According to a press conference on Thursday, Feb. 15, Pennsylvania Attorney General Josh Shapiro stated that six Lackawanna County prison guards and one former officer were charged with sexually assaulting female inmates. This comes after years of reported allegations from inmates in which correctional officers would trade things like extra phone time, cigarettes and commissary items for sex.
The Attorney General assembled a statewide investigative grand jury which found that the Lackawanna County Prison contained a coercive and abusive culture, with the assaults not being committed by lone wolves but with support from other officers who would warn the perpetrators when someone was coming.
So commonplace and coercive were these instances that the guards would have the women perform a specific act in a certain area of the prison, and the women all had a slang phrase for it, reported Attorney General Shapiro at the Dunmore Police Barracks.
“As Attorney General, I will not allow sexual abuse to take place at any correctional institution in our Commonwealth. To the women who have endured this horrendous abuse for many years, we hear you. Today, we’re putting a stop to it,” assured Shapiro.
According to the Journal for Correctional Healthcare, women make up 7 percent of the United States’ prison population; 33 percent of the staff-to-inmate assault victims are women. Moreover, the Marshall Project, a nonprofit journalism organization dedicated to the U.S. criminal justice system, found that between the years 2010-2015, 120 New York State inmates reported sexual assault from correctional officers, but only 30 resulted in the dismissal of perpetrators.
“Their punishment is to serve time, not get raped,” commented senior criminal justice major Luke Haldeman.
Due to the power dynamic, most inmates refrain from reporting incidents to the supervisors of their facility.
“In the few instances that these allegations were reported to personnel at the Lackawanna County Prison, there is no evidence that any action was taken to help the female inmates who were being sexually assaulted by correctional officers,” Attorney General Shapiro said. “This is outrageous conduct by those placed in positions of power.”
Legal scholars from the Virginia Law Review claim officer-to-inmate assault is considered cruel and unusual punishment under the eighth amendment, finding that the coercive nature of the sexual act inside prisons should still be considered cruel and unusual, due to the occurrence being in a correctional facility.
Junior marketing major Matt Weaver agrees. He stated that, considering the circumstances, “I think officer-to-inmate sexual assaults should be considered cruel and unusual punishment under the Eighth Amendment.”
“It is an unnecessary use of force and unethical,” added Brighid Kaeser, a senior criminal justice major.
Sophomore history major Eric Schwass isn’t so sure the Constitution should be used to back criminals up. This issue must be eradicated, explained Schwass, but “I’m not so sure you can use the Bill of Rights as a defense in this situation. As a convicted felon, you lose certain rights, and I’m not sure if this one even applies after conviction. With that being said I would have to believe there is something in either the judicial system or prison system or the contracts of the officers that strictly prohibit this and make it illegal,” Schwass explained.
This case is reminiscent of 1992 case Hudson v. McMillian in which the court determined that an assault inflicted on an inmate by a prison guard was unconstitutional. According to the Jailhouse Lawyer’s Handbook, “The Court held that a guard’s use of force violates the Eighth Amendment when it is not applied ‘in a good faith effort to maintain or restore discipline’ but instead is used to ‘maliciously and sadistically cause harm.’”
The seven officers taken into custody include: John Shnipes, Jeffrey Staff, George Efthimiou, Mark Johnson, George McHale, Paul Voglino and James Walsh.
As determined by the grand jury, they are now facing a plethora of charges, most including institutional sexual assault, involuntary deviate sexual intercourse, aggravated indecent assault and harassment, according to the Attorney General’s office.
Amanda Mills is a fourth-year student majoring in political science. ✉ AM836938@wcupa.edu.