Why It's Illegal for Prisoners to Masturbate
Some inmates are getting thrown in solitary for seeking a little stress relief.
www.vice.com
Summary:
Nine months in the hole. No books—aside from the Bible—and few breaks. It's the purgatory 29-year-old Josh Richards* (behind bars on an aggravated assault charge—a shootout when he was 18) says he's serving for masturbating in his prison cell. Richards claims he was recently caught masturbating for the first time in 12 years of incarceration when a female guard peeked her head in during night checks. He got a ticket—no big deal. But a short time later, when another prisoner was caught masturbating and ran off, the blame was pinned on Richards, and he was slapped with nine months in solitary confinement. "I'm two years away from going home—I'm not looking for trouble—and now I'm in the hole and have this on my record."
Public masturbation (and it's pretty much all public when you're locked up) along with any other kind of sexual behavior is banned in US prisons—kind of a surprise if you figured self-satisfaction was one of those few freedoms the incarcerated could keep. According to Justin Long, a spokesperson for the Federal Bureau of Prisons, the rule exists to keep inmates and staff safe, since masturbation can be intimidating, offensive, or serve as a precursor to sexual assault or fights.
But there's a bigger trigger for the clampdown, and that's the rise of female corrections officers. Attracted to the steady pay and benefits that come with a prison gig, more women are now working on the front lines. (The latest research shows women working in correctional facilities jumped 40 percent from 1999 to 2007.) And in recent years, some female staffers have starting suing the prisons for not enforcing the masturbation ban and protecting them from a hostile work environment. "A lot of these inmates have no control—a female staffer will walk by and they'll immediately expose themselves and start masturbating," says Brian Baker*, a California-based prison staffer. To avoid expensive court cases, some supervisors put the kibosh on all self-satisfaction, whether it has an aggressive intent or not.
