June 2009

He further notes that, "Congress may also want to reconsider laws that make it very difficult for prisoners to sue prison authorities absent concrete evidence of physical harm. It's quite possible that many legitimate prison-rape claims get thrown out of court under current laws. And prison rape needs to stop."

Deborah M. Golden, an attorney with the D.C. Prisons' Project of the Washington Lawyers' Committee for Civil Rights and Urban Affairs, reported in an ACS Issue Brief, that the Prison Litigation Reform Act (PLRA) "may prevent rape victims from bringing lawsuits against their attackers." In her 2006 Issue Brief, The Prison Litigation Reform Act - A Proposal For Closing the Loophole for Rapists, Golden wrote that, "In order to receive monetary compensation, the PLRA requires that any plaintiff demonstrate that she or he has a physical injury. In the current legal system, this torture must be analyzed within the framework created by the PLRA that ‘no federal civil action may be brought by a prisoner confined in a jail, prison, or other correctional facility, for mental or emotional injury suffered while in custody without a prior showing of physical injury.'"