In September 2003 President George W. Bush signed into law the Prison Rape Elimination Act. This act mandates that the Bureau of Justice Statistics begin a comprehensive program to monitor the prevalence of rape in prisons and develop a set of guidelines to reduce such crimes. While the problem is acknowledged to be a major one, few studies have been conducted on the subject of rape in prison, and those have been typically small in scale and limited in scope. Victims of same-sex rape are often reluctant to discuss the event with authorities. Inmates attacked by guards often fear retribution if they speak of the matter. The Prison Rape Elimination Act was instituted to get accurate numbers from which effective measures can be determined. Under the act's provisions, those prisons with both the highest and lowest rates of sexual assault will be studied to determine what measures have been the least and most effective in preventing such crimes.
According to Data Collections for the Prison Rape Elimination Act of 2003 (Bureau of Justice Statistics, June 2004), the primary objectives of the bureau's data collection are to determine:
- The number of reported incidents of inmate-on-inmate sexual violence and staff-on-inmate sexual misconduct, by gender
- How prison systems and facilities record these incidents (e.g., in disciplinary, grievance, investigative, or medical files)
- What information is recorded (e.g., allegations, confirmed incidents, only incidents involving serious bodily harm, or threats)
- Where the incidents occur (e.g., in the victim's cell/room, in a common area, or outside of the facility)
- What additional data are available (for purposes of administrative collections in future years)
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