Fun Fact

There is just as much rape in prison as you've heard there is. This may not sound surprising, but when people hear about a bad situation in a government institution, they usually assume that's it's even worse than what they're hearing. This is usually a smart assumption, but not in this case. Prison rape is as bad as you've heard, not worse.

I know a few ex-cons, and they're actually more eager to tell prison rape jokes and otherwise keep prison rape in the public consciousness than other people. Why is this?

Because it distracts people from thinking about how much voluntary gay sex goes on in prison, which I assure you is quite a lot. There are lots of cons who are "only gay in prison" and claim the ability to magically turn their man-lust off when they're on the outside. This is utter nonsense of course, and by the way, the criminal element is no gayer than the general population, so we all need prison rape jokes to keep us from thinking about things we would rather not.

One bad situation in prison that is worse than what you hear is the guard beatings. They are not just isolated incidents. Any prison guard you've may have met has probably beaten a prisoner just for fun. This is not a conspiracy theory, it is not the imaginary beef of difficult criminals and their slick lawyers. Everyone in prison gets beat for no good reason except for the narcs. It is quite simply endemic among the guards. You can go to prison yourself and see that I write the truth. In fact I would even advise you to rob a liquor store just for the educational experience.