New government data suggesting high levels of sexual abuse of confined youth in the United States should galvanize the Department of Justice to swiftly issue national standards to end prison rape.

If adopted, the June 2009 standards submitted by the National Prison Rape Elimination Commission would go far toward eliminating rape in adult prisons and jails, juvenile and immigration detention facilities, and community corrections.

In 2004, a teenage girl incarcerated at the Illinois Youth Center in Warrenville was sexually abused by a male employee at the facility. The abuse consisted of repeated acts of oral sex and sexual intercourse. There was no doubt that the abuse occurred, and the employee ultimately pleaded guilty to two counts of criminal sexual assault.

All told, the United States spends about $60 billion a year on locking people up. But there are also other, less obvious costs, including the effects on children left behind when parents are sent away to prison.

The Papua New Guinea government should abolish the death penalty instead of putting it back into effect, Human Rights Watch and Amnesty International said in a joint letter to Dr. Allan Marat, justice minister and attorney general.

Human Rights Watch writes to express concern over recent statements in Parliament suggesting that the death penalty might be soon implemented for the first time since Papua New Guinea gained self-governance and independence and that the Ministry of Justice may develop regulations to do so.

For years, we have been shocked by stories of the abuse — much of it sexual — of security detainees in U.S. custody in Iraq, Afghanistan and Guantanamo Bay. But prisoners are not just abused overseas. Rape and sexual violence are all too frequent here in our own backyard. If America is to reclaim its moral authority as a defender of human rights and dignity, it must start at home.