That's the claim in this n+1 piece, which is well worth a read.

In January, prodded in part by outrage over a series of articles in the New York Review of Books, the Justice Department finally released an estimate of the prevalence of sexual abuse in penitentiaries. The reliance on filed complaints appeared to understate the problem. For 2008, for example, the government had previously tallied 935 confirmed instances of sexual abuse. After asking around, and performing some calculations, the Justice Department came up with a new number: 216,000. That's 216,000 victims, not instances. These victims are often assaulted multiple times over the course of the year. The Justice Department now seems to be saying that prison rape accounted for the majority of all rapes committed in the US in 2008, likely making the United States the first country in the history of the world to count more rapes for men than for women.

Those numbers are not quite correct, but they are nonetheless horrifying. First of all, "sexual assault" is not always the same as "rape" and includes a variety of behaviour that wouldn't meet the legal standard for rape. So it's not clear that there are actually more rapes of men than women, or more rapes of prisoners than non-prisoners. Also, the number I found through the Department of Justice (DOJ) was 88,500 victims of sexual victimisation. This New York Review of Books article says that the DOJ revised those findings, getting to 216,000. Continued...

I would like to clear up one Men’s Rights Myth: that the number of men raped inside prison is greater than the number of women raped outside of prison. This is simply false; the numbers aren’t even close: again, while the estimate of the total number of people (male and female) currently being held in prison who have been raped there in the past year is 88,500, estimates of the total number of those raped per year (outside of prison) range from about 200,000 to more than a million (the real number is probably closer to the latter)

Female inmates in prison (4.7%) or jail (3.1%) were more than twice as likely as male inmates in prison (1.9%) or jail (1.3%) to report experiencing inmate-on-inmate sexual victimization.

Rachel Bronwyn wrote:Not true:

I would like to clear up one Men’s Rights Myth: that the number of men raped inside prison is greater than the number of women raped outside of prison. This is simply false; the numbers aren’t even close: again, while the estimate of the total number of people (male and female) currently being held in prison who have been raped there in the past year is 88,500, estimates of the total number of those raped per year (outside of prison) range from about 200,000 to more than a million (the real number is probably closer to the latter)

Prison rape is an enormous problem. Diminishing the issue of rape outside of prison, however, isn't the solution. This shouldn't be a game of one-upmanship.

Rachel Bronwyn wrote:From the same link:

Female inmates in prison (4.7%) or jail (3.1%) were more than twice as likely as male inmates in prison (1.9%) or jail (1.3%) to report experiencing inmate-on-inmate sexual victimization.

Prison and jail rape hurts everyone.

CdesignProponentsist wrote:

Rachel Bronwyn wrote:From the same link:

Female inmates in prison (4.7%) or jail (3.1%) were more than twice as likely as male inmates in prison (1.9%) or jail (1.3%) to report experiencing inmate-on-inmate sexual victimization.

Prison and jail rape hurts everyone.

Numbers are really hard to verify for this type of thing. It is possible that men are far less likely to report a rape. So we really don't know. But I am sure it is a huge problem.

CdesignProponentsist wrote:

Rachel Bronwyn wrote:From the same link:

Female inmates in prison (4.7%) or jail (3.1%) were more than twice as likely as male inmates in prison (1.9%) or jail (1.3%) to report experiencing inmate-on-inmate sexual victimization.

Prison and jail rape hurts everyone.

Numbers are really hard to verify for this type of thing. It is possible that men are far less likely to report a rape. So we really don't know. But I am sure it is a huge problem.

Rachel Bronwyn wrote:It really doesn't matter. That's why bringing the issue forward as "Men raped in jail is a bigger deal than women raped outside" is so unhelpful. BOTH ARE WRONG.

purplerat wrote:

Rachel Bronwyn wrote:It really doesn't matter. That's why bringing the issue forward as "Men raped in jail is a bigger deal than women raped outside" is so unhelpful. BOTH ARE WRONG.

Where did you get that from?

Prison rape is a big deal. A lot bigger than most Americans are willing to consider or accept. It's also a different type of problem from rape outside prison meaning there isn't really one solution that addresses both. There's probably little overlap between what can be done about each problem. The only point in discussing the two together is in gaining perspective.

I'm With Stupid wrote:I suspect there's a degree of "they get what they deserve" amongst the public, and it won't be in the interests of any politician to take this epidemic seriously.

I'm With Stupid wrote:I suspect there's a degree of "they get what they deserve" amongst the public, and it won't be in the interests of any politician to take this epidemic seriously.

johnbrandt wrote:When the first lot of AIDS awareness campaigning was underway back in the early eighties, there were calls for condoms to be handed out in prisons. The very conservative Premier of my state at the time refused to allow it, saying "That sort of thing doesn't go on in jail"...

The public pretty well knew it damn well did though.
I remember working with a guy on a farm who had spent about six months in jail for some minor offence, and the rest of us used to rib him about "don't drop the soap" and stuff like that. One day one younger guy wouldn't let it go, and just kept picking at him, and the guy silenced us with one comment I still remember to this day, and we didn't joke anymore about what went on in jail.
He said: "Look you young fucker...one day if you end up in jail, and hope you don't, but if you do, some dark night or in the showers or somewhere one or more big angry guys will corner you and they'll give you a choice: go easy and you won't get hurt, or go the hard way and end up in the prison hospital, and I went the easy way, and I bet you fucking would too".

Must be a whole different world in there...but I believe that's the point.

SirDenisNaylandSmith wrote:
Don't get me wrong, I do partially subscribe to the stance that real child diddlers and rapists DO get what is coming to them.