Letters.(Letter to the Editor)

--Re Eli Lehrer's "A Blind Eye, Still Turned," June 2: Prison rape is a confounding issue when viewed from the micro-managing standpoint of the current U.S. Congress, which is ever ready to pour more liberal ideology and taxpayer money into bogus cures for the baser instincts of human nature.

What Sens. Kennedy and Sessions fail to recognize is that threatening prison administrators with withdrawal of federal funding does nothing to hold the perpetrators of rape accountable for their own actions. Spending $60 million to fund rape-prevention programs is a political boondoggle for both sides of the aisle. The real issue is how to stop predators from being predators -- solve that, and crime could be stopped worldwide. As a 17-year correctional officer, I can assure you that convicted felons are pure predators who will prey on anyone they perceive to be weaker.

I resent Mr. Lehrer's notion that staff "tolerate" and "encourage" prison rape. Furthermore, the gratuitous use of AIDS statistics does not address the issues of drug use and simple tattooing as major sources of HIV and hepatitis "C" infection.

As with cops on the street, correctional staff usually arrive on the scene after the crime has been committed; for that matter, many crimes are not reported at all. Where will federal lawmakers and their convoluted bureaucracies gain reliable statistics upon which to grant money or levy fines? Guesswork? Extrapolation?

Bottom line: State and federal governments can remove the predator from our streets, but they cannot remove the predatory nature from his soul. There isn't a civil law in the world that can accomplish that feat, ...