New Rules Target Sexual Assault Epidemic Among LGBT Inmates
WASHINGTON — The Obama administration's Department of Justice has released new rules to combat the epidemic of sexual assault in the nation’s prison system, a crisis that disproportionately affects LGBT inmates, as the agency specifically addressed Thursday.
The new rules coincide with a presidential memorandum mandating that the Prison Rape Elimination Act (PREA), a law passed by Congress with overwhelming bipartisan support nearly a decade ago, applies to all U.S. correctional and detention facilities (the Justice Department has been finalizing rules pertaining to the law over the past several years).
“Sexual violence, against any victim, is an assault on human dignity and an affront to American values,” President Obama wrote. “To advance the goals of PREA, we must ensure that all agencies that operate confinement facilities adopt high standards to prevent, detect, and respond to sexual abuse.”
While LGBT advocates have hailed the Justice Department rules as a significant step forward in protecting vulnerable gay and transgender inmates, questions remain about why DOJ’s PREA regulations, which it has spent years and millions of dollars developing, do not directly apply to the nation’s immigration detention facilities that hold approximately 32,000 people every day. (For more on this issue, read The Advocate's Eight Months in Solitary report.)
http://www.advocate.com/politics/washington-dc/2012/05/17/new-rules-target-sexual-assault-epidemic-among-lgbt-inmates
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INS is under the jurisdiction of the Department of Homeland Security, not the Department of Justice. 
