There is this stereotype that in prison, inmates convicted of sex crimes against children are treated badly by their fellow prisoners. Is there truth to this, or is this an “honor among thieves” sort of conceit?
Any crimes against children are looked upon negatively. Even though people are in prison, most of the inmates are parents or siblings, and look upon it negatively as well.
It is my understanding that one’s crime is not common knowledge, unless one makes it so.
So it would make sense to say you were a murderer, if that’s what you are worried about.
But on a serious note, this question has come up many times, and it is generally felt by those who actually live in or work in the penal system that a lot of it is urban legend.
Maybe but prisoners do have their own morals and even maximum security prison will put such a prisoner in constant touch with other prisoners who hold their own version of family values. Many prisoners have been molested themselves as well and won’t react well to anyone that has committed those crimes.
The Catholic community was rocked by the Boston sex scandal. After he was sent to prison, former priest John Geoghan was stalked and murdered even while under protective custody by another prisoner. It took a lot of skill and planning. I wouldn’t call the question at hand baseless.
I should add the Jeffrey Dahmer was also murdered in prison for brutal molestation and serial killer crimes. This is a real a real phenomenon although I don’t know how common it is. I would guess that it is real based on the heinous criminals I have known. It is one thing to kill a man in the heat of confrontation. It is quite different to molest little girls and I doubt maximum security prisoners are going to want you to play chess with them or watch TV watch them if you did that.
This is patently false. Any high profile crime, which children’s crimes often are, is noted, and it gets out relatively quickly when the prisoner arrives. It is a huge gossip mill, remember. Inmates get the newspaper every day.
Sometimes they’ll be put in maximum security for their own protection, especially at first.
When they do get in general population, they may not be attacked, but they are shunned. That doesn’t mean they don’t have friends, or don’t do most of the things other inmates do, but there is a difference.
Just to take a guess using my common sense, I’d imagine that if a child molester were weak and wimpy, he’d be fresh meat. If he happened to be a huge badass, I doubt as many people would fuck with him as would the first.
Most child molesters you read about tend to be weak and wimpy.
In a medium security prison in my home town, someone spread a rumor that an incoming prisoner a child sex offender. He got hospitalised within 6 hours of arriving.
Yeah, it’s pretty common in other countries too.
My ex-wife counselled a woman whose daughter was murdered in a prominent case. The mother received a letter telling her how to communicate with the bikies in jail if she wanted the guy killed.
A friend of mine was a drug and alcohol counselor at a Sydney maximum security prison. He suspected that some of the “exotic” punishments handed out to child molesters must have required the complicity of staff. Even being kept in a cell by yourself couldn’t stop you receiving a bucket of boiling water or oil thrown in your face.
Forgive me if your career and/or social arrangements are in the public domain but how do you come to know heinous criminals and what discussions with such people lead you to conclude they would indulge themselves by perpetrating violence on those convicted of child sex crimes?
How much of it is true outrage on the part of the inmates doing the beat down, and how much is opportuistic in that the inmate concerned is the kind of guy that likes to beat people down, but needs a victim that the corrections officers will be, let’s say, slow to respond to? My guess is that even if caught and subject to administrative punishment the punishment would be less severe than if the inmate beat down an embezzeler.
That’s one of the problems I have with people who think it’s all right for child molesters to be raped while in prison. While it may be emotionally satisfying, the inmate doing the rape is learning that it’s perfectly all right to do it, as long as they pick someone low enough on the pecking order, and sooner or later, that rapist is going to get out.
It’s usually known who the child abusers are in prison. My experience is that the same compulsion that causes them to abuse children also makes them talk about it. And even if they don’t tell anyone, it’s now easily accessed information on the internet and other prisoners get the information.
Anyone who committed crimes against children is going to be unpopular. It doesn’t mean he or she’s going to be getting raped or stabbed on a daily basis but they will generally be shunned by most other prisoners.
Part of it is a pecking order - one way for prisoners to raise their status is to push another prisoner’s status down. Another part of it is perceived vengeance - a large percentage of prisoners were the victims of abuse when they were children and by hurting a child abuser they can feel they’re getting some revenge for the crimes committed against them.
Actually, the prisoners who are most unpopular and are most likely to get beat up are the ones who commit crimes inside the prison. The biggest targets in a prison are jailhouse thieves - if you’re ever doing time and you want to get beat up just start stealing things from other prisoners. Jailhouse arsonists are less common but are also very hated - people who are locked inside a building do not like people who set the building on fire. Prisoners with bad hygiene are disliked. Anyone doing time for treason or crimes against the country is hated - many prisoners are very patriotic. And, of course, nobody likes a tattletale. So if you’re an Al Qaeda child molester whose hobbies are avoiding showers, stealing potato chips, throwing matches in garbage cans, and snitching to the guards, you’re going to have to resign yourself to not having a lot of friends.
I grew up in a poor rural area and I have closely known a disproportionate number of people that became rapists, murderers, and everything in between. One of my best childhood friends executed someone while he was down on his knees at his own house and the friend in question was most likely a serial killer as well. He avoided the death penalty but is doing life without parole in Angola. Other circumstances has led me to know other serious criminals way more than other people do. My comments are just based on conversations with them. Even if they are lawless, they still have their own morals and no one likes a child molester especially them.
I agree with the comment that felons tend to be oddly patriotic and view themselves as defenders of the nation. I have seen that myself.
In New Jersey they have their own prison. So if they are treated badly it is by others who have commited similar crimes.
Very true—I frequently lurk on stormfront.org; not because I’m sympathetic to their viewpoints, but because I’m fascinated with the AB mentality. Aryan criminals really do have a strong but deranged sense of what should constitute proper law and order. It’s a topic of constant conversation there.
For two and a half years, from early 1978 to late 1980, i spent a couple of hours every Saturday morning at Long Bay Jail in Sydeny, Australia, visiting my stepfather, who was in jail for growing a massive marijuana crop. He spent the first 6 months or so in maximum security, then about a year and a half in medium security, and then the last half a year in minimum security.
While he never went into too many details (i was only about 10 at the time), he told me that prisoners who had committed crimes against kids were extremely unpopular, at best, and were often the targets of violence. I’m not sure if the term is exclusive to Australia, but the name given to child molesters in Aussie prisons in “rockspider.”
A few years after he got out of jail, he and my mother divorced, and she married a policeman. Go figure.
I’m assuming that “bikies” is the Aussie term for “bikers”?
Large scary white dudes with enormous attitude problems, right?
Correct. Australians tend to use the “y” or “ie” diminutive for a lot of words.
bikies = bikers
bikkies = biscuits
brekkie = breakfast
footy = football
And, of course, Aussie.
There was a case a couple of years ago where a relative of young sex abuse victim ended up in the same prison as the guy who did the crime. The relative got some help holding the guy down and they tattooed his forehead. Katie’s Revenge.
