PREA Annual Report

PREA Annual Report

Prison Rape Elimination Act (PREA)

The Prison Rape Elimination Act (PREA) was passed in 2003 with unanimous support from both parties in Congress. The purpose of the act was to “provide for the analysis of the incidence and effects of prison rape in Federal, State and local institutions and to provide information, resources, recommendations and funding to protect individuals from prison rape. (Prison Rape Elimination Act, 2003.) In addition to creating a mandate for significant research from the Bureau of Justice Statistics and through the National Institute of Justice, funding through the Bureau of Justice Assistance and the National Institute of Corrections supported major efforts in many state correctional, juvenile detention, community corrections and jail systems.

The act also created the National Prison Rape Elimination Commission and charged it with developing draft standards for the elimination of prison rape. Those standards were published in June 2009, and were turned over to the Department of Justice for review and passage as a final rule. That final rule became effective August 20, 2012.

In 2010, the Bureau of Justice Assistance funded the National PREA Resource Center to continue to provide federally funded training and technical assistance to states and localities, as well as to serve as a single-stop resource for leading research and tools for all those in the field working to come into compliance with the federal standards.

The Hubbard County Jail has a zero tolerance policy toward all forms of sexual abuse and sexual harassment in our facility, under the Prison Rape Elimination Act (PREA) 2003. We will enforce all federal, state and local laws pertaining to inmate sexual misconduct. All reports will be fully investigated, which includes both allegations of sexual abuse and sexual harassment, by the Hubbard County Jail and the Hubbard County Sheriff’s Office investigative Division. 

The Hubbard County Jail’s continued commitment to maintain an organizational culture of zero-tolerance toward all forms of sexual abuse and harassment through annual staff training, contractor and volunteer training, notification to all professional visitors and inmate education is supported by comparing the final statistics for the previous two years. The supporting graphs show from 2017 to 2018 the number of allegations of staff on Inmate sexual abuse has gone from 1 unfounded allegation of sexual abuse and 3 unfounded allegations of sexual harassment to zero allegations of sexual abuse or sexual harassment. The number of allegations of inmate on inmate sexual abuse has gone from 1 unfounded allegation of sexual abuse and 1 unfounded allegation of sexual harassment to zero allegations of sexual abuse and zero allegations of sexual harassment. For three consecutive years there have been zero substantiated allegations of staff on inmate sexual abuse and zero substantiated allegations of inmate on inmate sexual abuse. The Hubbard County Jail redacts all personal identifiers when reporting annual statistics.