US Government: Guards may be responsible for half of prison sex assaults

Power is situational: in one context someone might have power over the other, while in another a minute later the roles might switch. And yeah, people do form a sort of truce or understanding about how power is to be applied and when.

But when it comes down to it, guards have the power to use legitimated state violence on pretty much any offender. Simply because that might be politically costly (with respect to prisoner-guard relations) doesn't change the fact that the power exists and is real.

> Simply because he adopted very successful survival tactics to leverage the sex they were exacting from him doesn't change the fact he had no real ability to consent.

This idea is not compatible with White's own opinion of his situation, "I make every final call in this jail". Have we come to the point where third parties decide for you whether you consented to something?

> This kind of sexual relationship is not something to glorify or excuse,

Did you miss the part where I said it should be criminal, and called for it to be punished more severely than it already is? (The current level is basically a slap on the wrist.)

> and the implicit "go for it dude!" shows a great lack of empathy for his situation.

Undisputed master of an extensive domain, making upwards of $16K / month tax free, with an extensive harem, and immune to prosecution (he's already in jail!). I'm pretty sure he doesn't need much empathy.

The guards weren't extorting sex from the prisoners. The prisoners were seducing guards in order to get perks. (Similarly, if a girl assumes I'm rich, sleeps with me in the hope that I'll buy her some nice things, and I later do, that doesn't mean I was raped. And if I offer a girl something to sleep with me, and she accepts -- that doesn't mean she was raped. What was going on in that prison was analogous to the first girl, and your erroneous notion is analogous to the second.) The agency distinction is important, and we don't just have to assume the prisoners were the agents because they're the men... we have their direct word that that's what they were doing! We have (and I mentioned this) gang literature on how to effectively seduce guards! We have Tavon White's own word that he controls everything that happens in the jail! There's no conceivable way for him to be coerced into sex, or, really, anything, in the middle of his own thoroughly subverted jail.

A few things. My girlfriend is a prison nurse, and a good friend's brother is a CO at another prison.

1. The population of guards is pretty bad. The job pays approximately $shit, (Good overtime possibilities, though) and the staff's quality suffers as a result. Frequently, you end up with criminals guarding the criminals. Said guards are often compromised and either become indifferent to criminal behavior or actively aid it.

2. Female guards perform poorly compared to male guards. This is due to a variety of things, but the biggest reason is that inmates are much more willing to test female guards. "Testing" involves intimidation, trying to bribe them, seducing them, harassing them, etc. A male guard commands a certain amount of respect simply by existing that a female guard does not get. My friend's brother summarizes it by saying, "A male guard can point to the rules and say, "Sorry, just doing my job," and an inmate will understand that it's the Man keeping him down and not the man. A female guard, because she's perceived as weaker, doesn't get that ability. Prisoners think they can get away with it because the woman isn't going to enforce the rules." From this, he asserts that the ideal male guard is an unthinking robot. "Sorry, you have violated Rule 21. I have to write you up. No exceptions." Meanwhile, an ideal female guard is a "crazy, man-hating, psychotic bitch" who takes sadistic pleasure in making prisoners' lives hell. She won't get any respect otherwise.

Due to most women being decent human beings, this leads to even higher rates of women being compromised compared to men. Whether it's from being intimidated or seduced, women end up giving favors, fucking inmates, or turning a blind eye to drug activity, rape, and violence. Men do it too, (see the "criminals guarding criminals" section) but at lower rates.

3. Due to a variety of factors, including too many prisoners, not enough for them to do, and a pervasive atmosphere of the animals running the zoo, drama is the primary occupation of most of the inmates. After all, they have nothing better to do. So they make excitement. They fuck with guards, fuck with each other, gamble, (which leads to fucking with each other because debts are created) rape each other, try to seduce the female guards, harass the medical staff, do drugs, make bullshit accusations against the prison just because they can, and so on. To counter this, prison staff frequently collaborate with the gang bosses. They tell the gang boss, "Hey, Jerry's being a pain. Can you take care of him for us?" Jerry gets his ass kicked, and the problem goes away. In return, the prison turns a blind eye to the things that the gang boss is doing. This, of course, leads to prison-sanctioned violence and rape.

Fixing this requires a hard look at what we use our prison system for. I think that we use it for far too much. We shouldn't be sentencing minor drug offenders and petty criminals to prison; it overloads the system and turns the place into a teeming madhouse where the prison staff is focused on survival, not actually rehabilitating the inmates.

In combination with this, we need to get better quality guards. Currently, corrections officers are frequently the failures who couldn't become cops. We need to change that by offering competitive pay. Doing this requires the prison system to shrink and become a smaller organization. Prisons should be focused facilities rather than being a Walmart.

Finally, I'd also suggest segregating prisons by race, but all the hippie Integration Uber Alles people would whine about it.

Being well-off (supposedly, at least) and having power in certain domains does not mean you can't be raped. The only relevant attribute is consent. If you were making an argument that the prisoner actually had power over the guards through external contacts and implicit threats to their families, that'd be one thing. But you continually mistake masculine bravado and some level of material comfort for ability to consent. It's a category error.

Your analogies both fall flat, because there's the key point that the women and men in that situation have the ability to consent. The proper analogy is a kid who's been abducted by a pedophile. No matter how happy the kid is, no matter how kindly the pedophile treats the kid, no matter how many gifts the pedophile gives the kid, no matter how much the kid jockeys with other kids for the pedophile's affection--it's rape. Because consent.

> The only relevant attribute is consent.

The guards here are not asking the prisoners for sex. The prisoners are asking the guards for sex. If I ask you to do something, and you do, I have consented to that thing.

If I show a woman a gun, and tell her "sleep with me or I kill you", and she sleeps with me -- that's rape.

If I'm her boss, and tell her "sleep with me or you're fired", and she does -- that's not rape.

Of those two, the prison guard / prisoner relationship can be reasonably analogized to the gun scenario. But:

If I have a gun, and a woman sees it, swoons, and asks to sleep with me -- that's not rape.

That's what's actually going on. It's not rape unless I actually use (or threaten to use) my ability to coerce.

By focusing so much on the idea that a prison guard could hypothetically have power over inmates, you're worrying about the appearance of impropriety. But while that is present in this case, there is no actual impropriety occurring (toward the prisoners).

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Appearance_of_impropriety

The guard who extorts sex from a prisoner they've taken a fancy to is abusing the prisoner. That's not happening here. The guard who caves to an inmate's seduction and does them favors out of love is not abusing the prisoner. They're abusing the trust society placed in them when they were made a prison guard.