During the trial, the corrections officers insisted that they had no idea that Johnson was being bought and sold by dozens of inmates for sex, despite his pleas. In fact, they testified that he was downright cheerful, flirting with a CO and "wearing tight pants." I'm sure this behavior wasn't a coping mechanism or anything. After all, you can't thread a moving needle!

This year, Texas was awarded the dubious honor of having the country's most dangerous and abusive prisons, according to a report issued by the U.S. Bureau of Justice Statistics. Of the 1,533 incidents of inmate-on-inmate sexual abuse reported to corrections officials last year, 609--that's almost 40 percent--of those reports came from Texas. (See here and here for additional info.) Kudos to you, Texas!

When you live here in NYC, on the island of limousine liberals, it's very easy to forget that just about everywhere else in the country, no one--with the possible exception of the formerly incarcerated--gives a shit about inmates' rights. But here it is: astoundingly, one-third of Americans believe that the American prison system is doing its job. From this data, one could extrapolate that one-third of Americans believe that gang rape and forced prostitution are ineluctably part of the incarceration process, even for nonviolent offenders, like Roderick Johnson.

And, more famously, Donny the Punk, who I learned about through MaximumRocknRoll. And it was through him that I learned about Stop Prisoner Rape. Their mission statement:

A national 501(c)(3) human rights organization, Stop Prisoner Rape (SPR) seeks to end sexual violence against men, women, and youth in all forms of detention. SPR has three goals for its work: to push for policies that ensure institutional accountability, to change society’s attitudes toward prisoner rape, and to promote access to resources for survivors of sexual assault behind bars.

I respect their work more than I can possibly articulate, because they advocate exclusively for a marginal, tragically underrepresented population. SPR is one of the few nonprofits I consistently donate to, and I hope you consider donating as well.

I also hope that you're angry at the outcome of the Roderick Johnson case, and I hope that you're outraged that he is one of the few prison rape victims who's gotten this far in the court system. But there's a one in three chance that you aren't.

(I know this sanctimony is a far cry from the funny-ha-ha persona to which I'm generally disposed, but until "drop the soap" jokes on primetime TV are no longer acceptable, I refuse to stop seething about it.)