According to a new study led by Joanne Belknap of the University of Colorado Boulder and Cathy McDaniels Wilson of Adena Regional Medical Center in Ohio, incarcerated women are significantly more likely to report having been raped in their lifetime compared to the general population.
In 2010, Dr. McDaniels Wilson surveyed a random sample of 716 incarcerated women in Ohio’s four state prisons regarding their past experiences with sexual violence. Dr. Belknap then compared the participants’ responses to federal data regarding sexual violence among the general population in Ohio for the same time period.
Upon analyzing their data, the authors found 70 percent of incarcerated women in Ohio reported being raped at some point in their lifetime. Among all Ohio women, 17 percent of women said the same, meaning incarcerated women are over four times as likely to have been raped than women in the general population.
Furthermore, incarcerated women were found to be over 10 times as likely as women who were not incarcerated to have been raped as a child, with one-third reporting being raped before age 11 and half being raped before age 18. Among all women, incarcerated or not, those who were raped before age 11 were 15 percent less likely to graduate from high school.
As their study only covered the state of Ohio, Dr. Belknap and Dr. McDaniels Wilson urge other researchers to track sexual violence among incarcerated women in other U.S. states. They also call for greater support for all survivors of sexual violence, regardless of their background.