Prison rape isn't a punch line

'From the studio that brought you 'Brokeback Mountain,' " intones the preview for the light comedy "Let's Go To Prison," "comes a penetrating look at the American penal system." In case that was too subtle for you, the DVD box features a dropped bar of soap, just waiting for some poor inmate to bend over to pick it up -- and suffer a hilarious sexual assault in the process.

Or maybe you're not feeling up for a movie. It's more of a board-game afternoon. How about picking up "Don't Drop the Soap," a board game created by the son of Gov. Kathleen Sebelius of Kansas. The game "is simply intended for entertainment," said Nicole Corcoran, the governor's spokeswoman. What, after all, could be more entertaining then trying to "avoid being cornered by the Aryans in the shower room" (one of the goals of the game, according to its promotional material)?

Here in Washington, however, the weather has been beautiful lately, so if you were bored last week, you might have wanted to do something out of the house. One option would have been going down to the Department of Justice, where, on the third floor, officials were holding hearings on prison rape, interrogating administrators from some of the worst prisons in the nation about the abuses that go on within their walls.

These hearings are held annually. This year's transcripts aren't online yet, but in 2006 you could have heard a man named Clinton explain, "I had no choice but to enter into a relationship with another inmate in my dorm in order to keep the rest of them off of me. In exchange for his protection from other inmates, I had to be with him sexually any time he demanded it. It was so humiliating, and I often cried silently at night in my bed ... but dealing with one is better than having 10 or more men demanding sex from you at any given time."

Clinton's testimony wasn't very funny, and it wasn't for entertainment. Nor was the 2001 report by Human Rights Watch, "No Escape," which included a letter from an inmate confessing that "I have no more feelings physically. I have been raped by up to five black men and two white men at a time. I've had knifes at my head and throat. I had fought and been beat so hard that I didn't ever think I'd see straight again."

Prison rape occupies a fairly odd space in our culture. It is, all at once, a cherished source of humor, a tacitly accepted form of punishment and a broadly understood human rights abuse. We pass legislation called the Prison Rape Elimination Act at the same time that we produce films meant to explore the funny side of inmate sexual brutality.