March 17, 2009, from correctional requested in his grievance. as innocent victims. Studies show that ofcer Keith Purcell stood out among According to a January 2011 release prisoners can be active participants other searches in his 22 years as an of sexual victimization reported by in sexual misconduct. An additional inmate in the New York State correc- adult correctional authorities to the complexity is the fact that transgender tional system. Bureau of Justice Statistics, most inmates may be housed in facilities He had me placed (sic) my hands reported allegations of sexual victimiza- designed for the inmates former on the wall, then he placed gender, not their current one. his front torso area pressed Inmate Kitty Kearney, a on my buttock, then he transgender woman who proceeded to caress my takes female hormones, is complete body in a sexual listed by DOCS as a male manner. C.O. Purcell actuprisoner named Kevin Kearally glided his hands all over ney, and is incarcerated in my body in a pervasive way a male facility. She claims while his torso continuity she has been both a victim (sic) pressed on my buttock. and beneficiary of staff In fact I can feel the outline sexual misconduct. While of his penis on me, wrote at Attica Correctional FacilRobles in a grievance letter ity in 2001, Kearney alleges, written to the Department of The DOCS inspector general partly upheld this male inmates an ofcerwho operated a sexual harassment grievance. Correctional Services (DOCS) sex ring using transgender Inmate Grievance Resolution Commit- tion of male prisoners involve female inmatesbeat and raped her because tee (IGRC) supervisor correctional staff. BJS statistics indicate she refused to be pimped out to other DOCS correctional ofcers and staff that 69 percent of male inmates who inmates. After being beaten and raped members adhere to the bodily-search said theyd been involved in sexual a second time, Kearney entered proprocedure listed in Directive 4910, misconduct with staff said the staff tective custody. which states, A pat frisk means a member was female2 from 2008 to 2009. Kearney, like some other male search by hand of an inmates person New York State male facilities inmates, also participates in consenand his or her clothes while the inmate reported 49 substantiated incidents sual relationships with correctional is clothed, except that the inmate shall of staff-on-inmate sexual misconduct ofcers. Ofcers pretty much make be required to remove coat, hat and from 2005 to 2009, a small number themselves known and available to shoes. The inmate will be required to given the roughly 60,000 inmates in you, says Kearney. If a girl comes run ngers through hair and spread New York prisons at any time. here from another spot, I can direct fingers for visual inspection. The But those statistics could reect reluc- her. I can tell her this guy [is] with it. search shall include searching into tance by male prisoners to report abuse Tiffany Walden the inmates clothing. Requiring an by male guards. A man in prison may inmate to open his or her mouth is be more inclined to report abuse by not part of a pat frisk. The Central a female person of authority than a
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State to State
New York State led the nation in the number of allegations of staff sexual misconduct that prison ofcials reported to the federal Bureau of Justice Statistics in 2007 and 2008. But New York only found one in 20 allegations to be substantiated; the national average was 22 percent. Meanwhile, California, which has more than twice as many inmates as New York, reported a mere 45 allegations over the two years casting some doubt on the veracity of reporting by some states.
Top 5 States
New York Florida Texas Georgia North Carolina
Allegations
% Substantiated
Bottom 5 States
New Mexico Connecticut Hawaii North Dakota Alaska
Allegations % Substantiated
385 280 252 163 159
5% 1% 5% 4% 19%
4 3 3 2 0
0% 0% 0% 0% 0%
other o cers knew about it. According to Zawislak and Perezs testimony, six correctional o cers knew about it and three helped them facilitate it. (All o cers that they allegedly told denied knowing about it during the trial or werent called as witnesses and were therefore unable to con rm or deny it.) A er Perez and Zawislak started having sex, Perez later testi ed, she began to feel as if she was falling in love with him. Zawislak testi ed that he also had romantic feelings for her. ey passed notes to each other through inmate Adelaide Alvarez, according to a statement Alvarez gave investigators. Zawislak gave Perez greeting cards and love letters, his baby photo, his telephone number, and address, Perez told investigators. He even gave her a wedding band for Christmas one year. At the time, she believed the ring meant they would get married and live happily ever a er, Perez testi ed. But the Hallmark card version of the Zawislak-Perez romance was only one side of a complex reality, at least according to Perez. According to her, no later than the summer of 1999, even before Zawislak and Perez had sex, Perez began to show some indication that she wasnt comfortable with their relationship. One day, she dra ed a gurative eviction notice, dated June 2, 1999, and addressed it to Zawislak. e handwritten notice declares that she is forever evicting him from her life. e notice reads, in part, is house of love has turned to anger, unlike yourself and your vicious inhuman treatment of the tenant and their rights. I ask that you return the keys to my heart and your deposit cannot be returned because of
broken promises and damaged mind. Its unclear what prompted the dra ing of this notice and whether Perez ever gave it to Zawislak, but by September 2000, Perez testi ed, she was clear that she wanted to end the relationship, in part because shed heard he was with involved with other inmates. She also told an investigator, My relationship with C.O. Zawislak was a bad one. He never did anything for me. He never brought me anything. Every time I asked him for something, he never brought it in. When she told Zawislak that she wanted to end the relationship, he got upset, threw a tantrum and began manhandling her, she testi ed. She also alleged, in Lewis and Freemans lawsuit, that Zawislak grabbed her around the neck and hit her with a pool cue (Perez joined their lawsuit when it was led in 2003 and dropped out in 2009, upon Zawislaks insistence, she testi ed). Pleasant told investigators she recalled overhearing an argument in which Zawislak called Perez a bitch and Perez called him a faggot. She fearedaccording to her testimonythat no one would believe her if she reported him and that DOCS would transfer her from Bayview, where at least it was possible for her to see her four children. If she werent incarcerated, she testi ed, she would have handled the alleged violence di erently. I would have moved, if he already knew where I lived. Or I would have told my brother. Or I wouldve called the cops, she testi ed. Every time they argued, he assaulted her, grabbing her by the arms and slamming her against the wall, Perez told an investigator. When Perez threatened to report Zawislak to his
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superiors, Perez testi ed, he told her, Go ahead. You know whats going to happen. Youre going to get dra ed [transferred], and Im going to remain at my job. So for several more months, Perez testi ed, she continued having sex with Zawislak because she felt she had to. en in February 2001, their relationship became even more complicated: Perez believed she was pregnant. Zawislak told her to wait until he got a transfer to a new facility before telling people about it, according to a statement she gave investigators. en, in March, he told her he would leave the job, marry her and take care of her and the baby, she told investigators. (Zawislak testi ed that he learned about the pregnancy in March and did plan, at that time, to marry her.) Perez and Zawislak knew that if she were pregnant, it was inevitable that the prisons upper management would discover their open secret. e o cial responsible for supervising all line o cersthe deputy superintendent of security, Kenneth Werbachertesti ed that in February and early March, he still didnt have an inkling that anything was going on between BY THE NUMBERS her and Zawislak. at began to change on Federal statistics on sex March 10, when Serand rape in prisons geant Sammy Green www.citylimits.org couldnt nd or reach Zawislak,because he was in Perezs room. When Zawislak turned up in the lobby, red and nervous, Green suspected that something was wrong. An investigation began. Before Zawislaks front began to crumble, Perez had requested to be transferred to another facility so she could get away from him. Within a few days of Zawislaks pivotal misstep, she was moved to a new oor. And two to three weeks later, she was transferred to Beacon, where she nally informed o cials of her pregnancy and eventually began to cooperate with their
investigation. At around the same time, Perez began talking to an attorney about ling a lawsuit in connection with her ordeal. In a letter to a friend, around April 17, she wrote, I hope everything goes okay with this claim for real. I can have my moms go on a long vacation, take care of my girls and the baby. Within four months, Zawislak resigned and was arrested. On Oct. 4, 11 days before Perez gave birth to a healthy boy, Zawislak pleaded guilty to rape in the third degreefor having sex with a person incapable of consent by reason of some factor other than being under 17 years old. For the crime, a felony that carries a maximum sentence of four years in state prison, he was sentenced to one to three years in prison. His incarceration began Dec. 18, 2001, and he spent nearly two years in prison. A er his release, he and Perez developed a joint custody arrangement. Zawislak began paying child support, and the couple considered rekindling their relationshipbut to no avail. With Zawislaks guilt established, the question begging for an answer became how was the couple able to carry on a sexual a air for nearly two yearseven engaging in sex in the o cers stationwithout so much as arousing the suspicion of the prisons upper management? Answers to that question began to emerge in January 2004, a er Perez led her lawsuit against New York State in the Court of Claimsthe exclusive forum for litigation seeking damages against the state. e lawsuit alleges that DOCS was responsible for what happened to her. e answers that emerged from the lawsuit illustrate how an employee might game the system and demonstrate the challenges of assigning blame when he does. DOCS attorney Suzette Rivera presented testimony that o cials didnt suspect Zawislak and Perez, because before April 2001, Perez never told them and Zawislak took care to cover his tracks. O cials testi ed that they had no reason to suspect Zawislak would do such a thing: He had undergone
Albion Correctional Facility in Orleans County. It was while Jeanette Perez was an inmate here that she began writing to Peter Zawislak.
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Whos the Victim

