This is an archived article that was published on sltrib.com in 2015, and information in the article may be outdated. It is provided only for personal research purposes and may not be reprinted.
Utah domestic-violence shelters, rape-crisis centers and victims advocates are losing out on more than $200,000 in federal funds this year because the state has opted not to comply with federal mandates aimed at reducing prison rape.
Last year, the state passed through $1.5 million in funds under the federal Violence Against Women Act. This year, that amount has been cut by $218,486, a result of the state refusing to comply with certain provisions of another federal law — the Prison Rape Elimination Act, PREA.
Ron Gordon, executive director of the Utah Commission on Criminal and Juvenile Justice, said the state agrees with the goal of eliminating prison rape, but after looking at the requirements in the federal bill, decided some of them would not help Utah achieve the goal.
"Frankly, it is the federal government trying to pass state law," he said. "They can't pass state law so they say either you comply with it or you lose federal grant money. And historically the state says we're not gong to pass bad law to hold on to grant money."
Holly Mullen, director of the Utah Rape Recovery Center, said the grant reduction cuts into services that her organization can provide to victims of sexual assault.
"I think it's unfortunate, and I guess we can blame the feds for this," she said. "I see it as punishment and it's unfortunate that it's coming [at the expense of] some of the most vulnerable people in our population."
Dianne Fuller, director of the Salt Lake Sexual Nurse Examiners, said losing the percentage of the Violence Against Women funds means her group, which trains nurses around the state to conduct sexual-assault examinations, won't be able to reach as many nurses with its program.
"It's absurd," Fuller said. "Our state has made a number of really bad decisions and this was one of them."
Gordon said state corrections and juvenile justice service officials went through the bill and identified areas where changes were made to strengthen sexual-assault prevention but there were areas deemed not to be beneficial.
"We said we're not going to change this because we're not going to sacrifice what we think is good policy to hold onto federal money," he said.
Gov. Gary Herbert notified the U.S. Department of Justice in a letter last year that the state would not adopt certain requirements of PREA — specifically a mandate that prison workers entering secured facilities with opposite gender inmates announce their presence, and auditing requirements that the state deemed onerous.
Herbert wrote that announcing when an officer enters "can create dangerous situations for the officers, and can create an opportunity for inmates perpetrating sexual assault to stop and hide their offense."
"We would like to work with the federal government in every way to reduce prison rape, but we will not sacrifice results to satisfy an arbitrary one-size-fits-all process," the governor wrote.
The state did comply with several of the requirements of the federal law. For example, the Department of Corrections has created a sexual-assault response team to respond to and investigate alleged attacks within the prison system.
And in the juvenile justice system, it developed training materials for staff and established a reporting hotline.
Five years ago, when Congress passed a bill creating a federal sex offender registry, the state looked at the bill and opted not to comply with provisions of that bill, as well. As a result, Utah has been penalized by losing grant money through that program, too.
"We are being penalized because we're thinking of what's the best policy for the state of Utah, rather than adopting a federal policy that doesn't meet" the state's needs, Gordon said.
Twitter: @RobertGehrke