The following is an excerpt from the full Human Rights Watch report on Male Prison Rape.

[[ To see the full report click here.]]

Prior studies have found that the crimes for which victims of rape are incarcerated are generally less serious and less violent than those for which the perpetrators of rape are incarcerated. Although findings by Human Rights Watch on this issue are tentative--especially because many victims of sexual abuse have no idea what crime their rapists were convicted of--they tend to support this argument. A few of the victims who provided information to us were convicted of serious, violent crimes such as murder, but a striking proportion of them were nonviolent felons, many of them convicted of crimes such as burglary, drug offenses, passing bad checks, car theft, etc. Of the minority of victims who were aware of the criminal history of the perpetrator of abuse, many reported serious and violent crimes. This general pattern is consistent, of course, with the idea that perpetrators of rape tend to be more violent people than victims, both inside and outside of prison.

With one exception, no specific crime seems to be associated with either perpetrators or victims. The exception is sexual abuse of a minor. Although the vast majority of victims of prison rape are incarcerated for other crimes, it is apparent that inmates convicted of sex crimes against minors, if their crimes become known to other inmates, are much more apt to be targeted for sexual abuse in prison. A number of inmates convicted of such offenses reported being sexually assaulted by other prisoners; all stated that the nature of their crime inspired the assault or increased its likelihood. "It took about seven months before my crime became known," one such prisoner explained. "Then everyone came down on me. They beat me with mop handles and broom sticks. They shoved a mop handle up my ass and left me like that."

This man was transferred to another institution but other inmates who knew of his crime were transferred with him. Some three weeks after the transfer, his cellmate woke him up at 2:30 a.m. and raped him, bashing him in the back of the head with a combination lock. "The guy told me, 'I will teach you what a baby raper is.'"

Explaining the targeting of prisoners convicted of sexually abusing minors, another inmate said:

Inmates confined for sexual offenses, especially those against juvenile victims, are at the bottom of the pecking order and consequentially most often victimized. Because of their crime, the general population justifies using their weakness by labling rape "just punishment" for their crime. Sexual offenders are the number one target group for prisoner rape.