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      Kris Marker
      Keymaster

      After it was signed into law in 2003, the Prison Rape Elimination Act (PREA), 42 U.S.C. ch. 147 § 15601 et seq., remained unused for a decade while standards were developed and implemented to curtail rape and sexual assaults at prisons and jails nationwide. At that time, the Human Rights Defense Center (HRDC), publisher of PLN and Criminal Legal News, submitted comments to the U.S. Department of Justice (DOJ) criticizing the proposed standards and calling them flawed and insufficient.

      That criticism proved prescient when a sexual abuse scandal erupted at the Federal Correctional Institution in Dublin, California, in early 2022. As PLN reported then, there were so many federal Bureau of Prisons (BOP) staffers accused of sexually assaulting prisoners—including coerced and non-consensual intercourse, oral sex, fondling and voyeurism—that the lockup earned a new nickname: the “rape club.” [See: PLN, May 2022, p.28.]

      For 103 prisoners who sued BOP for the abuse that they suffered, the nightmare finally came to a resolution on December 18, 2024, when the federal court for the Northern District of California approved a nearly $116 million settlement—the largest payout in BOP history.

      Ten Staffers Charged, Seven Convicted So Far

      Although allegations of sexual misconduct by BOP staffers …

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