Rape is no joke, as numerous public awareness campaigns and common sense remind us. Prison rape, however, has long been a cultural punchline. That needs to end.
This week, Jared Fogle’s attorneys announced that the former Subway pitchman will plead guilty to paying for sex with two children, among other crimes. Fogle will spend at least five years in prison. Once there, he will likely be branded a “chomo,” prison slang for child molester, and targeted for violence, including possible rape.
Fogle’s admission of guilt prompted several jokey rape-related headlines, including this one from the New York Post: “Enjoy a foot-long in jail.”
This is odious, but typical. Prison rape is a reliable punchline in movies and TV shows, in music and throughout popular culture, even in kids’ entertainment. Politicians and prosecutors make jokes about it. One recent movie, “Get Hard,” relies on the premise that prison rape is inherently funny.
The prospect of getting raped in prison is even used in official propaganda campaigns to scare people from engaging in criminal activity. A recent anti-meth ad campaign featured a photo of a jail cell and a caption that read: “No one thinks they’ll spend a romantic evening here. Meth will change that.”
The message, apparently, is that the government has the resources to put you in jail for using drugs, but won’t do anything to protect you from being violated in its custody. By making and funding such unfunny jokes, the state is portraying itself as an evil actor, not the distributor of justice that it should be.
Prison rape is no joke, and it should not be treated as such. A 2013 Justice Department report estimates that perhaps 200,000 people are raped in America’s prisons every year. To his credit, President Obama has chided those who make light of prison rape. “We should not be tolerating rape in prison, and we shouldn’t be making jokes about it in our popular culture,” Obama said in a speech before the NAACP national conference in July. “That is no joke. These things are unacceptable.”
Yet to many people, the jokes are acceptable, because prison rape’s victims are people who have been convicted of crimes and thus have surrendered their right to just and humane treatment.
But prisoners — yes, even those who have committed sexual crimes against children — are still human beings, and they deserve to be treated with dignity, even if they have denied it to others. Their punishment involves separation from society and loss of the most valuable resource we have as human beings — years of life. Extrajudicial punishments, which are themselves serious crimes, should not be tolerated, let alone made into a joke.
Daniel Allott is deputy commentary editor for the Washington Examiner