Inmates who claimed to have been the victim of staff sexual misconduct in the Bureau of Justice Statistics 2008-2009 nationwide survey were more likely to be multiracial, well-educated and facing long sentences. These statistics include male and female inmates nationwide. These statistics include male and female inmates nationwide and reect the number of inmates in each category who reported beg subject to some form of staff sexual abuse. 8.7% 6.6% 3.8% 2.9% 2.5% 2.2% 2.7% White Black Hispanic Other Two or more races 2.3% 3.2% 4.3% 2.4% 2.9%
Race
Heterosexual
Bi-sexual, Prior sexual Homosexual victimization or other
Less than high School
High school graduate
Some college
College degree or higher
Sexual Orientation and Incident History
Education
4.1% 2.8% 1.9% .9%
4.6%
2.3%
Less than 1
1-5
5-10
10-20
20+
Life/Death
Length of Sentence
Data Source: BJS
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A guard patrols the perimeter outside Bedford Hills Correctional Facility. Almost a third of the states female inmates are housed there.
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We cant be everywhere at once. Theres not always going to be another ofcer or supervisor observing what that specic ofcer does. We must rely on the individual ofcers to perform their duties as they were trained to perform them.
a criminal background check and a battery of tests before becoming an o cer, including a psychological tness test, and passed all of them. ere were no prior complaints against Zawislak, according to DOCS testimony. And Perez was considered a mature inmate. Rivera, an attorney in the New York State O ce of the Attorney General, also presented testimony that as soon as o cials began to suspect there was an inappropriate relationship between the two, they took action. Martin Horn, a professor at John Jay College of Criminal Justice and the former commissioner for New York Citys Department of Corrections, testi ed on DOCS behalf as an expert witness. He argued that prison supervisors cannot be omniscient. We cant be everywhere at once, he testi ed. eres not always going to be another o cer or supervisor observing what that speci c o cer does. We must rely on the individual o cers to perform their duties as they were trained to perform them. ere were no cameras in the stairwells where they copulated and petted and no alarms on the doors leading to the stairwells. But cameras alone would not have prevented the a air, Horn testi ed. Even where cameras are installed, there are blind spots, he testi ed. Cameras dont look inside individual cells or rooms that inmates live in, neither do cameras in toilet and shower areas. In any situation where the facility is covered by cameras, there are places that arent subject to camera coverage. Horn testi ed that there were 24-hour periods during Perezs and Zawislaks a air when prison o cials assigned not a single o cer to supervise the honor dorm and no DOCS employee came to the third oor at all. During the 7 a.m. to 3 p.m. shi , when inmates were supposed to be in programs, no o cer was ever assigned there. But, Horn contended, the level of supervision in the dorm was appropriate, because the inmates assigned to the honor dorm were more mature.
Robert DeRosa, an expert witness for the plainti , saw matters di erently. DeRosa testi ed that DOCS supervision of Zawislak le him free to roam the building and access areas and to carry on this relationship unabated. He testied, No one challenged it. When supervisors made security rounds, o cers called ahead to alert one another that their bosses were coming. e routine security inspections of his supervisors did not deter him, because they were predictable, he testi ed. e couple never feared having sex on the roof, because, Perez testi ed, Nobody was coming up to the roof. Roof checks by other guards occurred every hour, giving them su cient time, she testi ed. When you have a facility managed like this, its pretty much open game for people to do what they want. ats pretty much what happened here. Peter was allowed to do what he wanted over a period of time, DeRosa testi ed. Perezs trial ended on Nov. 16, a er four days of testimony. If the judge rules in her favor, it would be at least the second time that an inmate or former prisoner has won a case alleging that DOCS is responsible for sexual abuse committed by a prison employee. Later this year, the Court of Claims could hear cases from two other women alleging that DOCS is responsible for their sexual abuse. One is correctional o cer Donald Lasker, Jr.s victim, who already won a federal civil case against him. Her Court of Claims lawsuit alleges that DOCS was negligent and careless in several ways, saying that prison o cials should have locked the classroom where she was raped to prevent Lasker from accessing it, because it was not in use. e lawsuit also alleges that Lasker was negligently hired, improperly trained and improperly investigated. rough a relative, Lasker did not comment.
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A Clash Of Rights
Decades Of Debate Over Male Guards In Womens Prisons
n the late 1970s, when omas Terrizzi began working as an attorney in the Elmira, New York o ce of the newly formed Prisoners Legal Services, sex between corrections o cers and inmates wasnt an issue that prisoners complained about to PLS, then the only New York organization specializing in prisoners rights. e state had very few female inmates then. In fact, some of the correctional facilities that currently house only women then housed men, either instead of women or in addition to them. Cross-gender supervision of inmates (in other words, men supervising women or women supervising men) was rare then, with most female inmates being supervised by women. e men who worked at Bedford Hills before 1976 worked not in the housing units but in areas including the grounds, the school and the library. Mens prisons also had few female o cers then. Partly because most inmates were men, most of the complaints PLS received then came from male inmates. At the time, one of their most common complaints was that guards were using excessive force. Female inmates complained to PLS so rarely during that time that Terrizzi doesnt remember handling any of their complaints. I think women just generally didnt complain much ... out of fear, out of fear of retaliation, Terrizzi says.
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CHAPTER FOUR
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An inmate looks out from Bayview Correctional Facility in Manhattan. There and at other prisons, there is a tension between the rights of inmatesfor whom prison is an involuntary home and the rights of guards, for whom it is a workplace.
But in 1976 New Yorks prisons underwent policy changes that would reverberate in sexual-misconduct allegations decades later. Since 1955, the U.N. Standard Minimum Rules for the Treatment of Prisoners had banned cross-gender supervision. But in 1976, DOCSin an e ort to comply with the equal employment law codi ed in Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964decided to allow male o cers at Bedford Hills to supervise the womens living and sleeping quarters. e rst male o cers began those jobs in February 1977. Within months, the opening salvo in the statewide battle to de ne the parameters of cross-gender supervision was red, when 10 female inmates led a lawsuit alleging that male o cers ability to view them naked in their cells and showers and on their toilets violated their privacy rights. e rst judge who heard the case in federal district court, Judge Richard Owen concluded that some male o cers were indeed viewing the women nude, sometimes as a result of performing their jobs and sometimes while being what he called Peeping Toms. He ordered DOCS to develop a plan that could prevent
