Other Agency Responses to the Prison Rape Elimination Act
When PREA became law, Congress also established a national commission to set standards and policies for State and local corrections to identify and report rape incidents in their facilities. NIJ was given the task to conduct research on rape in prisons, jails, and lock-up facilities. Other Federal agencies' specific tasks are:
- Bureau of Justice Assistance: BJA is creating prevention programs to educate and train staff and inmates and boost staffing to eliminate the incidence of rape in State and local correctional facilities.
- Bureau of Justice Statistics: BJS has established a national data collection on the incidence and prevalence of sexual assaults in prisons and jails and is developing and testing inmate self-reported surveys across all levels of institutional corrections. Once this survey is completed, the number of sexual assaults occurring in prisons and jails will be better understood.
- National Institute of Corrections: NIC is providing training and technical assistance to State and local corrections concerning staff-on-inmate sexual misconduct and has established a national information clearinghouse on prison rape.
NIJ, BJS, and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention are conducting surveillance of inmates who report to selected prison and jail infirmaries with symptoms commonly associated with sexual assault and rape. This study will complement other BJS data collections to further correlate the incidence and prevalence of rape in correctional facilities.
