Never Did Find The Soap
On a much more serious note, an American expat in Moscow rants in The Exile about the sexual torture prevalent in U.S. prisons. It’s a hateful rant in many ways, anti-American and arguably racist, but the horrifying phenomenon of prison rape is not often described so starkly:
Recently a British paper printed the story of a man in Illinois who is suing the state prison system. At the whim of a sadistic functionary in the prison system, this man, who is white, was placed in a cellblock which was all black and controlled by a very tight, military-style prison gang. He was, of course, gangraped, taught to suck cock on demand, used as a urinal and toilet, and otherwise made to entertain his fellow inmates.
There is more, some of it even uglier. (It would be more convincing if the author had backed up his anecdotes with links.)
Someday we may have to face up to the fact that prison, the way we do it, violates this constitutional prohibition, found in the Eighth Amendment: “nor [shall] cruel and unusual punishments [be] inflicted.”
