"There are some people who theorize the men who dragged James Byrd, Jr. to death in Texas became as bad as they were in the Texas penal system. Sorry I don’t happen to have a cite handy but maybe someone else remembers hearing the same thing. "
I read this as well. Supposedly the guy had grown up around black people, had black friends, etc… and then went to prison. Prison is where the nation’s racists are born. You do not mingle races in prison. You stay with your own kind, otherwise you are on your own (this from what I’ve read on the matter, not my own experience). This guy was supposedly gang raped by a bunch of black guys. Something triggered a memory and he instigated the brutal dragging murder. What I also read was that the guy who stopped and gave Mr. Byrd a ride was a basically normal person who often offered rides in this rural area. He is also the one that tried to stop the murder (admitted to by his codefendents) and was the one who notified police after the fact. However he is still guilty of a hate crime (he is the one that got life instead of the death penalty). Unfortunately there are a lot facts that we don’t get from the mainstream media.
From what I read about prison (possibly from one of the authors mentioned previously) it goes something like this:
A new guy will find himself challenged in his first few days in prison. If he is capable of defending himself he has a fair chance of avoiding random violence though it does nothing to prevent it from someone who has a grudge against him. He still will try to find a group that will offer him more protection from attack. The poor guy who cant defend himself is now a punk. He will be raped. If he is lucky he will find a protector and will become his bitch, having to offer sex to avoid the gang rapes.
Well, ok. You realize that I didn’t say every person with a heavy sentence had previous brushes with the law, right? I only bring it up because you make it sound like I said something I didn’t.
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And how many chances are you willing to give someone?
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Sounds difficult and expensive. The easiest way to do this is to put people in protective custody. But they’ll be rather isolated and perhaps unlikely to take part in certain prison activities.
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That does sound excessive. How does someone break into a place they were living in? Was she in the apartment at the time?
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I don’t feel as sorry for this guy. He was given a break and he decided to piss it away. Tough luck.
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Frustration over this kind of judical rulings is what led to three strikes laws. Which I don’t support but I understand why they were passed.
Marc
Dunno. But, cumulatively, I find it difficult to justify locking some one up for more time for a property offense, than other folks for assaultive crimes. For property offenses, why should there be an upper limit? Give ‘em a couple years each time, so what? If they learn, swell, if they don’t, they’re stealin’ stuff, give 'em another couple of years. I’d rather have that than a 10 year sentence for property minor property crimes.
This is my field (I know you know that), I notice all the sentences that go around. What I can’t get behind is stuff like : the guy (granted he’d had several convictions for shoplifting etc.) stole a 20$ bill from 2 different purses that were left in an open classroom, was being charged w/2 counts of larceny from a building, habitual offender status, and was facing life w/o parole. For stealing $40. That’s insane. I don’t care if it was his 10th crime. That’s still crazy. Especially when you also see the embezzler who stole the life savings of dozens of seniors getting a 5 year sentence.
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**, shrug. Of course, if you’re having fewer prisoners 'cause of the reforms I"m talking about, there’s less chance. But your alternative would be? shrug it off? not investigate? and there’s ways of seperating the prey from the predators generally.
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THey were living there together, she tossed him out (he wasn’t on the lease). He went back in when she wasn’t at home. He claimed to only have taken his own clothes (that were still there) and ‘damage’ a door. I assume he trashed the place, destroyed her clothes etc, the pre sentence report suggested several hundred dollars worth of damage, I’d buy that. But still, 10 years?? HE came out bitter as hell. IT took me several weeks to get him to the point where he wasn’t beligerant w/folks (I was afraid he’d get arrested again), for example, he applied at a gas station. They still had the sign up a few days later, he went in and confronted the guy about why they’d still be advertising for help when he’d already applied. He eventually settled down, and, now several years down the road, he’s not been in trouble again.
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you misunderstand my point - perhaps I wasn’t being clear. What happened is that the ‘system’ went pretty much from street probation to 8 years incarceration. Without attempting to see if say, one or two years incarceration would have an effect. Difference to me is let’s test 'em out on probation (especially property offenders), if they fail that, try year or so incarceration (cost about $25,000), maybe try that again, but it shouldn’t go from street probation to a ‘solution’ that cost over $200 grand. there’s a lovely middle area there to be explored.
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frustration and a bunch of politicians who figured out that being seen as being ‘tough on crime’ was the best way to re-election, that being seen as ‘soft on crime’ meant ‘find new job now’.
