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Stop Prisoner Rape Information Outreach
Voting Summary (Elevator Pitch):
Stop Prisoner Rape is the only U.S. organization exclusively dedicated to combating sexual violence in detention. SPR will create an interactive on-line repository that incorporates first-hand survivor accounts, media coverage, and policy analysis.
Supporting organization:
Stop Prisoner Rape
URL:
www.spr.org
City:
Los Angeles
State/Region:
California
Country:
U.S.
Project Vision Statement & Potential Social Impact:
Stop Prisoner Rape (SPR) is the only organization in the U.S. exclusively dedicated to combating sexual violence in all forms detention. As such, it has amassed extensive information about the issue, including first hand survivor accounts, policy and academic analysis, and media coverage. Through this project, SPR will create an interactive on-line repository where activists, journalists, prisoner rape survivors, and others can receive up-to-date, comprehensive information.
Currently, SPR’s website includes links to relevant newspaper articles. Using tagging and aggregating RSS feeds, SPR will organize its media coverage so that it can be searched geographically, by issue, and by population.
SPR will also update its one-of-a-kind survivor database so that portions of it can be made publicly available on-line. Every day, SPR receives letters from prisoner rape survivors recounting the abuse they have endured and often asking to help share their story. The vast majority of these letters come from detainees who lack access to computers or email. SPR compiles the invaluable information contained in these letters but, to date, does not have a way to disseminate this data while protecting the anonymity of survivors who still fear for their safety. In the next few months, SPR will be revamping its database to include detailed information that can be posted on-line without disclosing the identity of an individual survivor. Researchers, reporters, and other members of the community will then be able to search this database for quantitative data about sexual violence reported to SPR and qualitative information about particular accounts.
Finally, SPR posts testimonials prepared by prisoner rape survivors on its website. Currently, these accounts are limited to written statements. To give survivors a more dynamic space to share their stories, SPR would like to incorporate audio and video statements by survivors, in their own words.
Sustainability (financial) model:
The costs of this project are largely the one-time expenses of start-up. Key staff will obtain training in innovative computer technologies and temporary staff will be hired to help input information from the nearly 3,000 letters that SPR has received from survivors into the database. Once these initial costs are met, the upkeep of the project will be incorporated into current staff responsibilities to update SPR’s website, monitor media coverage of sexual violence in detention, and respond to survivor letters.
Potential obstacles:
Disseminating information about incidents of sexual assault often raises confidentiality concerns, which are heightened for people in prison. Incarcerated survivors continue to fear for their safety because they are often subject to retaliation and stigma. SPR’s Mental Health Director, a social worker with more than twenty years of experience as a rape crisis counselor, will create a confidentiality policy for the project to ensure that information posted on-line does not threaten anyone’s safety. This policy will also include a process whereby survivors who write to SPR consent to information about them being publicly shared.
Resource Needs:
As discussed above (see Sustainability Model), the primary resources needed for this project are staffing start-up costs associated with training and data entry. To create videotaped testimonies for the website, SPR will also need a digital videocamera.
Key Milestones:
SPR already has an extensive website to share information about sexual violence in detention. In the first month of this effort, staff will receive training using web 2.0 technologies, develop an RSS feed, and create the revamped database to include a private version (to be used in-house with identifying information) and a redacted version (without survivors’ identifying information) to be posted on-line. In month two, SPR will revise the media coverage section of its website to include tagging and aggregation of RSS feeds, and incorporate its extensive collection of survivor letters into the database. In month three, SPR will complete the data entry, post the redacted database on the website, and begin creating videotaped testimonies with survivors who work closely with the organization.
Project Summary:
Prisoner rape is the most widely neglected human rights abuse in the United States today. According to the best available research, as many as one in five male inmates and one in four female inmates are subject to sexual abuse while behind bars. Victims are left beaten and bloodied, impregnated against their will, contract HIV and other sexually transmitted diseases, and suffer long-term psychological harm.
There is a common misperception that prisoners “get what they deserve,” even when they are raped. However, it is the most vulnerable, least violent inmates who are at greatest risk for sexual abuse. Typical male victims are young, nonviolent, first-time offenders who are small, weak, shy, or gay. Among women, young and mentally ill inmates and first-time offenders are particularly vulnerable. Although there are many different prisoner rape scenarios, a majority of male victims are assaulted by fellow inmates, often with the complicity or acquiescence of prison staff, while most female victims are raped by male corrections officials.
Detention facilities throughout the country are notoriously secretive institutions, particularly when it comes to mistreatment in their facilities, and inmates are rarely able to gain public attention. Through this project, Stop Prisoner Rape (SPR) will enable researchers, reporters, and members of the general public to obtain substantial up-to-date information about this human rights crisis.
SPR is a national human rights organization dedicated to ending sexual violence in all forms of detention. SPR has three core goals for its work: to advocate for policies that ensure institutional accountability for prisoner rape; to transform ill-informed public attitudes about sexual violence in detention; and to promote access to resources for those who have survived this form of abuse.
SPR already maintains a website that includes information about its programs, links to research and media coverage, and first-hand written testimonies by survivors. Through this project, SPR will incorporate the innovations of the social web to create a dynamic, interactive site that allows for up-to-date state-specific research that incorporates first-hand survivor accounts, media coverage, and policy analysis.
Comments
Sounds like a great initiative
especially in bringing voice to the survivors who have no other way to get their stories out. You don't explicitly make the connection, but I think this could have a huge impact on advocacy around this issue. So the potential for social change is, in my view, enormous.
--ivan (quixotic1.com/Genocide Intervention Network)
Have you thought of using Martus for this?
Martus.org
Martus is a secure information management tool that allows you to create a searchable and encrypted database and back this data up remotely to your choice of publicly available servers. The Martus software is used by organizations around the world to protect sensitive information and shield the identity of victims or witnesses who provide testimony on human rights abuses. Martus is the Greek word for witness. Learn more about Martus software.
The Martus software can be downloaded free from this website. An open source software tool, Martus is used by human rights workers, attorneys, journalists and others who need to secure their information from eavesdropping, theft or equipment failure. Some organizations which use Martus to protect their data also use Analyzer, a software program developed by the Human Rights Data Analysis Group to organize human rights information for statistical analysis. Both Martus and Analyzer are supported by Benetech, a non-profit technology organization based in Palo Alto, California.