Prison rape is nothing to laugh about. From an article featured in The Week by Ezra Klein writing for Los Angeles Times.
In our society, there's only one form of sexual assault that people find hilarious, say Ezra Klein - and that's prison rape. A new movie, Let's Go to Prison, is rife with gags about anal penetration, and features a bar of dropped soap in it's marketing material. In a similar vein, when Enron's Ken Lay was jailed, California's attorney general saw fit to remark that he couldn't wait until Lay was banged up in a tiny cell with a "tattooed dude who says, 'Hi, my name is Spike, honey'". It's as if we've come to think of rape as part of the punishment. But the reality of prison rape is not a joke, it's horrific. As prisoners have testified at justice department hearings, it's not uncommon for inmates to be pinned down, beaten and raped by as many as seven men in quick succession. Some prisoners enter into coerced "relationships" with dominant inmates, to avoid these habitual assaults; and those who don't do this live in constant fear. Our tacit approval of this situation is grotesque; it is also misguided. Predictably, research has shown that the humiliation engendered by repeated sexual assaults hardens prisoners and fills them with rage, making them likely to return to society more alienated and violent than when they went in. And "there's nothing funny about that".
So here's my dilemma.
I follow a faith in 'no harm'. I can forgive all things through understanding and a deep love, yet somewhere within me a satisfaction is felt when it seems someone who has physically brutalised another may come to experience it themselves. Is this revenge, or some kind of hope that through this they may come to understand what they have done, feel remorse, compassion for their victim? This though is countered with the thought 'if they could hurt some-one in the first place, their own suffering is unlikely to make them more considerate toward others.' In fact, as pointed out, it is more likely to make them worse.
So I can wave my flag of 'no harm', justified by the knowledge that violence precipitates violence, kid myself of my own piety, but in truth, I do not feel sympathy if a brutal person is brutalised, and much as I try, the thought remains 'if you're prepared to use violence, be prepared to go to prison, and turn the other cheek'.