Prison rape is the criminal justice issue no one is talking about

In America, we have laws. If you break those laws, sometimes you’re sentenced to prison — and sometimes you’re sentenced to being raped.

At least in practice, that’s the ugly reality of our criminal justice system. It’s out of sight, so it’s out of mind. But according to the Bureau of Justice Statistics, every year roughly 200,000 United States prisoners are victims of sexual assault while in custody. Despite all the promising bipartisan work that’s recently been done to reform our broken criminal justice system, few people are actually paying attention to the ever-present issue of prison rape, even though it’s a crisis of unspeakable moral urgency.