Prisoners get drunk on swine flu hand gel

Alcohol hand gel meant to combat swine flu has been banned from a prison after inmates started eating it and became embroiled in a drunken brawl.

Inmates have been drinking the liquid soap placed on their wing after realising it contained alcohol.

The detergent was meant to beat off the threat of swine flu in the Verne Prison on Portland, Dorset.

However, instead of rubbing it into their hands, inmates at the category C prison have been placing their mouths over the dispensers and consuming it.

Prison officers had expressed their concerns at suddenly having to deal with a number of drunken convicts before the brawl erupted.

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Where is all the Centre's Purell going? Tom

Rape in Prison

Published: June 23, 2009

Rape accompanied by savage violence has long been part of prison life. Congress finally confronted this horrendous problem by passing the Prison Rape Elimination Act of 2003. In addition to bringing attention to a long overlooked problem, the new law created a commission that has put forth a broad set of rape-prevention standards that deserve to become mandatory in correctional agencies throughout the country.

The commission report, released earlier this week, should come as alarming news. It suggests, for example, that rapes carried out by corrections officers and inmates are widespread, but the actual rates of rape vary widely from place to place.

Drawing on a federal survey of more than 63,000 state and federal inmates, the commission said that about 4.5 percent reported being sexually abused at least once during the previous 12 months. Extrapolating from this data, the commissioners estimate that there were at least 60,000 rapes of prisoners nationally during this period.

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