In the prison movies, they call them "fresh fish.''

"The younger inmates are under tremendous pressure when they come in,'' said Butler County Chief Deputy Richard Jones, who wrote a book, Behind Bars, based on his 17 years as a corrections officer at Lebanon Correctional Institute.

"They have to hook up with some group to keep away the predators, who look for the young ones getting off the bus. They're like piranhas. They loan you a cigarette and say, 'I'm going to protect you,' then they get them in a cell and the young guy is scared and forced to commit some sex act he didn't want to do.

"It's a vicious environment.''

According to the national group Stop Prison Rape, a recent study of prisons in four Midwestern states found that about 20 percent of male inmates reported a pressured or forced sex incident while incarcerated.

At some prisons, 27 percent of female inmates have reported being raped. And young prisoners are seven times as likely to be raped and abused.

"I can't take any more of this. I'm tired of crying myself to sleep. I'm tired of waking up soaked in sweat, crying. I wish I could just go to sleep and never wake up. I'm so scared and confused.''

That's a suicide letter written by an inmate in Texas, Cary Money, just before he hanged himself two years ago. He was 5-foot-6, locked in a cell with a rapist who was over 6 feet tall.

Money was serving a sentence for murder. He could handle that. What he couldn't take was the cruel and unusual punishment of sexual assault. He finally killed his rapist cellmate, then decided he would rather die than explain why in open court.

"I can't go in there and be humiliated like that, knowing everyone will know what happened to me,'' he wrote. "I can't live with that! But you can't live in prison with everyone knowing that. You can't survive in here then.''

You don't need a Ph.D. in criminology to know there are predators in prison. Better there than on the streets. But where there are predators, there are also victims.

"Some inmates are afraid to scream and holler because they fear for their life,'' Jones said.

It's often hard for guards to separate the rapes from the consensual sex in prison, he said. And with state cutbacks, there aren't enough officers to stop the violence.

"The prisons are all too crowded,'' he said. "These people have never followed rules in their life. If you can keep 'em from rioting, killing and raping each other, you've done pretty good.''

That's the goal of a bill sponsored by Ohio Sen. Mike DeWine. His Prison Rape Reduction Act passed the Senate by unanimous consent July 22.

It would set up a national commission to report in two years on ways to reduce prison rape, and require a statistical study of rape in federal, state and local jails.

"This legislation addresses the culture of violence and rape in America's prisons,'' DeWine said. "Prisoners do not deserve to be punished twice by being forced to live in fear of sexual assault."

Jones said prisons are "a very mean, tough place.'' A place that turns "fresh fish'' into killer sharks - and sooner or later, turns them loose.

E-mail pbronson@enquirer.com or call 768-8301.