Bedford Hills male o cers from viewing the women nude. e policy DOCS developed became the basis for a court order in 1979. It required female guards to be on hand at all times in case there was an emergency in the female unit, where privacy was an issue; barred male guards from overnight duties that might require looking in female cells; prohibited male guards from working in rmary posts where female nudity was possible; and mandated that male guards give female inmates a ve-minute warning before opening their cell doors. Beyond that, male guards were allowed to keep working in womens living quarters. Within seven months, the corrections lieutenants union and its executive director appealed part of the judges order, reigniting the battle over cross-gender supervision. e appeal argued that barring male o cers from the female housing areas overnight infringed unduly on the male o cers fairemployment rights. ey also argued that the provision would infringe female o cers employment rights: removing male o cers from night shi duties would bump female o cers from preferred daytime shi s, to which they would normally be entitled by virtue of seniority, they argued.
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e appeals court judge sided with the union, ruling that female inmates could prevent the male o cers from seeing them nude at night by wearing appropriate clothing or covering their windows with a curtain for up to 15 minutes at a time. at May 1980 appeals court ruling secured for New York States male corrections o cers fuller entre into the housing areas of womens prisons. But for at least 10 more years, it didnt change the nature of the complaints PLS received, which continued to be primarily from men, Terrizzi says. By the 1990s, Terrizzi began to hear occasionally that a female prisoner or former female prisoner had sued a male o cer for damages in connection with allegations of sexual abuse, the rst evidence that cross-gender supervision in womens prison was beginning to have some unintended consequences. But even those cases were rare, he says. ose cases got little publicity. You couldnt track them, really, he says. ey o entimes would get settled very quickly and wouldnt be on the radar screen. Not until 1996, when Terrizzi was a PLS supervisor, did PLS receive signi cant complaints about cross-gender supervision in womens prisons. One day that year, his o ce received a letter from a woman at Albion saying that o cers had just videotaped her strip frisk, a procedure in which an inmate disrobes and o cers search the crevices of her body for contraband. e strip-frisking was being conducted by female o cers while male o cers stood watching just outside an ajar door. When Terrizzi read it, he was shocked and immediately called the DOCS counsels o ce. An attorney there acknowledged that o cers were videotaping some strip frisks and said the o cers had permission from DOCS central o ce, Terrizzi says. Video cameras were used only when o cers believed they might have to use force to conduct the strip frisk, a DOCS spokesperson told e New York Times. ey were doing it to have a record of the strip
search, so theres no allegations of wrongdoing, Terrizzi says DOCS explained. ey said it was as much a protection for the woman as for sta , which is pretty outrageous. Obviously the procedure is so humiliating and degrading to begin with for everybody. Operating under an existing consent decree from a case in which male inmates alleged they were improperly stripsearched, Terrizzi gradually found 72 women who complained of the same treatment. He also learned that videotapes of the searches were not stored in any controlled way, he says (A DOCS spokesperson told e New York Times the videos were locked away). Under a settlement, DOCS agreed to pay each victim, of which there were ultimately 85 $1,000. But DOCS did not agree to stop the videotaping, according to the paper, saying theyd done nothing wrong.[line break] A er that settlement made the news, more women began pursuing legal action against DOCS to launch allegations of sexual abuse. Within less than two years of the strip-frisk victory, more female inmates launched a new attack against DOCS on yet another front related to cross-gender supervisionthe pat frisk, a procedure for detecting contraband that directed o cers to touch an inmates vagina and breasts. One lawsuit allegedand the then-corrections commissioner largely con rmedthat aninstructional videotape that DOCS then used to train o cers suggested that a pat-frisk was to be conducted as follows:, An o cer begins by ordering the inmate to stand against the wall with her back to him. e o cer then approaches the inmate from behind, placing his hands on the inmates neck and inside the collar of her shirt. He works his hands down every inch of the surface of her body. Probing for small items, the o cer runs his hands under and over the womans breast, brushing her nipples. Searching the womans legs, the o cer grips one inner thigh. His hands press
Time Served
In New York and nationwide, a timeline of sexual abuse behind bars as an issue
1976 DOCSin an effort to comply with the equal employment law codied in Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964decides to allow male ofcers at Bedford Hills to supervise the womens living and sleeping quarters. 1979 Court order requires DOCS to restrict duties of male guards in female prisons in order to prevent male staff from seeing inmates nude. 1980 Appeals court overturns part of the court order. 1984 The Georgia court case Cason v. Seckinger, one of the
rst to address sexual abuse in prisons, presses claims by women that they were forced into sexual acts with staff. The case leads to changes in state prison policy. 1996 The federal Bureau of Prisons issues guidelines aimed at reducing staff sexual abuse. Human Rights Watch releases a report highlighting the sexual abuse of women in U.S. prisons. A new New York State Law
holds that any person in custody in a New York State correctional facility cannot consent to any sex act with an employee. 1998 Congressman John Conyers Jr., D-Mich., introduces the Custodial Sexual Abuse bill, which would have mandated a registry of staff who engaged in sexual activity with inmates. The bill fails. 1998 New York States DOCS revises
its pat-frisk policy, increasing the number of circumstances under which pat frisks must be conducted. A federal lawsuit alleges that pat frisks in New York State prisons provide a pretext for abusers to sexually abuse inmates. 1999 National Institute of Corrections survey shows that only the BOP and six out of 50 states routinely allowed men to pat-search women. New York State is one of them.
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against the womans vagina before moving down her thigh toward the ankle. He then grips the other thigh and repeats this procedure on the womans other side. e policy mandated that o cers conduct this procedure in certain situations. For instance, o cers were required to pat-frisk every woman returning from a visit in which she had contact with unincarcerated people. But the policy also allowed o cersregardless of their genderlatitude to conduct random pat frisks when the inmate aroused suspicion. Claudia Angelos, a New York University School of Law professor who had worked at PLS during the 1970s, heard about DOCS pat-frisk policy while representing Stacey Hamilton, then a prisoner at Bedford Hills, in an unrelated matter. e way they conducted the frisk was so beyond shocking that when we sent the press the videotape, we had absolute pandemonium across the state, she says. at was the training tape, which shows this guy spending ve minutes frisking her, going up in her crotch. Before 1994, in at least one female facility, Bedford Hills, most if not all pat frisks were performed by female o cers, because the sta was 60 percent female, Elaine Lord, the former Bedford Hills superintendent, testi ed in a 1999 deposition. But by the late 1990s, the facilitys gender makeup had reversed. And around the same time, in 1998, DOCS revised its pat-frisk policy to increase the number of circumstances under which pat frisks must be conducted. Even though, according to Lord, male guards at Bedford Hills tended to let female o cers do pat frisks of female inmates, the frequency with which male o cers pat-frisked female inmates still increased, and so did the complaints from inmates and o cers. Lord estimated that in 1999 all o cersmale and femalewere conducting a combined total of 200 to 250 pat frisks a day. Because the procedure made some o cers
