Id be more scared of a dangerous person whos free than one whos locked up.!!!
This thred is in suport of understandin why men behave badly in prison.!!!
I think the bigger question is why the authorities did nothing to stop it.
From
your link:
The situation was widely known, but authorities did little to stop the behavior, the plaintiffs claimed.
The women filed the suit against their boss, Public Defender Amy Campanelli, and against Cook County Sheriff Thomas Dart, charging that Campanelli and Dart failed to take adequate measures to fix some of the most egregious examples of a hostile work environment.
“It is difficult to communicate with clients when other inmates are exposing their genitals, erect or flaccid, masturbating, while either staring at us or yelling at us to get us to look,” wrote Crystal Brown, one of the defenders who filed the lawsuit, in a separate complaint lodged at the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission last month. “This conduct is offensive, degrading and unwelcome.”
[...]
“Our attorneys are being forced to work in an environment that is traumatizing and debilitating,” Campanelli wrote. “These attacks have also affected the safety of the workplace. Attorneys are reluctant to talk to clients for fear of being sexually or physically assaulted.”
“It’s just become pervasive. We’ve tried everything,” wrote Campanelli, who became public defender in 2015.
She asked the sheriff for more guards to be present at lockups and other pressurized times. The sheriff did bring in more guards in the spring, but Campanelli said they were pulled in August, according to the Chicago Sun-Times.
The allegations then state that the Sheriff who is in charge of the prison and the court lockup advised that more punitive measures be used against the offenders. These involved, in one case, not allowing one inmate to appear in court after an incident. The lawyers had to refuse, because that would infringe on the inmate's Constitutional rights.
The problem is well know, but apparently more prevalent in that particular prison. It gets worse.
One of the plaintiffs, Samantha Slonim, pressed criminal charges against a detainee who masturbated at her while in the courthouse lockup in 2016. After that, she was placed in the same lockup with him three more times, according to the complaint. At those times, he yelled that he would “beat the shit out of” her and “motherfucking kill” her, according to the complaint.
Another plaintiff, Erika Knierim, asked Dart to say something to the detainees who were repeatedly exposing themselves. According to the suit, Dart told her “that she could file a charge but nothing would happen; at the end of the day it is not going to stop; and she should just do her job.”
Smith, from the sheriff’s office, said there is absolutely no truth to this claim. She also said that the sheriff’s office had not yet received a copy of the complaint.
The female public defenders also allege that inmates have grabbed them by the legs or buttocks. And at least one male inmate reportedly ejaculated on a public defender.
Male attorneys are not subject to the harassment, but they’re in the minority. More than 60 percent of the public defenders in Cook County are women, according to the complaint.
The plaintiffs say that little has been done to stop the behavior, despite much outcry, conference calls, memos and meetings.
To wit, nothing is really being done to actively stop the behaviour. And these women are afraid to speak out about it, out of fear of reprisals.
If an assistant public defender files a complaint, detainees are charged with misdemeanor public indecency. But that’s done little to deter the behavior, since these men are facing serious felony charges, according to the lawsuit.
The women also fear reprisals, according to the suit. One assistant defender who did file a complaint was bad-mouthed by her superiors and throughout the court system for doing so, the lawsuit says.
It is an impossible situation. As public defenders, they are required to act on behalf of their client. When the options presented to them equate to an abrogation of Constitutional rights for their clients, they are forced to decline as frankly, failure to do so could see them disbarred.
Other counties around the country face a similar problem, but as the article notes, it is not on the scale seen in Cook County.
When the authorities in charge of this prison offer such little option to public defenders and staff, and they do nothing else to stop it, I think the bigger question should not be about the inmates so much as those who are charged with running the prisons housing these inmates who allow it to continue without offering any security or viable options for the victims.
It's not just that it is the criminals behaving badly, many of whom suffer from mental health issues and they seem to be violent and in secure lock-up to begin with.. It's that the authorities aren't really doing anything about it and they have only offered options that they know these lawyers will be forced to refuse, leaving these women at continued risk.
And it is not just them.
Female prison guards have also filed a similar lawsuit for the same reason. They were also told that if they did not like it, they should leave, they were told that this sort of behaviour is just a part of the job. They were also discouraged from filing any complaint. They also pointed out that other prisons reduce and prevent it from happening by physically restraining inmates who do it, and placing them in isolation if the behaviour does not stop and their guards are trained to immediately respond. It seems that in Cook County, this is not the case. Female prison guards were told to just sue, by the looks of it, instead of the Sheriff's department actually addressing the issue.