L votes no on prison rape

We've made prison rape into a joke. We've turned a traumatizing experience that countless inmates have to endure into a quick laugh. We've turned emotional pain into shame. And we have done nothing to combat it.

The truth is that prison rape happens. Probably often. And it's not just sexual, it's about power and pain and violence. And the consequences are far-reaching: it creates cycles of violence when men who have been traumatized must assert themselves through violence, it creates health problems through the spread of HIV/AIDS and STDs in prison populations, it destroys the rehabilitative penal system we need to strive for.

I don't know what the solution is, but it can't be to smirk and look the other way. As a society, we need to acknowledge that this is neither inevitable nor acceptable. We have to take this seriously.