PREA: Prison Rape Elimination Act

This summer I am teaching tech ed at the North Dakota Youth Correctional Center (NDYCC). It is a facility that typically houses between 75-100 youth offenders from North Dakota. It is the facility with highest security rating in the state for youth. Most kids that commit felonies or cannot behave in other facilities end up here. As a result our population consists of kids who have been convicted of assault, sex crimes, arson and other high risk/dangerous behaviors. This means that the way I manage my classroom at the NDYCC is significantly different than at my public school. I have received several hours of training on how to interact with the students and how to operate my classroom but today I received training on something I was not even aware existed, the Prison Rape Elimination Act.

Since September 4, 2003, PREA has been protecting youth and adult people in correctional facilities. More recently it has become required in North Dakota for all staff members who come into contact with incarcerated people to receive training in this area. After receiving this training I have altered some of my classroom management to better protect my students and myself.

In this training sexual misconduct as pertaining to PREA is specifically laid out and methods on how to deal with and prevent incidents are discussed. Things that directly affect my classroom include:

-Never allow two students (males or females) to be alone in a room without direct supervision. This means no stepping into my office to check an email or grab a book. Incidents can happen in an instant.

-Never allow myself to be alone with a female student (I am male). Some people have a history of falsely accusing staff of inappropriate behaviors. The hopes of accusations such as this are to receive special treatment afterwards and possibly be transferred to a less structured facility. Never allowing this situation to happen will also help eliminate the possibility of it actually happening.

-Never allow two students to be within touching distance of one another where part of their bodies (such as legs under a desk) cannot be seen. Inappropriate touching under tables has occurred.

I understand that these rules would not apply to many of the people reading this blog but there is a community of teachers out there that have to deal with these issues on a full time basis. I plan on using some of this information in my classroom come fall. I do not plan on being this strict in my public classroom but being able to identify potentially dangerous situations can be an advantage. Not to mention the piece of mind that I will have knowing that I am protecting my self as well as students.

It should not be a surprise that congress passed this act with a unanimous vote in 2003. But what are interesting are the comments made by experts in the field of corrections. If you have time you should scan through a few of these comments. One that I find to be particularly powerful is this:

“Teachers cannot be overlooked because our youth are required to spend so much required time in school. They need to be included in thinking about anything you want to do. Sometimes educators come into our setting clueless and can be easily manipulated.”

I don’t want to be “that guy”.