ORIGINAL PAPER Consensual Sex Between Men and Sexual Violence in Australian Prisons Juliet Richters • Tony Butler • Karen Schneider • Lorraine Yap • Kristie Kirkwood • Luke Grant • Alun Richards • Anthony M. A. Smith • Basil Donovan Received: 11 November 2009 / Revised: 4 May 2010 / Accepted: 10 July 2010 / Published online: 31 August 2010 Ó Springer Science+Business Media, LLC 2010 Abstract Estimates of the incidence of sexual coercion in men’s prisons are notoriously variable and fraught with con- ceptual and methodological problems. In 2006–2007, we con- ducted a computer-assisted telephone survey of a random sample of 2,018 male prisoners in New South Wales and Queensland. Of 2,626 eligible and available inmates, 76.8% consented and provided full responses. We asked about time in prison, sexual experience, attraction and (homo/bi/heterosex- ual) identity, attitudes, sexual contact with other inmates, rea- sons for having sex and practices engaged in, and about sexual coercion, including location and number of perpetrators. Most men (95.1%) identified as heterosexual. Of the total sample, 13.5% reported sexual contact with males in their lifetime: 7.8% only outside prison, 2.8% both inside and outside, and 2.7% only inside prison. Later in the interview, 144 men (7.1% of total sample) reported sexual contact with inmates in prison; the majority had few partners and no anal intercourse. Most did so for pleasure, but some for protection, i.e., to avoid assault by someone else. Before incarceration, 32.9% feared sexual assault in prison; 6.9% had been sexually threatened in prison and 2.6% had been sexually coerced (‘‘forced or frightened into doing something sexually that [they] did not want’’). Some of those coerced reported no same-sex contact. The majority of prisoners were intolerant of male-to-male sexual activity. The study achieved a high response rate and asked detailed questions to elicit reports of coercion and sex separately. Both con- sensual sex and sexual assault are less common than is generally believed. Keywords Sexual behavior Á Prisons Á Male homosexuality Á Sexual assault Á Australia Á Sex survey methodology Introduction Sex in prison is a topic that elicits complex emotional reac- tions. Definitional issues (What counts as‘‘sex’’? When does pressure amount to coercion?) are confounded further by atti- tudes to homosexuality that make some people see sexual contact between men (especially men who outside prison are heterosexual) as prima facie abusive. J. Richters (&) Á L. Yap School of Public Health and Community Medicine, University of New South Wales, Sydney, NSW 2052, Australia e-mail: j.richters@unsw.edu.au T. Butler National Drug Research Institute, Curtin University, Perth, WA, Australia T. Butler Á K. Kirkwood Centre for Health Research in Criminal Justice, NSW Justice Health, Sydney, NSW, Australia K. Schneider Á B. Donovan National Centre in HIV Epidemiology and Clinical Research, University of New South Wales, Sydney, NSW, Australia L. Grant New South Wales Department of Corrective Services, Sydney, NSW, Australia A. Richards Offender Health Services, Queensland Health, Brisbane, QLD, Australia A. M. A. Smith Australian Research Centre in Sex, Health & Society, La Trobe University, Melbourne, VIC, Australia B. Donovan Sydney Sexual Health Centre, Sydney Hospital, Sydney, NSW, Australia 123 Arch Sex Behav (2012) 41:517–524 DOI 10.1007/s10508-010-9667-3