Why are we so nonchalant? We might be outraged that anti-social thugs are getting away with horrific new crimes every day, under the very noses of law enforcement. Instead, many people — Lockyer among them — have embraced the proposition that the victims are getting only what they deserve.
One of the reasons this phenomenon gets little attention is that it’s largely invisible. Even critics can only make educated guesses about the scope of the problem. But it’s clearly large. A survey of seven men’s prisons in four states, published last year in Prison Journal, found that 21 percent of inmates had been coerced or forced into sexual contact, with 7 percent reporting they had been raped.
When Human Rights Watch did a confidential poll of prison guards in an unnamed southern state, they estimated that one in five inmates were victims of such abuse. Inmates said it was more like one in three.
Suppose we take a conservative estimate and say that one of every 10 inmates suffers this misfortune. With more than 1.8 million men behind bars at any given time, that means at least 180,000 inmates are forcibly violated every year. And that’s not counting what goes on in juvenile facilities. For comparison’s sake, in the entire United States, there were 124,730 reported rapes of females in 1999.
How can sexual abuse possibly be regarded as an appropriate part of serving time? Some of the victims are vicious thugs themselves. But many people in prisons and jails were arrested for nonviolent offenses.
Many of us, if a close relative were found guilty of one of these crimes, would think he should pay for his offense by losing his freedom for a long while. But few of us would agree he deserves to be beaten, stabbed, sodomized and infected with AIDS, which is what prison often means. If a judge were to give a convict a sentence like that, it would be ruled cruel and unusual punishment.
Lockyer might not have the stomach to actually watch one of the encounters that he finds so amusing. One inmate interviewed by Human Rights Watch had complained to guards after being raped. His assailant then beat him with a combination lock — breaking his neck, jaw, collarbone and finger, dislocating his shoulder, and giving him two serious concussions — before raping him again. Afterward, the victim could read the word “Master,” the brand of the lock, on his forehead. Many inmates submit rather than risk being stomped to a pulp.
Atrocities like this happen all the time, mainly because hardly anyone minds. Authorities have no great incentive to take the problem seriously because they generally can’t be held liable for attacks. In overcrowded, understaffed facilities, prevention may be impossible. Prosecutors, meanwhile, see no need to seek punishment.
Treating prison rape like the crime it is would deter some attacks. Prisons could also act swiftly to segregate the perpetrators from the rest of the inmate population. The surest remedy is also the most expensive: Put all prisoners in one-man cells, so they don’t have to sleep with one eye open.
Or maybe we should just require all government officials with responsibility for prisons and jails to spend a couple of nights a year in one of their own facilities. Since you’re already acquainted, Mr. Lockyer, you’ll be rooming with Spike.
The naked truth about Los Angeles
Sunday, August 5, 2001
In Southern California, home of the Playboy mansion, Frederick’s of Hollywood and the video pornography industry, locals are currently taken aback by a work of art that offends their standards of modesty. A depiction of male nudes in the granite floor of the American Airlines terminal at Los Angeles International Airport has caused shock and anger among Angelenos accustomed to the puritanical standards of dress that prevail throughout the region. Susan Narduli may become famous as the woman who put the X in LAX. In reality, the photographs she sand-blasted into the black granite floor of the world’s third-busiest airport would barely qualify as PG. They consist of several life-size images of athletic-looking nude men, with shadows and body positioning deftly used to conceal their vital parts. Narduli says she was merely trying to evoke the nobility of early man’s efforts to fly, not “to do something provocative or controversial.”
Her creation was not too provocative for those avant-garde rebels in the executive suite at American Airlines. “We worked with the artist, and we’re fully supportive of it,” said George Hazy, the company’s managing director. Maybe they’re just trying to distract their customers from the wearisome indignities of modern air travel. But the city airport agency concluded that innocents passing through the building might faint dead away at the brazen display of bare flesh.
“We are a public place, and we have an obligation not to offend people,” one official said. “What I really care about is what my father thinks, or my niece thinks, or the Amish couple from Des Moines thinks.” One complainer wrote, “Aren’t there much more beautiful and acceptable things to be admired, especially by children who have to walk over and past this stuff?”
On behalf of children and Amish couples, the airport hastily covered the pictures with brown paper. But last week, the city’s Cultural Affairs Commission ruled that the piece would remain where it is, sans covering. So outsiders should enter the terminal braced for what they will encounter.
Of course, Iowa farmers may actually grasp that an unclothed human figure can be a legitimate subject of art, as it happens to have been for more than 2,500 years. They might know that nudes appear in many thoroughly Christian places, starting with the Sistine Chapel, and countless paintings of biblical subjects.
Some can be found in various public sites around the world, where they can be gazed on by youngsters and everyone else. In Des Moines, an array of naked people is immortalized in works on exhibit at the Art Center. And would you believe that director Susan Talbott says she frequently sees Amish patrons?
Maybe they know what art historian Kenneth Clark pointed out: “The nude is the most serious of all subjects in art.” His answer to the question of whether there aren’t “more beautiful and acceptable things to be admired” would probably be the same as the ancient Greeks, Michelangelo and Renoir would have given: No, there isn’t.
Why would an artist insist on portraying a naked person when she could portray a modestly attired one? Not usually out of a desire to evoke lust, but because there is something elemental, timeless and classic about the nude form. Artists also realize the undeniable fact that the human body is a subject of great interest to anyone who has one.
For some subjects, nudity is not just appropriate but mandatory. Michelangelo’s “David” — that’s King David, of Israel — would not be the same wrapped in a loincloth. Narduli’s men would lose something if they were wearing togas.
Southern California is not alone in having some residents who doubt that nakedness can ever be aesthetically valuable. After a shop owner in Lake Alfred, Fla., placed a replica of “David” outside his store, the city demanded that he cover its nether regions. Complaints from workers at Kennedy International Airport in New York prompted an artist to paint a loincloth on her depiction of a nude Jesus on the cross.
After the State Bar of Wisconsin decided to adorn its Madison headquarters with a classical sculpture of a woman holding the scales of justice, with her eyes covered but her breasts bare, a handful of employees expressed discomfort. So the artist was brought back in to put some clothes on the hussy. There are people out there upholding the crucial principle that the uncovered human form should evoke shame rather than pleasure.
But in Los Angeles, where Victorian values are under unprecedented assault, sensitive travelers may see things they might not see just anywhere. So they should take the advice that has always been prudent for anyone journeying to California: If you’re easily shocked, close your eyes.
Our unwarranted ban on polygamy
Thursday, August 30, 2001
Let’s say Tom Green is a handsome young NBA star with a lusty nature and some irresponsible habits. He