Men’s Vulnerability to Prisoner-on-Prisoner Sexual Violence

The one-state case study described in this article assesses imprisoned men’s vulnerability to sexual assault by an inmate before policies were implemented to reduce sexual violence. The cases studied were substantiated in an internal hearing procedure. On average, victims were more recently incarcerated, younger, smaller, and less aggressive than their perpetrators, but many victim-perpetrator pairs deviated from this profile. The strongest predictor of victimization was a history of childhood sexual victimization. Other predictors were race, youth, build, education, and experience with incarceration.