"In here if you don’t be the man you’re supposed to be you’ll be the woman you don’t want to be. " —Prison inmate In his 1980 study of victimization in prison, Lee Bowker commented that like heterosexual rape on the streets, prison homosexual rape has effects that go beyond its immediate victims. We must realize, he continued that homosexual rape impacts all prisoners and fundamentally alters the social climate of correctional institutions (Bowker,1980:1). Most researchers of prison sexual violence would agree with Bowker’s contention. Yet, in practice, most research on prison sexual violence has not addressed its impact on the social climate of the institution, but has instead focused on trying to ascertain its incidence on the one hand and, on the other, the actual victim and victimizer. However, studies which have addressed the incidence of sexual violence in the prison have been inconsistent and inconclusive. Early studies of the prison (Clemmer, 1940; Sykes, 1958; Davis 1968) suggested a high rate of the incidence of homosexual rape in men’s prisons. But more recent studies (Bartollas, Miller, and Dinitz, 1976; Bowker, 1980: Lockwood, 1980; Bondeson, 1989) have suggested that the actual incidence of
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Smith et al. (1989) studied this question.