Center for Community Engagement

Sexual assault in prisons is a shameful phenomenon in the United States. According to the Department of Justice, over 200,000 individuals are sexually abused in confinement annually. In response to this human rights crisis, Congress passed the Prison Rape Elimination Act (PREA) in 2003 with the intention of creating measures to protect inmates from this abuse. Since then, PREA standards for different types of confinement facilities were passed, auditing of facilities began, and changes regarding the auditing process were made as various shortcomingsbecame apparent. In prior research, I explored if PREA audit-related reforms were successful in resulting in higher quality prison audits than had previously been conducted (specifically, in Alabama). Disappointingly, I found that they were not and that Alabama’s audits were alarmingly inadequate. This led me to my present question, which seeks to uncover whetherincreased state punitiveness is correlated with decreased PREA audit robustness. Based on the auditor application and certification process, I hypothesize that a relationship between state punitiveness and audit robustness does not exist. To answer this question, I examine three audits from each of three different states that vary significantly in their supposed punitiveness. I explore five distinct factors that I believe are indicative of audit robustness and examine how each of the nine audits performs in relation to these factors. I find that, based on these measures, increasedstate punitiveness does not appear to be associated with decreased audit robustness.