Is Sex the Bad Thing?

This morning's headlines on CNN include an article on sexual misconduct in juvenile delinquency centers in the United States. Detainees are being forced to have sex, apparently they engage in some sort of networking behavior where they move between cells. Surely, coerced sexual activity is nothing new in United States prisons. Even so, it becomes an issue every time something new is exposed—especially with children. Maybe that should be the case, but maybe not.

What articles like this do is dismiss all other instances in prisons around the country. We have a Hollywood perception of prisons where everyone gets raped by the huge black men in prisons and everybody is in a gang. The truth is that these things do occur but they are not widespread. Yes, they make it onto Lockup on MSNBC but that's why they make it onto Lockup on MSNBC.

There is a vast number of literature covering prisons, including 'New Jack' by Ted Conover and the amazingly eye-opening book 'Prison Nation.' Don't forget there is the breakthrough book by Mumia Abu-Jamal 'Live From Death Row.' All of these books expose what goes on behind the walls of America's largest prisons and the most significant issues are not prisoners raping prisoners or joining gangs. In fact, the problems have little to do with the prisoners at all.

If you ask me, the most disgusting occurrence in United States prisons is the practice of employing doctors with revoked medical licenses. These are doctors who used to practice medicine in the outside world who made major mistakes. Yet still they are allowed to become doctors in prisons around the country. In turn, this is reducing prisoners to subhuman status by stating that these doctors are not good enough to practice on everyday people, but on prisoners, it's okay.

Prison medicine also has other problems such as the recycling of dirty needles. That should be expected when you have doctors who have already lost their medical licenses. This is of notable importance as it is in part responsible for the widespread AIDS epidemic in prisons, not high rape levels.

Every year there are issues with the beating of prisoners and it is often by prison guards, not fellow inmates. There are instances where children with asthma are forced to literally run to death or with white guards smearing the letters KKK in the blood of a black inmate they beat. CNN conveniently forgot about this.... So did Lockup.

Because what's a television program or a news article that tells us the system has failed? Why tell us that most of these people are relatively decent young men just trying to make it in a day to day struggle that the majority of us more fortunate could never begin to comprehend? No, we want the corporate media to tell us that prisons keep us safe, that these guys belong in prison and that we as a country never do anything wrong. Unless it's ripping on George Bush, we'd rather not hear it.

And so it goes, the public remains misinformed about a very serious issue. Most of us do not know about the Innocence Project or the lack of efficacy in the death penalty, three strikes laws or mandatory minimum sentences. Most of us don't know about the prison-industrial complex or that well over half of those incarcerated in the United States are there for nonviolent drug offenses. And we would rather it goes on that way because, as the saying goes, ignorance is bliss.