uncomfortable, 20 to 30 of them complained to her about it, she later testi ed. A er numerous inmates complained to her that two or three or male o cers were making sexual remarks during the pat frisks, she sent an e-mail to one of her deputies in June 1997: At this point I do not intend to go ahead with random pat
2001 Human Rights Watch releases another report, this time focusing on maleprisoner rape. 2003 After years of advocacy, research and lawsuits, Congress unanimously passes and President Bush signs the Prison Rape Elimination Act, or PREA, which requires a zero-tolerance policy on all abusive sexual acts for all forms of detention. A National Prison Rape Elimination Commission (NPREC)
is formed; it completes work six years later. 2004 New York States one maximum security prison for women, Bedford Hills, completes a two-year, $3.6 million project to design and install 300 cameras a move sought by advocates for inmates alleging sexual misconduct by staff. 2006 A guard at a federal prison in Tallahassee, Fla., shoots and kills a federal agent when Department of
Justice ofcials visit the facility to deliver arrest warrants to six staff members charged with exchanging contraband for sex with female inmates. 2007 New York State law on sexual misconduct in prisons expands the denition of employee to include any person, including volunteers and contract employees, providing direct services to inmates. 2009 Class action
lawsuit is settled with the Michigan Department of Corrections, resulting in a $100 million award to 500 female prisoners who said they had been sexually abused by guards. 2010 The U.S. Bureau of Justice Statistics releases the results of a nationwide survey of inmates on the incidence of sexual misconduct in prisons and jails. Of the 11 facilities with the highest reported rates of sexual
misconduct, three are New York State facilities. Another is an upstate county jail. 2011 As prisoner advocates, state prison ofcials and the Justice Department wrestle over the development of new regulations authorized by PREA to reduce sexual misconduct behind bars, New York State prison leaders are called to Washington to explain their facilities prominence in the BJS survey.
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Taconic Correctional Facility is across a road from Bedford Hills prison in Westchester County. There were only ve substantiated cases of staff sexual abuse there from 2005 through 2009, but there are questions about whether state prison statistics capture all cases of 48 inappropriate behavior. Behind Bars: Sex, Rape And Love In New Yorks Female Prisons
I think women just generally didnt complain much ... out of fear, out of fear of retaliation.
frisks. Im already sick of what Im hearing about what some of our nest males think theyre going to get out of this. Sad to say, I truly believe the inmates in these cases. Stop it now and we will discuss how you might get control but no go until such time. Lord says she believed that some corrections o cers couldnt wait to touch female inmates. Lord testi ed that she and her deputy handled the womens complaints by speaking with them and the o cers involved. Her deputy had sta monitor one of the guards. But neither o cial reported the o cers to the inspector generals o ce, nor, to Lords recollection, were those guards subjected to any disciplinary proceedings in connection with these incidents. Lord later testi ed that she never restricted cross-gender pat-frisking. Inevitably, the issue of cross-gender pat frisks went to court. Angelos led a federal lawsuit on behalf of New York States female prisoners in 1998, demanding an end to cross gender pat-frisks, alleging that they provided a pretext for the misconduct of abusers and emboldened some o cers to touch inmates sexually in other contexts. e judge assigned to the case, Allen G. Schwartz, was a former corrections o cer. Schwartz Very early on, the judge, who is now dead, made it clear that he was going to rule in the inmates favor if they didnt reach a settlement, she says. e judge told them that he couldnt imagine frisking a woman that way, she says. DOCS initially resisted any change, and testimony by then Commissioner Goord provided some insight as to why. Goord testi ed in his deposition that equal employment law bars DOCS from eliminating cross-gender pat frisks. He cited an EEOC charge that had been led by female o cers in 1996, when DOCS temporarily restricted cross-gender pat frisks at Albion in an e ort to allay the concerns of advocacy groups. e female o cers who led the charge alleged that their new pat-frisk duties infringed on their rights to select their jobs based on seniority. DOCS ended the Albion experiment restricting cross-gender pat-frisks within seven months. But DOCS resistance to the demands of Hamilton and the other plainti s did not last long. During the lawsuits rst year, the agency compromised, agreeing to restrict cross-gender supervision under the terms of a settlement. e settlement made male pat-frisks of female inmates less intrusive, but
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ultimately permitted male o cers to continue pat-frisking the majority of female inmates. A May 2010 letter written by DOCS commissioner Brian Fischer to the U.S. Department of Justice describes the results of the settlement, which governs pat-frisks today: Under this policy, a male o cer cannot perform a non-emergency pat down search upon any female inmate ON THE RECORD who has been issued a Cross Gender Pat Frisk Read documents from our Exemption. Typically, sex abuse investigation www.citylimits.org such an exemption would be issued following a determination that the inmate su ers from post-traumatic stress disorder because of a history of sexual abuse. e reforms havent eliminated concerns about pat-frisks. In fact, DOCS believes that misunderstandings about pat-frisks might explain some of the sexual misconduct allegations its inmates have made against guards. Some evidence suggests, however, that the problems in New Yorks female prisons are deeper than that.
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CHAPTER FIVE
Corrective Measures
State prisons And Advocates Keep Battling Over Sex-abuse Regulations
ach of the 11 correctional facilities that the Bureau of Justice Statistics put on its 2008-2009 list of prisons and jails with the nations highest levels of inmate-reported sta sexual abusea list on which three New York state prisons ranked had a rate that was at least 55 percent higher than the national average. But DOCS o cials have downplayed New Yorks prominence on that list. In August, when BJS released the results of its 2008-09 survey, NYS DOCS spokesperson Linda Foglia issued a statement saying that some surveyed inmates who reported sta sexual abuse might be mistaking pat friskers intentions. e statement says in part: Because safety and security remain a top priority, we conduct frequent pat frisks of inmates to help keep potentially dangerous contraband out of prison. ese frisks can lead to allegations of inappropriate touching or abuse. We will work with the Department of Justice to see, based on the anonymous self-reporting data presented, if there are in fact identi able patterns of abuse and to determine how much of the issue may be a question of interpretation and perception.
