Moving beyond prison rape: Assessing sexual victimization among youth in custody

This integrated literature review discusses the need to treat youth in custody distinctly from adult carceral populations when examining sexual victimization. Although the Prison Rape Elimination Act (PREA) mandates correctional facilities address sexual assault in both populations, the lack of available information on risk factors among youth may lead to practitioners and policy-makers becoming reliant on the adult literature when making decisions on preventative and reactive care for juveniles. Such extrapolation may lead to an inadequate or even inappropriate response for youth in custody. A research agenda using an ecological framework to determine youth-specific individual and structural level risk factors is proposed. Findings demonstrate differences in sexual victimization risk factors for adults in jails and prisons compared to youth in custody. This review serves as a foundation for moving research on this topic to juvenile custody settings while also acknowledging the challenges associated with conducting such research among youth in custody.