The recent rape of a male college student in the Alachua County Jail, while sad and regrettable, is a fact of life in jails and prisons across the nation. There are an estimated 240,000 such rapes every year and that number appears to be increasing. A casual hunt on any Internet search engine for “prison rape” will produce more material than can be absorbed in a single sitting. Google alone lists about 488,000 sites.

The one type of prison rape that is not listed or discussed anywhere: prison staffs are also rape victims. A single rape in some 20 years of service may result in a case of hepatitis or AIDS that can be transmitted to the partner. The overall rate of confirmed AIDS among the nation's prison population was four times the rate in the U.S. general population in the year 2000. This represents the best guess in an environment where extensive testing is in no one’s best interest.

Prison rape is symptomatic of a far greater problem and has consequences that are problems in themselves. For instance, about 20 percent of inmates are less than 25 years old. Thus they will reach their majority and/or mature in jails and prisons with other inmates as their role models.

If these inmates are released while they are still sexually active, we can expect each of them to parent one to four children. That means about a million children with a parent who matured in jails or prisons where rape was a common practice or experience. If each of the present 2 million jail and prison inmates parents one to four children, and the recidivism rate remains at about 67 percent, then we can expect the state to become involved in raising and/or financially supporting an additional 1 to 8 million children over the next generation.

Trends indicate that the nature of the prison population is changing. Over half of the increase in our prison population since 1995 is due to an increase in violent offenses such as murder, negligent and non-negligent manslaughter, rape, sexual assault, robbery, assault, extortion, intimidation, criminal endangerment, and others.

This is a direct indication of the core problem of which prison rape is a symptom. The problem is the institutionalization of our society. We warehouse our problems and expect them to be resolved on their own. For the purposes of this paper, warehousing and dehumanizing are interrelated terms and processes.

Kids are considered a problem and are warehoused/dehumanized in orphanages, foster homes, nurseries, camps, special programs, day care centers, Head Start and pre-school. The face of the warehouse is often altered with baby-sitters, caretakers, au pairs, grannies, nannies, nursemaids and the likes.

Later, kids are passed to public schools where they are again warehoused for the most part in buildings with metal detectors on the doors and armed deputies in the corridors. Five percent of Alachua County’s sheriff’s deputies are dedicated to maintaining law and order in Alachua County schools.

It is hard to call these warehouses schools when the graduation rate hovers around 60% after 12 years of education. Last year, 51% of recent high school graduates who entered Santa Fe Community College were required to take remedial English and/or math. The University of Florida’s Athletic Association recognized this as a fact of life and budgeted $1.93 million this year for tutors, advisers, computer labs and oversight for 460 student-athletes.

There are 10,000 reasons for warehousing our children that are both persuasive and moving. However, out of the 10,000 reasons come three truths. These are our kids. We are responsible for our kids. We are failing our kids.

We have truly become a nation where the institutional village is raising the child. This is a trend initiated over a generation ago with the advent and maturation of the Great Society and Camelot.

A lot of very learned papers and books have been and will be written attesting to the merits of the Great Society, Camelot, the Village and the likes. However, the most powerful indictment is a simple statement: the prison population has gone from 139 inmates per 100,000 population in 1980 to 476 inmates per 100,000 population in 2002. That translates into over 2,100,000 men, women, and children in the jails and prisons of our nation today.

At this moment 1 in 34 Americans is under the direct supervision of government in prison or on parole/probation. One in 20 Americans can expect to become a convicted felon and be imprisoned in their lifetime.

We can choose to deal with the actual problem or we can ignore it and address the symptoms. It appears the political, legal, religious, educational, cultural and intellectual leaders of Florida in general and of Alachua County in particular are dedicated to addressing the symptoms rather than the problem.

Alachua County is in the process of doubling its capacity to conduct criminal court proceedings while education and child-related issues are left to atrophy on the sidelines. There is no doubt that a new county jail will be required, financed and built with the same alacrity as the new courthouse.

Rape, be it in the jails, prisons, streets or home, is destined to become a rite of passage for our youth if we wait for our anointed leaders to act.