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All 67 New York State prisonsincluding Albion face an uncertain future as budget cuts force reductions in capacity and, perhaps, the closing of some facilities.
Indeed, BJS found nationwide that inmate-reported sta sexual abuse o en occurred in conjunction with strip searches and pat downs. But the vast majority of victims participating in the survey91 percent of women and 86 percent of menreported that they had also experienced sta sexual abuse outside that context, suggesting that inmates arent overreporting sexual abuse because theyre confused about the difference between a frisk and a fondle. e scrutiny DOJ is giving DOCS is more than its been getting from the states own watchdog. e Commission of Corrections, a three-member panel with the statutory authority to shut down unsafe prisons, hasnt sent its sta to conduct a routine inspection of a New York State prison in about ve years, with 70 percent of the sta responsible for conducting those inspections laid o , says James E. Lawrence, the commissions director of operations. e commission focuses its scarce resources on New York State jails and has recently aggressively enforced the law banning sexual contact between inmates and sta at one upstate jail, temporarily banning it from housing female inmates until the problems were recti ed, says John Caher, the agencys spokesperson. DOCS doesnt need such an intervention, Lawrence says, saying that it has strong leadership in their central o ce in Albany and
many resources. ey have a very sophisticated sex crimes unit, he says. eyre using DNA work. eyre using sni ers. eyve got sophisticated investigative techniques. But the State Senate and Assembly are each considering bills that would scrutinize DOCS track record, by implementing a commission to study sexual abuse in the states prisons and propose solutions. A version of the assembly bill has been under consideration since 2004. In mid-March it passed out of the committee with unanimous support, says Je rion Aubry, the chair of the assemblys Crime and Corrections Committee. Aubry says the legislature needs to study the problem despite the federal governments ongoing seven-year national study of it. We have anecdotal evidence that there is a problem, thats been reported through lots of di erent sources, the Queens Democrat says. We need to we need to be more diligent in monitoring whats going on. Assemblyman Steve Hawleya Republican from the 139th District, which contains the Albion prison, the female prison with the most substantiated incidents since 2005issued a statement that says, in part: While it is clear no incidence of sexual abuse of female prisoners by correctional o cers can be tolerated, we must also be careful to ensure that further measures taken to prevent
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and punish this behavior do not have an unwarranted impact on the vast majority of dedicated, hardworking, decent and law-abiding correctional o cers, who work 365 days a year to operate our prisons. Over the years, DOCS has implemented some measures that address sta sexual abuse. Although the agency doesnt currently have enough cameras to meet the proposed federal standard encouraging the adoption of surveillance cameras to monitor the prison, it has been installing them. Since 1995 the department has spent more than $35 million on the implementation of these systems, then-Commissioner Goord testi ed in 2006 before the federal commission that helped develop the proposed standards. DOCS currently conducts criminal background checks on all new hires (including contract employees and volunteers) and has established a link with the New York State Division of Criminal Justice Services, which informs DOCS if an agency employee is arrested for any type of crime for the duration of his/her employment with DOCS, says a letter that DOCS Commissioner Brian Fischer wrote the U.S. Department of Justice in May 2010. e letter also says, DOCS presently provides each o ender with an orientation concerning sexual abuse prevention upon admission to the system and upon every transfer to a new facility. Fischer also pointed to the departments Sex Crimes Unit, which consists of a deputy
inspector general, an assistant deputy inspector general and 12 investigators who receive intensive training in investigative techniques. But in November, a former deputy superintendent of security at Bayview, who retired in 2002, gave testimony at Perezs trial that undermines DOCS claim that the inspector generals o ce investigates all allegations of sexual abuse. Kenneth Werbacher testified that he didnt always report such allegaTHE LATEST tions to the inspector Updates on sex abuse generals office. If lawsuits and DOCS I determined that federal testimony possibly something www.citylimits.org happened, I would put it in a report form and send it to the inspector generals o ce, he testi ed. It appears that o cers at other state correctional facilities that house women followed a similar procedure, according to records provided to City Limits. Prison o cials recorded on so-called monthly sta -on-inmate incident/threat summary forms, a combined total of TK allegations from January 2005 to January 2011. But according to these forms, the resolution of TK of these allegations, or TK percent, did not involve the prison o cials reporting them to the inspector general. TK
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Dori Lewis, one of two Legal Aid lawyers representing former DOCS inmates in an eight-year-old lawsuit against the prison system. A decision could come soon.
or TK percent of those unreported allegations were deemed unsubstantiated by prison o cials. But some think more ambitious changes are needed. When it comes to sexual assaults in prisons, there is much that needs to be done, Karen Murtagh-Monks, the Albany-based executive director of Prisoners Legal Services, a statewide network of legal clinics, said via e-mail. Critics and even some neutral observers say that to reduce the prevalence of sexual abuse, DOCS needs to further restrict cross-gender supervision. When asked how DOCS should address the problem, Orleans County district attorney Joe Cardone says the prevalence is already low but adds that DOCS should hire more women in womens prisons. As much as possible, have same-gender guards in these facilities, he says, adding that he doesnt think it would violate equal employment law. ose women that are hired, is there anything wrong with assigning them to womens facilities as opposed to mens facilities? At the very least, DOCS should stop assigning male sta members to posts that give them the opportunity to
have unmonitored contact with female prisonerslike jobs in housing areas, especially at nightFreeman and Lewis say. Another preventive step that DOCS should take is limiting o cers access to private, unmonitored areas such as kitchen storerooms, storage closets, slop sink areas and laundry areas, where sexual abuse may be easier to commit. In addition, when an employee generates a lot of complaints, prison o cials should always increase the supervision of that person, to ensure that his unmonitored contact with female prisoners is limited, say Freeman and Lewis. Such changes can be implemented without violating the union contract, but ultimately, DOCS might have to consider doing that too, they say. You may never be able to achieve zero complaints in a year, but you can certainly not be one of the leaders of the country, Freeman says. ere are steps that can be taken to reduce the risk. Its unclear yet whether their lawsuit against DOCS will force the agency to take any of those steps. A judge has ruled that since none of the inmates original grievances articulated in enough detail what policy changes they sought, their lawsuit
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Sparring Over Prison Rules

