Juvenile Prison Rape a 'Crisis'

The New York Review of Books takes a long, hard look at the "crisis of juvenile prison rape" online and in upcoming print issues, finding that many young offenders across the country are reporting sexual assault from both prison staff and fellow inmates on a regular basis. Investigations by the Department of Justice, journalists, and organizations such as the Bureau of Justice Statistics paint a shocking picture of systematic abuse and unwillingness on the part of authorities to take on the problems. The numbers presented—some 12 percent of kids in a BJS survey said they'd been sexually assaulted—may be even higher than realized.