We're All Our Brothers' Keepers

It's a natural human response to avert our eyes from squalor, which is why we owe a debt to those individuals and organizations who force us to face up to uncomfortable truths. And there are few more uncomfortable tomes that the recent report by Human Rights Watch, the New York-based advocacy group, on male-on-male rape in American prisons. The result of five years of work, the report is a horrifying catalogue of sexual abuse and official indifference — some studies have found that up to a fifth of inmates in state prisons experience nonconsensual sex — which should shame American authorities...