In 2003, President G.W. Bush signed into law the Prison Rape Elimination Act of 2003 (P.L. 108-79). The goal of the Prison Rape Elimination Act (PREA) is to eradicate prisoner rape in all types of correctional facilities in this country. In August 2012, the final PREA rule became effective requiring confinement facilities to comply in order to prevent, detect, and respond to all possible PREA occurrences. The PREA regulations require that agencies collect uniform data on PREA incidents, and those that are not in compliance will face financial penalties.
The goal of the IJIS Institute’s PREA initiative is the creation of a consensus-based National PREA Data Standard that will enable the effective and efficient collection and sharing of PREA-related information by using the components of the Global Standards Package (GSP). The Standard will identify critical PREA data elements that can exponentially improve overall information sharing, data analysis, and data quality. The IJIS Institute developed the National PREA Data Standard to address conformance with the PREA-related processes, data collection, reporting, sharing policies, and privacy with guidance from the PREA Data Standard Working Group (PWG), which includes PREA experts from key nationwide organizations and practitioner advisors from six state departments of correction.
The IJIS Institute is currently working on the implementation of the PREA Data Standard at three pilot sites and to measure the impact of the PREA data standard.