A celebration was in order when the National Prison Rape Elimination Commission (NPREC) completed its six years of work. Since the members appointments in 2003, they had consulted victims, experts and administrators, held hearings, and reviewed studies, to determine how to combat the sexual abuse of inmates by other inmates and staff. In June 2009, they handed off their report to the U.S. attorney general, Eric Holder, who had by law one year to make any changes to their recommendations and promulgate a national set of standards. But it was not until Jan. 24 of this year, more than six months overdue, that Holder published his proposed National Standards to Prevent, Detect and Respond to Prison Rape. And to the dismay of commissioners and advocates alike, the AGs revisions have weakened several of the standards to such a degree that some policies could be a step backward from what most state agencies already have in place. To aid in his review of the commissions recommendations, the AG assembled a working group of representatives from a range of departments, like the Bureau of Prisons and the DOJs Civil Rights Division and Ofce of Legal Policy. The group began by contracting out a cost-analysis study. Meanwhile, in January and February 2010, the DOJ held listening sessions in which both advocates and members of individual state departments of corrections could give their input. One month later, the AG published an Advanced Notice of Proposed Rulemaking, prompting more than 650 public responses. The
Advocates, DOJ Disagree On Abuse Elimination Guidelines
cost study took until June to complete. Finally, the working group revised the standards and contracted a second study to determine the nancial impact of each new provision. Although advocacy groups and several editorials in the Washington Post and the New York Times criticized these procedures and the delays they caused, the Justice Department felt the process was necessary to create a set of standards that states would be inclined to adopt, DOJ ofcials say. Moreover, the Prison Rape Elimination Act of 2003, or PREA, expressly mandates that the national standards may not impose substantial additional costs compared to the costs presently expended by federal, state and local prison authorities. A DOJ official tells City Limits he felt this placed inherent limitations on what the AG could demand from state corrections departments. Indeed, the New York State Department of Correctional Services voiced concerns over funding during the rst round of public commentary. It is apparent that the Commission did not heed [PREAs cost] limitation as the proposed standards would greatly increase the costs to this and virtually any other correctional department in the nation, wrote Brian Fischer, NYS DOCS commissioner. Only one agency nationallythe Bureau of Prisons (BOP), the branch of the DOJ that runs 116 federal correctional facilities across the countrywill be legally bound by the nal set of standards. But state prison agencies will face a 5 percent cut in federal
funding if they fail to comply with the new standards. If implemented according to the AGs revisions, the proposed standards would make a difference, NPREC commissioner Jamie Fellner, senior counsel at Human Rights Watch, allows. But it would be a wasted opportunity to make the signicant difference Congress had sought. The standards could and should be much stronger. The commissions proposed rules, for instance, emphasized the importance of limiting cross-gender pat searches to prevent the abuse of inmates by staff. A 1999 National Institute of Corrections survey showed that only the BOP and ve out of 50 states routinely allowed men to pat-search women in all facilities. Among them, Michigan has since eliminated the practice. However, the DOJ wrote in the proposed standards that it felt the benets of eliminating cross-gender pat-down searches do not justify the costs of imposing such a rule across the board, with an exception for inmates who previously suffered cross-gender sexual abuse while incarcerated. Potential costs of a cross-gender pat-frisk ban could include hiring additional male or female staffers to match the inmate population. Melissa Rothstein, senior program director at the advocacy group Just Detention International (JDI), notes that there are areas in which the DOJ did clarify and even strengthen certain provisions. In one such case, the DOJs proposed standard expands the commissions recommendation by requiring access to [forensic] exams
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not only in cases of penetration but whenever evidentiarily or medically appropriate. But Rothstein added that the DOJ weakened some of the most critical provisions, including one that would have applied the standards to immigration detention centers. The DOJ told
is a professor at Washington College of Law at American University.While Smith acknowledged the importance of proposing attainable rules, she worried that with the grievance and cross-gender supervision standards, the DOJ had done what was best for the Bureau of Prisons.
review. When it signs off, the DOJ will publish the standards as nal rule. The attorney general is motivated by a desire to make a final set of standards that is robust, effective and attainableand which can endure over the years, says the DOJs Jessica Smith, a senior public affairs specialist.
How Strict A Standard?

