Urban sex in prisons, Jali told
March 18, 2004 Edition -1
The banning of consensual sex among inmates is the reason rape and unprotected sex - and the spread of Aids - are so rife in prisons, the Jali Commission of Inquiry heard yesterday.
"The prohibition, if not unlawful, is certainly unwise," Lesbian and
Gay Equality Project director Evert Knoesen said.
"It is bad social policy. All it serves to achieve is to encourage unsafe sexual practice and put people at risk of things from which they would otherwise not have been," he told the commission.
Knoesen said the departmental prohibition discouraged rape victims from reporting such crimes as they feared being punished. It also dissuaded consensual sexual partners from asking for condoms.
"The department should get over its embarrassment over people having sex in prison," he said.
It was extremely unrealistic, Knoesen added, to expect convicted criminals to suddenly adopt a "monastic lifestyle".
"You cannot expect of people not to have sex for the next 40 years.
"Most people having sex in prison are heterosexual - but their fellow prisoners are the only other people around to have sex with."
Commission evidence leader Graham Barlow said prisoners were charged "on a regular basis" for engaging in consensual sex. Punishments included solitary confinement.
Knoesen also told the commission that transgender prisoners - particularly effeminate gay men - were at a high risk of "torture" and ill-treatment in prison.
"The incidence of abuse against transgender people is so wide-spread as to constitute a virtual assuredness," he said. This amounted to extra-judicial punishment, Knoesen added.
They were at a higher risk of violence from fellow inmates as well as prison officials - including being taken as the "wives" of prisoners.
In some cases, they were held in solitary confinement under punitive conditions because authorities did not know whether to place them in male or female prisons.
In a written submission, the project proposed the decriminalisation of consensual sex in prison, the training of prison staff on sexual orientation issues, and the development of a specific departmental policy on "minority sexual orientations".
In the morning, the commission heard that plastic and steel containers for dispensing condoms in prisons were used by inmates to manufacture lethal weapons.
When cardboard boxes were used instead, the containers and their contents were often destroyed by prisoners, according to Correctional Services Health Director Maria Mabena. She was cross-examining Aids Law Project attorney Yusuf Saloojee, who was critical of condom distribution in prisons.
Saloojee proposed on Tuesday that condoms be made available to inmates in a more discreet manner, away from the prying eyes of warders and fellow-inmates.
Mabena pointed out, however, the unique challenges posed by the prison environment and invited suggestions to address such practical problems.
The hearing continues. - Sapa
