Prison Rape Elimination Act of 2003

But what I can tell you is that before the MDOC updated their policy, prison officials stated in an email to advocates that cameras would remain on passive mode even during strip searches because that footage wasn't being saved after 18 hours.

Also, they invoked the Prison Rape Elimination Act, and that's basically a federal law designed to prevent sexual abuse in prisons.

They claim that the passive body camera recording protected inmates and the staff by preserving the evidence in case there were any misconduct investigations.

I think you mentioned that Natalie Forest was formerly serving, uh, this sentence.

There was a bill enacted in 2000-

There's something called the Prison Rape Elimination Act, aimed at preventing and responding to sexual abuse in prison, but what happened with Rodriguez showed it wasn't really working.

Anomaly.

However, Rodriguez's violence is not an anomaly.

They need to get rid of Arroyo forever

foreverIsidro Arroyo, that sergeant who Yance said told them to stop filing PREA reports, he was transferred for a while, but now he's back.

You feel me? That ain't even cool.

That's not cool because my wife is there.

Katrina Cameron is now legally blind from getting pepper sprayed in her eyes.

She says she's not set foot in the chow hall since August 2nd.

If their goal was to scare women off from filing PREA, do you think they succeeded?

Um, to scare them into silence? I, I would say perhaps majority of them, but there is a group that isn't going to be silenced, you know? And then hopefully the more of us that start to speak, the more will follow.

in the worst way.

Yeah, I spoke to advocates that said that those audits, which are called like PREA audits, which stands for like Prison Rape Elimination Act, it's a federal law, excuse me, sorry.

But that's really just like a rubber stamp.

And that's kind of the floor and not the ceiling.

After a correctional officer named Gregory Rodriguez got arrested for exploiting dozens of women in custody, many more people incarcerated at the prison began to file complaints about sexual abuse.

These are called PREA complaints, short for the Prison Rape Elimination Act.

It was the summer of 2024, and Antoinette Yancey, who's incarcerated at CCWF, says a sergeant named Isidro Arroyo came up to her.

And he

I was in solitary confinement for 18 months.

And there's a system called the Prison Rape Elimination Act, PREA.

It's a bipartisan system that came out of racism, though, because what was taking place is you, in the crack wars, you had all of these young black men that were being incarcerated, given these Buck Rogers numbers, you know, 80, 50, 100, 200.

Mm-hmm.