STANDARD
Nearly eight years after a federal law to reduce sexual misconduct in prison, advocates, prison ofcials and federal regulators are debating rules to achieve the legislations aims. What the Prison Rape Elimination Commission Proposed What NY Prison Ofcials Said e proposed standard as dra ed will have drastic immediate scal impact as well as substantial reoccurring costs. What the DOJ Decided Citing cost concerns and worries about equal employment rules, the DOJ disagrees with the Commissions recommendation and proposes to allow cross-gender pat-down searches. Believes that independent audits are critical but since audits are time-consuming and resource intensive, concludes that further discussion is necessary. Kept the Commissions standard and added training in how to avoid inappropriate relationships with inmates. In addition, agencies must provide documentation that the required training was provided and, for sta training, that the training was understood. e DOJ proposes that instead of enabling reports to an outside public entity, an agency can meet the standard by reporting to an internal o ce, but that is operationally independent from agency leadership.
CROSS GENDER Except in the case of emergency or VIEWING AND other extraordinary or unforeseen SEARCHES circumstances, the facility restricts
nonmedical sta from ...[performing] cross-gender pat-down searches.
AUDITS OF To measure compliance, audits must STANDARDS be conducted at least every three years
by independent and quali ed auditors.
Recommends eliminating or signi cantly modifying the requirement for audits so it does not create an enormous taxpayer burden. NYS DOCS recommended that the training requirement be reduced, citing costs of up to $3.7 million to implement what the commission called for.
EMPLOYEE e agency trains all employees on a TRAINING residents right to be free from sexual
abuse free from retaliation for reporting sexual abuse, the dynamics of sexual abuse, and the common reactions of sexual abuse victims.
e facility provides multiple internal INMATE REPORTING ways for residents to report sexual
abuse and at least one way for residents to report the abuse to an outside public entity or o ce not a liated with the agency that has agreed to receive reports and forward them to the facility head.
NYS DOCS felt the provision was too speci c, and that the second sentence should instead read: e facility also provides at least one way for residents to report the abuse to an outside public entity or o ce not a liated with the agency.
commissioners that only the Department of Homeland Security had the jurisdiction to make demands on the immigration detention system. Some of the disagreement springs from competing ideas about what impact the DOJ guidelines will have. The DOJ might think that these standards will be a floor, but for many jurisdictions, they re going to become a ceiling, says Brenda Smith, who served on the NPREC and
The DOJ launched a 60-day public comment period on its proposed standards, which ended on April. 4, 2011. The department will review all comments submitted on the proposed rule and will take such comments into account in developing the nal rule, a DOJ ofcial said. The DOJ expects to complete this process by the end of 2011. The last step is to send the standards over to the Ofce of Management and Budget for regulatory
Until then, Cindy Struckman-Johnson, a professor of psychology at the University of South Dakota, who sat on the NPREC, is still optimistic, telling City Limits, We remain hopeful that the AG will be responsive to the concerns that we are raising. Isabella Moschen
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You may never be able to achieve zero complaints in a year, but you can certainly not be one of the leaders of the country. There are steps that can be taken to reduce the risk.
cannot pursue such changes. ey have appealed the ruling. Some of the criticisms of DOCS could still be addressed by the federal standards scheduled for adoption later this year. But Lewis and Freeman lack faith in DOCS willingness to comply, in part because Commissioner Fischer contested some of the standards initially proposed. Indeed, Fischer himself expressed skepticism that correctional systems could comply with all the standards. is requirement of 100 percent compliance is a goal that is likely unachievable, he says in his letter to the DOJ. Moreover, Fischer says he doesnt support the use of independent and quali ed auditors to monitor DOCS compliance with the standards. His letter says accreditation by the American Correctional Association should be su cient. All 67 DOCS prisons have already attained such accreditation. I recommend eliminating or signi cantly modifying the requirement for audits of compliance with the standards, he says, adding that it will create an enormous taxpayer burden by creating a team of consultants.
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AN OUTSIDE CHANCE
e country was built on the belief that each human being has limitless potential and worth. Everybody matters. We believe that even those who have struggled with a dark past can nd brighter days ahead. One way we act on that belief is by helping former prisoners whove paid for their crimeswe help them build new lives as productive members of our society.
President George W. Bush, signing the Second Chance Act, April 9, 2008
About 58,000 people are in New York State prisons right nowmore than the number of people who live in all but nine of the states 618 municipalities. In the next year, about 24,000 will enter those prisons and another 26,000 will leave. If national recidivism rates hold, around half will return to prison. Several organizations in and around New York City o er work to assist inmates behind bars and a er release with the aim of preventing reincarceration. If you want to volunteer with this population, please contact one of the following programs for information.
Correctional Association of New York www.correctionalassociation.org rough monitoring, research, public education and policy recommendations, the Correctional Association strives to make the administration of justice in New York State more fair, e cient and humane. 2090 Adam Clayton Powell Blvd., suite 200 New York, NY 10027 212-254-5700 Women in Prison Project tstolar@correctionalassociation.org Juvenile Justice Project Director gprisco@correctionalassociation.org Prison Visiting Project Director dhirsh@correctionalassociation.org Womens Prison Association www.wpaonline.org WPA is a service and advocacy organization committed to helping women with criminal justice histories realize new possibilities for themselves and their families. 110 Second Ave. New York, NY 10003 646-336-610 dcoscia@wpaonline.org
Greenhope Services for Women www.greenhope.org Located in East Harlem, Greenhope has a commitment to providing quality services to predominantly poor African-American and Latina ex-o enders that has made it a leader in working with women to address the problems that lead to a life of drugs and crime. 435 East 119th St., 7th oor New York, NY 10035 212-996-8633 www.greenhope.org/involved/ volunteer.asp Hour Children www.hourchildren.org Hour Children is a multifaceted family service organization that provides housing permanent and transitionaland a wide array of supportive services that transform the lives of women and their families involved in the criminal-justice system. 36-11A 12th St. Long Island City, NY 11106 718-433-4724 Fortune Society www.fortunesociety.org e Fortune Society, founded in 1967, is a nonpro t social service and advocacy organization whose mission is to support successful re-entry from prison and to promote alternatives to incarceration, thus strengthening the fabric of our communities. 29-76 Northern Blvd. Long Island City, NY 11101 212-691-7554 info@fortunesociety.org www.fortunesociety.org/get-involved Center for Community Alternatives www.communityalternatives.org e Center for Community Alternatives mission is to promote reintegrative justice and a reduced reliance on incarceration through advocacy, services and public policy development in pursuit of civil and human rights.
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The Death and Life of the Neighborhood Store Behind Bars: Sex, Rape And Love In New Yorks Female Prisons Homework
Warden T.M. Osborne and staff at Sing Sing prison, 1915. Photo: Library of Congress.
39 West 19th St. #10 New York, NY 10011-4266 212-691-1911 ccany@communityalternatives.org Fi h Avenue Committee: Developing Justice www.fthave.org e Developing Justice program utilizes an evidence-based approach that leverages FACs job development experience, vocational training, a ordable housing and organizing resources in order to provide a comprehensive re-entry approach to criminal justice issues facing our community. 621 DeGraw St. Brooklyn, NY 11217 718-237-2017 Osborne Association www.osborneny.org
The Osborne Association furthers its founders goal of a criminal justice system that restores to society the largest number of intelligent, forceful, honest citizens by providing a broad range of treatment, education and vocational services to more than 5,500 people each year, including those who are currently or formerly incarcerated, their children and other family members. 175 Remsen St. 8th oor Brooklyn, NY 11201 718-637-6560 OTHER RESOURCES Prison Families of New York www.prisonfamiliesofnewyork.org/ local_li.html Prisoner Reentry Institute John Jay College of Criminal Justice
www.jjay.cuny.edu/centers/prisoner_reentry_institute/2710.htm Report of the Re-entry Policy Council: Charting the Safe and Successful Return of Prisoners to the Community www.reentrypolicy.org/Report/About
8 MILLION PEOPLE
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REVISITING IMAGES FROM OUR ARCHIVES
ey Stayed
When Corlandress Pittman spoke to City Limits reporter Steve Mitra in late 1992, his home in Brooklynthe Willard J. Price Houseswas a scary place. e bullet holes in the doors were only the most dramatic symbol of what was wrong at the four-building complex in Bedford-Stuyvesant, named a er the rst black lawyer in Brooklyn. ere were hundreds of code violations and $33,000 in back property taxes. is was despite the fact that the building was federally subsidizedbought with a federally subsidized mortgage and operated with more than $1 million a year in federal Section 8 rent subsidies. is is not how I want to live, Pittman, who had lived at the complex since the mid-1970s, told Mitra. Yet youre paying for this. Were all paying for this. is building is run on government money from our taxes. In November 2003, City Limits Cassi Feldman went back to the Willard Price Houses. Like many other federally subsidized complexes in disrepair, the Price properties had been foreclosed on by the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development. ey were sold in 2000 to new owners for $1 a er which, Feldman wrote, the previous owners security and maintenance sta went on an angry rampage, setting res and ooding pipes. Tenant Carmella Smith told City Limits that under the new owners, led by Demetrios Moragianis, e outside is all well and good. But we dont live outsidewe live inside. Residents complained about rats and crime. Today the Price Houses are up to date on their taxes, and the complex has a mere nine open housing-code violations and a handful of buildings department complaints. When the building was foreclosed on, it lost its project-based Section 8 statusunder which all apartments were covered by the programand all tenants received a Section 8 voucher that they could use there or elsewhere. at re ected a wider trend: According to the Community Service Society, from 1990 to 2008, the number of project-based Section 8 units in the city fell 12 percent. About half the 190 apartments at the Price complex are held by Section 8 voucher holders these days, according to Moragianis, who is still the owner. We try to keep them because its a
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Photo by F.M. Kearney
good deal for us, he says of the voucher holders. His purchase agreement requires him to keep all apartments a ordable, but Moragianis says charging market rent isnt realistic anyway: e neighborhood doesnt call for that to begin with. With 28 percent poverty in 2008, Bed-Stuy was the eighth poorest community district in New York. Smith is still there too. A resident since 1974, shes vice president of the tenants association at Price and says, while things are better now, Its not all peaches and cream. A gang formed at the complex two years ago, she says. at took care of itself. One guy got killed. One was paralyzed. One went to jail. Two others got beat pretty bad. Management threw several tenants out for alleged gang a liation. Smith says another gang is forming now. e complex has improved its system of surveillance cameras, has an on-site security supervisor and works closely with the 79th police precinct. e number of annual murders in the 79th dropped from 71 in 1990 to 12 last year. Why has Smith stayed? e apartment is beautiful. I looked at nice apartments, and they had no closet space. I have a lot of closets, a big linen closet, and I need that space, she says. I looked at other apartments, and they just didnt touch it. Pittman also opposed moving out, telling Mitra: is is my home. Why would I want to leave? He didnt. He was still a resident when he died in 2005, at age 81. Jarrett Murphy
The Death and Life of the Neighborhood Store Behind Bars: Sex, Rape And Love In New Yorks Female Prisons Look Back

