Incarcerated Women's Decisions Regarding the Reporting of Staff Sexual Misconduct: A Multi-Level Investigation That Sets Directions for Social Work

Background. Over 80,000 prisoners each year are sexually victimized during incarceration, but only about 8% report to correctional authorities. Complicating reporting is the fact that half of the perpetrators are correctional staff. Although research in community settings has demonstrated that decisions to report are influenced by a variety of factors (such as victims’ demographics,characteristics of the assault, and whether victims receive support and encouragement from others), there is a dearth of research examining reporting decisions by prisoners due to the restrictive and highly regulated prison environment. Existing studies have relied exclusively on prisoners’ who have reported, or hypothetical decision-making by prisoners. This study used an ecological framework to examine archival data from a class action lawsuit of staff sexual misconduct on behalf of 809 women in one state prison. The cases in this class action lawsuit constitute a sample with a naturally occurring comparison group: incarcerated women who experienced sexual assaults but did not report the abuse to prison authorities and those who experienced assaults and did report the abuse.  The aim of this study was to explore what differentiates the two groups of women by asking these specific research questions: 1) What individual, assault and contextual factors predict reporting sexual victimization within prison? 2) What combination of predictors produces the strongest model for predicting reporting by incarcerated women?

Methods. Relying on a subsample of 179 women who experienced 397 incidents of victimization, we extracted data from legal case files (e.g. victim statement and prison records) and a publicly available state ‘offender’ database. Using an ecological framework, individual-level (e.g., victim demographics), assault level (e.g., injuries sustained), and contextual level factors (e.g., policies/features of the prison setting) were constructed. Bivariate and multivariable mixed effects logistic regression (LR) analyses (HLM7) were used to examine the multiple level predictors of reporting on 397 incidents of staff sexual misconduct.

Results. Variables significant in bivariate analysis were entered into LR, producing a final model with six predictors (age at time of assault, physical injury, multiple incidents, perpetrator with multiple victims, the year the abuse began, and the number of years women have left on their sentence) accounting for 58% of the variance in reporting. Older women (OR 0.97, CI 0.94,0.99) and those who had more than 12 years left to serve (OR 0.56; CI 0.35, 0.89) were less likely to report while assaults resulting in physical injury were four times more likely to be reported than assaults without (OR 4.53; CI 2.33,8.76). Perhaps most telling given the context, reporting was 2.72 times more likely after the class action lawsuit was initiated.

Conclusions and Implications. These findings indicate the importance of external advocacy for incarcerated populations and the need for stronger and more systematic implementation of Prison Rape Elimination Act guidelines. Moreover, remedies that create and enforce sanctions, including termination, for staff violating policy and state law are needed. Social workers within correctional settings need to understand mandatory reporting requirements, as well as the implications for prisoners who have little protection against staff retaliation.