In recent years US prisons have failed to meet legally required minimum standards of care and protection of incarcerated people. Explanations for the failure to protect prisoners in the United States focus on the effects of the Prison Litigation Reform Act (PLRA) and lack of adequate external oversight. However, very little scholarship empirically examines how different systems of accountability for prisoners’ rights work (or do not work) together. In this article, we introduce an accountability framework that helps us examine the prisoners’ rights “accountability environment” in the United States. We then compare two post-PLRA case studies of failure to protect incarcerated women from sexual assault in two different states. We find that the prisoners’ rights accountability environment is a patchwork of legal, bureaucratic, professional, and political systems. The patchwork accountability environment consists of a web of hierarchical and interdependent relationships that constrain or enable accountability. We argue that ultimately the effectiveness of prisoners’ rights accountability environments depends on whether protecting prisoners’ rights aligns with the priorities of dominant political officials. Our argument has implications for efforts to improve prison conditions and incarcerated people’s well-being.

中文翻译：

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拼凑的保护：美国囚犯权利问责的政治

近年来，美国监狱未能达到法律规定的对被监禁者的最低护理和保护标准。美国未能保护囚犯的解释主要集中在《监狱诉讼改革法案》(PLRA) 的影响和缺乏足够的外部监督上。然而，很少有学术研究实证检验不同的囚犯权利问责制度如何协同工作（或不协同工作）。在本文中，我们介绍了一个问责框架，帮助我们审视美国囚犯权利的“问责环境”。然后，我们比较了两个不同州未能保护被监禁妇女免受性侵犯的 PLRA 后案例研究。我们发现，囚犯权利问责环境是法律、官僚、专业和政治体系的拼凑而成。拼凑的问责环境由一个层次结构和相互依赖的关系网络组成，这些关系限制或支持问责制。我们认为，囚犯权利问责环境的有效性最终取决于保护囚犯权利是否符合占主导地位的政治官员的优先事项。我们的论点对改善监狱条件和被监禁者的福祉的努力具有影响。