By Elise Ferguson, Helen De La Cerda, Alise O’Connell, and Paul Guerin,
The 2003 Prison Rape Elimination Act (PREA) requires that federal, state, and local correctional facilities maintain and enforce a zero-tolerance policy toward sexual abuse and sexual harassment for both inmate-on-inmate and staff-on-inmate misconduct. On October 1, 2020 the Metropolitan Detention Center (MDC) was through a competitive process awarded funds by the Bureau of Justice Assistance to address, enforce, and monitor PREA and its standards. The Bureau of Justice Assistance grant was awarded in an effort to assist counties and/or cities that are seeking to review and improve upon their implementation of PREA standards. For the MDC, this included establishing new PREA investigator positions as permanent staff, supporting facility upgrades and increasing surveillance, facility supplies such as shower curtains, and print materials for inmate education. These items support maintaining full compliance with PREA standards, improving PREA education for inmates that emphasizes reporting methods, streamlining contractor and volunteer training, improving data collection and management, and identifying specific populations especially vulnerable to sexual abuse. Our study and this report review PREA standards and procedures in practice at the MDC. This included a review of the PREA screening tool used at the MDC, both for structure of the tool and the effectiveness of the tool in identifying potential victims or perpetrators of sexual violence. We also analyzed disciplinary incidents that relate to PREA and reviewed the process of classification as it relates to PREA, and PREA incidents. In addition, we separately surveyed MDC staff and inmates and held a focus group with MDC classification staff. This report contains a set of recommendations that includes changes to the PREA screening tool and to PREA policies and procedures.
Albuquerque: University of New Mexico, Center for Applied Research Analysis, 2022. 50p.
