Brazilian guinea pig

The Brazilian guinea pig (Cavia aperea) (preá in Portuguese) is a guinea pig species found in Argentina, Brazil, Bolivia, Colombia, Ecuador, Guyana, Paraguay, Uruguay and Venezuela.

C. aperea has been successfully mated to the domestic guinea pig, Cavia porcellus, though many females become infertile in successive generations. Brazilian guinea pigs are mainly diurnal animals and are narrower and longer than domesticated guinea pigs.

Description

This is a medium-sized guinea pig with an adult length of about 272 mm (11 in) and a weight of 637 grams (22.5 oz). The tail, at around 2.4 mm, is almost non-existent. The dorsal fur is dark olive-brown mixed with brown and black, and the underparts are a pale grey or yellowish-grey.

Its karyotype has 2n = 64 and a reportedly variable FN of 116 or 128 for C. a. aperea and 128 for C. a. pamparum.

Distribution

The Brazilian guinea pig has a wide distribution in South America at altitudes between 400 and 3,000 metres (1,300 and 9,800 ft) above sea level. Its range extends from Colombia, Ecuador and Venezuela to northern Argentina. Its typical habitat is open grassland and savannah.

Prison Rape Elimination Act of 2003

The Prison Rape Elimination Act of 2003 (PREA) is the first United States federal law passed dealing with the sexual assault of prisoners. The bill was signed into law on September 4, 2003.

Background

Public awareness of prison rape is relatively recent and estimates of its prevalence vary widely.

In 1974 Carl Weiss and David James Friar wrote that 46 million Americans would one day be incarcerated; of that number, they claimed, 10 million would be raped. A 1992 estimate from the Federal Bureau of Prisons conjectured that between 9 and 20 percent of inmates had been sexually assaulted. Studies in 1982 and 1996 both concluded that the rate was somewhere between 12 and 14 percent. A 1986 study by Daniel Lockwood put the number at around 23 percent for maximum security prisons in New York. In contrast, Christine Saum's 1994 survey of 101 inmates showed 5 had been sexually assaulted.

In 2001 Human Rights Watch (HRW) released a paper called "No Escape: Male Rape in U.S. Prisons", the single event that contributed most to PREA's passage two years later. HRW had published several papers on the topic of prison rape in the years since its initial report called "All Too Familiar: Sexual Abuse of Women in U.S. State Prisons", released in 1996, when there was barely any Congressional support for legislation aimed at prison rape. A 1998 attempt by Representative John Conyers, Jr. (D-MI), known as the Custodial Sexual Abuse Act of 1998, was attached to the reauthorization bill for the Violence Against Women Act but summarily removed and never reintroduced.