With it's surreal moments – the phantom chicken, the starving-out of prisoners who cuss the food, the inmates using their urine as a means of protest – it’s easy to think that Orange Is The New Black is more fiction than fact. But when it comes down to the grosser-than-gross sex-pest prison guard, George ‘Pornstache’ Mendez, it seems as if he really is cut from the same cloth as many guards in real prisons. And his sort don't only exist in America, as a report today shows that female prisoners in the UK are being coerced into sex with guards in return for favours like cigarettes and booze.
The study, which was released today, found that jailed women are ‘vulnerable to abuse’, with many being pressured into having sex with staff in exchange for favours like preferential treatment, cigarettes or alcohol. Even worse, there is also a form of sexual assault known as ‘de-crotching’, where one inmate is told to forcibly remove drugs concealed in another inmate’s vagina. The findings were published by the Commission on Sex in Prison, which is headed up by leading academics, health experts and former prison governors and is the first independent study of sex behind bars in England and Wales.
Chris Sheffield, who is the chair of the commission, said that ‘women in prison are particularly vulnerable and more likely than men to have a history of being a victim of violence or sexual abuse. It is important that policies recognise these differences and are developed in order to protect the vulnerable. It is equally important that staff in women’s prisons receive specific training on working with women.’ The report also noted that women have very different sexual health needs than men and are at greater risk of entering prison with a sexually transmitted infection like HIV.
In slightly less harrowing news, the report also found that women often ‘overtly’ build romantic relationships with each other whilst inside for support and comfort.
A Prison Service spokeswoman said that reported occurrences of sexual assault in prison are still ‘rare’, adding that ‘sexual relations between prisoners are not common place. We do not condone sex in prisons or believe that prisoners in a relationship should share a cell.’
Not that that ever stopped anyone in Orange Is The New Black…
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Picture: Corbis
This article originally appeared on The Debrief.