ABSTRACT
In the 1860s, women reformers in the USA raised public awareness about the increasing number of women in prison and the terrible conditions of confinement they faced, in particular the sexual abuse of women prisoners by male guards. These reformers pointed out that men were luring women and girls into prostitution. Women prison reformers complained that prisons degraded rather than reformed women by subjecting them to sexual abuse. Sexual abuse was prominent feature of the enslavement of African women in the United States. Slavery and sexual abuse of women in prison share many congruencies and certainly obvious differences. The sexual abuse of women in custody is akin to the sexual abuse of female slaves. At base, both slave-owners and correction officers used sexual domination and coercion of women to reinforce notions of domination and authority over the powerless. While litigation, public education, and legislation, have yielded concrete gains in addressing abuse of women in custody, much remains to be done.
