Look up the comments section to any news story about a particularly horrific criminal (Levi Aron, Anders Behring Breivik), and you’ll find plenty of comments along the lines of “this creep won’t last a week in jail, the other inmates will take care of him reeeeeal good.” In cases where the death penalty is out of the question, this seems to be public revenge fantasy #1 – “if the government won’t kill him, let’s hope the other inmates will.”
Sidestepping all questions about whether the death penalty should exist or not, or whether such revenge fantasies are moral or immoral, my question is simple: Does it ever happen? Are notorious criminals sometimes killed/tortured/mistreated by other inmates, not as a result of internal power struggles or the like, but as “revenge” for their original crimes? Are there famous examples of this?
Yeah, but I’m not sure about Scarver’s motives. Could have been “revenge,” sure, but the Wiki link doesn’t really say… Well, apart from quoting him as telling a guard that “God told me to do it.”
You don’t have to be a “horrific criminal.” Just be a defenseless, segregated prisoner and there is a prison riot, a la the New Mexico 1980 prison riot.
John Geoghan, convicted pedophile priest, was strangled in his cell by another inmate. There’s evidence that the murder was planned, not just spur of the moment.
There’s a number of them that have been attacked in prison here in the UK, particularly those guilty of crimes involving murdering children. I don’t know of any who were actually killed though. Ian Huntley had scalding water thrown in his face and separately had his throat slashed. His girlfriend, Maxine Carr, who was convicted of trying to help him cover up the murders, also had boiling water thrown at her, although apparently it missed. Ian Brady was attacked a number of times, including one in which he was stabbed in both eyes with a pen, permanently blinding him in his left eye. His girlfriend too, Myra Hindley, claimed she was repeatedly attacked in prison. The man who killed Milly Dowler was attacked a few weeks ago, although only received ‘cuts’. The man who killed “Baby P” was first beaten in prison, and a few months later also had scalding water thrown in his face, scarring him for life. According to that article one of the inmates said:
Incidentally, Ian Brady and Ian Huntley are arguably the two most notorious murderers in the UK, and the Baby P and Milly Dowler murders received huge media attention. I don’t know whether that’s why those killers were attacked - whether they were one-off things - or whether all such murderers are routinely attacked in UK prisons but without it being reported. Probably something in the middle I’d guess.
Those are classic newspaper made-up quotes. See also “an onlooker said” and “a bystander commented”. “Friends of” means the individual concerned, or their PR people, and “sources close to” similarly, but more often used for politicians.
Peter Sutcliffe is probably the most notorious murderer still alive in Britain (well, him or Brady), and he’s been attacked a few times, even in the Broadmoor secure hospital. Dennis Nilsen, on the other hand, has always been in regular prisons (albeit the chunkier end of Cat-A) and doesn’t seem to have ever been attacked.
Edit: Re Nilsen,had to look him up as unsure of spelling - a lot of his victims are still unidentified. What a sad thing that is.
I’ve always heard that criminals who have been convicted of crimes against children can expect to have short life expectancies in prison, but I don’t know if there are numbers to back that up.
I would suspect the “prison revenge” meme in which people are attached specifically because of their crimes by justice seeking fellow criminals is way overblown.
People may be attacked because they are mentally “off” or obnoxious, or perceived as weak, or possibly just for the notoriety of being their attacker. If there really a higher incidence of attacks I think it would have more to do with the personality of the criminal being attacked rather than any retributive justice seeking by fellow inmates.
A prison is full of dangerous people, so the fact that some inmates are targeted may say less about their notoriety and more about their surroundings.
Many of the most notorious criminals in the federal prisons are kept in isolation in SuperMax facilities (guys like Ted Kaczynski and Ramzi Yousef.
That doesn’t seem to happen in state prisons, for whatever reason. But it’s not clear that the death of Dahmer or the attempts to kill Charles Manson were related to the sort of “revenge” that the OP suggests.
Agreed, it’s probably a made-up quote, but the string of examples mentioned by isaiahrobinson certainly seem to suggest there’s a good chance that “prison revenge” is a real thing, at least in the U.K.