Behind Bars - 2011 May - City Limits Magazine

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IN THIS ISSUE

Vol. 35, No. 2 May/June 2011

City Limits / Vol. 35 / No. 2

CITY LIMITS STAFF

WHATS NEW AND WHATS NEXT AT CITYLIMITS.ORG

How New Yorks poor make it in spite of the rest of us

City Limits / Vol. 35 / No. 2 34 5

Photos by Adi Talwar and Walter TK.

And For Their Next Act

FDNY electrician Granted permission to sell Avon products

NYPD ofcial Allowed to hire NYPD detective to be his o duty driver

Mayor Bloomberg Allowed to write a new version of Bloomberg on Bloomberg

HPD Worker OKd for a second job, at Staples

Continued from page 4

City Limits / Vol. 35 / No. 2 34 5

Exclusiv Vodka 1/4 page ad

MIDDLE EAST SIDE

City Limits / Vol. 35 / No. 2

By Kelly Virella / Photographs by Marc Fader / Illustration by David Senior

Sex, Rape And Love In New Yorks Female Prisons

City Limits / Vol. 35 / No. 2

Sex, Love and Violence

City Limits / Vol. 35 / No. 2

Substantiated Incidents Of Abuse In Female Prisons, 2005-2009

1 Lakeview 5 Taconic 0 Willard 21 Total

City Limits / Vol. 35 / No. 2

Trouble at the top

Facilities with high reported rates of sta sexual abuse

Inmates Reporting Sexual Abuse And What Caused It

Data Source: BJS

City Limits / Vol. 35 / No. 2

e Frequency Of Inmate Sexual Abuse

City Limits / Vol. 35 / No. 2

City Limits / Vol. 35 / No. 2

Laughter vs. the Law

City Limits / Vol. 35 / No. 2

Cell Phone Radiation Controversy v ve Revisited

Tuesday, April 12, 2011 ay, ay A y

An NCI-designated Cancer Center

Understanding cancer. And you.

City Limits / Vol. 35 / No. 2

Unique People Services, Inc.

For more information and to RSVP: mayopenhouse@uniquepeopleservices.org

Age range of New Yorks Female Prisoners

Where they were tried

Number of Living Children

Minimum Sentence (In Years)

City Limits / Vol. 35 / No. 2

The Bayview Affair

Attica Correctional Facility. Photo by TK.

Characteristics of Alleged Abuse Incidents

Coercion No pressure or force Pressure Force/threat of force 38.8% 29.8% 81.9%

City Limits / Vol. 35 / No. 2

Male Prisons Not Immune

385 280 252 163 159

City Limits / Vol. 35 / No. 2

City Limits / Vol. 35 / No. 2

Whos the Victim

Bi-sexual, Prior sexual Homosexual victimization or other

Less than high School

High school graduate

College degree or higher