I personally know a man who ran the state Department of corrections. He’s often been quoted as suggesting that we’ve gotten to be addicted to locking people up, that we no longer simply lock up the people we’re afraid of, but also the people that we’re mad at (with disastrously expensive consequences), and that after a couple of years incarceration you start getting a diminishing return on your investment in changing the individual.
I’d rather ‘save’ the long prison sentences for people who hurt other people. But that’s just me.
When I said rape is uncommon, I suppose I was using an limited definition of the act. I meant that the stereotypical prison rape scene depicted in lurid movies (Big Ed and his boys holding a shank to the throat of some new fish in the shower room) is pretty uncommon. Sex happens in prison, and much of it wasn’t really desired by one of the partners. But usually it’s a case of someone making some kind of deal rather than submitting to the threat of violence.
We can usually identify new prisoners who are likely to be the subject of sexual pressure. We then try to keep them away from the prisoners who are likely to apply that pressure. We try to avoid situations like the one from Oz where some suburban DWI convict like Tobias Beecher is thrown into a cell with a hardtimer like Simon Adebisi or Vernon Schillinger.
The bottom line is most rapists are looking for the easy marks. Why should they pursue someone who is going to resist if they can find someone else who won’t? The rapists are also aware that they can’t flee the scene of the crime; the guy you rape today may be the one who’ll be stabbing you in the back next week.
Like I wrote before, that part of our job is essentially police work. Looking for evidence, gathering clues, working informants, interrogating suspects, etc. Crimes in prison get solved the same way as crimes on the street. We place prisoners in protective custody in some cases, but usually we just try to run an investigation is such a manner that informants aren’t revealed.
On the subject of rehabilitation, the worst case scenario is “why not?” If you’re going to lock a person up, he’s going to have a lot of idle time on his hands anyway. You might as well give him all the rehabilitaion you can even in those cases where you know it’s unlikely to produce results. If it works, bonus.
On the other hand, here’s a true story which actually happened yesterday. For legal reasons, I’ll call this guy “Murphy”. Murphy was arrested in 1998 for stealing cars while he was drunk and leading the police on a high speed chase before they caught him. He was sentenced to five years and yesterday he maxed out and we put him on a bus at 8:30 AM. At 2:30 PM yesterday, I received a phone call from a county sheriff telling me they had Murphy in custody at county jail. He was so obviously fresh out of prison that they thought he might be an escaped felon. What had happened was Murphy only rode the bus to the first stop it made (eight miles from the prison) where he observed a bar next to the bus stop. He decided to get off and spend his take home money on alcohol. Once that was gone, he wanted to finish the trip home, so he stole a car. When the police observed him driving around town drunk in a stolen vehicle in the middle of the day, they tried to pull him over. Murphy apparently decided at this point there was no reason to stint in his historical re-enactment, so he led the police in a high speed before his capture. His total time on the street after five years of incarceration was about five hours.
Personally, I have the feeling we may not have fully rehabilitated this lad.
But really then, if that prisoner (the sex offender) gets raped, then once that rape occurs a new rapist is created. What’s his punishment going to be? Would this be a official capacity of the prison system, like the way that killing someone on “the outsdie” is illegal, but many states have death rows? And doesn’t this reinforce the idea of using rape as a legitimate form of behaviour control?
I realize that you realize that it’s impractical, and I really understand that visceral wanting to make someone who has done something awful suffer. I just think that the only way we can move forward as a society is to rethink the whole penal system and not base it on revenge.
Excellent thread, stoid. There’s a lot of really thoughful responses here
I don’t understand why the prison authorities are not charged with criminal behavior for failing to preclude or stop such things as rape, to include consensual sex when it is coerced.
In military law, dereliction of duty is considered a crime and culprits are subject to prosecution. Surely in the tightly constrained environment of a jail or prison, derelection of duty would be even more appropriate than under military conditions.
In either civilian or military life, were one to arrange a violent crime, as was reported Capt. Cobb did, one is vulnerable to prosecution. Have you, Stoid, ever heard of such a procecutorial advance?
I don’t see why the taxpayers should be on the hook because of a crime such as Capt. Cobb was reported to have done: Victim compensation, yes; but shouldn’t the criminal be prosecuted and punished–even if he is a prison Captain?
I suppose that there is the problem of detection as Little Nemo described; but with spy-cams available to nearly everyone at nominal prices and with computer-software available which could easily detect the type of motion associated with sexual activity, particularly a group-sexual activity such is a gang-rape, how can any jail or prison authority, no matter how highly placed, plead ignorance-of-the-crime?