My work has me visiting each state penetentiary in Louisiana at least twice a year for approximately a week at a time for the past 8 years. I have many clients who work for the Dept Of Corrections including several wardens so I’m somewhat aware of the prison situation.
In the Louisiana State Penal system there are people incarcarated who have absolutly no idea of remorse for their crimes. Many function on an animal level and if they were paroled they would committ a crime which would land them back in prison within a week. Case in point the Baton Rouge area rapist. He was so called “reformed” yet went on to rape and kill several women AFTER serving time. Investigators are beginning to find this individual probably could be connected with another dozen or so rapes, murders and brutal assaults. Up until now he was incarcarated on lesser crimes for several years at a time yet due to “good behavior” he was released not once but twice!
What we have here is a pathological sociopath who knows how to work the system. Countless victims have suffered and died at this man’s hands yet he still walks and breathes on this earth. When the national news flashed a picture of this excrement on the TV I could see that the photo was one taken while he was in state custody because of a bright orange D on his t-shirt which stands for Dixon Correctional Center. While working with the warden I asked him about this and he confirmed my suspicions. He told me that this person was a sociopath and he would rape and kill again if given the chance. He said that this guy could play women with such ease and then just wack them dead in an instant. These guys while they are in prison have nothing better to do then to find needy women who will listen to their sob stories and buy into their line of shit. Several guards I have spoken with said that most of the inmates free time is spent concockting more sick and perverted ideas to try.
The inmate population IS segregated and the rapist, child molesters, bad cops and judges are segregated together away from the general population with each given an individual cell. OTOH the general population is housed barracks style with 72 inmates to a block. Everything is visible from the key room including all toilets and showers so there is zero privacy. The molesters OTOH can come and go from their cells during normal day hours as long as they do not leave the common room.
The general population at most prisons is a working population. They do field work like clearing underbrush, picking up trash, maintaining farm land and even raising livestock. Its long hot and hard work for them. The rapist due to security are not allowed to work with the general population so they go about just keeping the grounds and buildings clean and maintained in their area.
I have been in the Max ward at several of the prisons and compared to the general population’s living conditions its a holiday inn. On several occasions I found the segregated prisoners playing games, music on their guitars (including electric guitars) and pretty much enjoying themselves as much as could be allowed. The majority of the murderers, and ones convicted of manslaughter are in the general popluation and serve in many capacities. One convicted murder is a trustee who works for the Colonel as an inmate record keeper. His crime was he came home early to find a 16 year old boy on top of his 13yr old daughter having sex so he killed him thinking his daughter was being raped. I have met several other murderers who were serving 25-40 for killing a cheating spouse or their spouses lover. In these situations these people are eligible for parole at some point.
While talking with the inmate who killed the 16 yr old I learned that there is a “new” breed of convict in prison. One who doesn’t see any reason for himself being in prison except that he got caught. The convict said that this breed has no respect for authority and would just as soon kill you as to look at you. Apparently there was an unwritten code of conduct inmates lived by several years ago but it has been replaced with pure animal behavior with the “new” breed.
Should a convicted child molester and rapist be put to death? Based on my observations and experiences putting someone of this ilk down would be the equivalent of putting down a rabbid dog. Can you reform a rabbid dog? No. Likewise, someone who has no remorse for their crime is just like that rabbid dog. Take your eyes off of them and they will bite and kill again.
Although I have serious issues with the death penalty - in that I think most legal systems are too flawed to implement it fairly and accurately - morally I think the correct thing for a child rapist is being put down, like a dog. At the very least, paedophiles and child rapists should be sterilised.
Also: rape of a child is not just rape, very often is is permanent and debilitating physical damage. It can leave permanent physical scars on an adult woman (or man) - compare then to the damage that can be done, often irreperable, on the tiny sexual organs of a toddler or baby. Such damage can even be fatal.
I’m sorry but there are some crimes that a society cannot devise a just punishment for. There is a point were we as individuals or a society can’t follow these animals any further down into their chosen depravity and hope to keep our own sanity.
This is one of them.
I hope he lives a long life, somewhere were he can’t possibly hurt another person but not death or torture, for our own sakes not his.
When I listen to some folks it’s almost as if they’re saying:
Child rape = Might as well be dead.
If I a child of mine were being held by evil people and I had to choose between them raping or killing my child, I’d choose a live child to love and possibly make whole again.
How would you feel if one of your children were raped?
As for myself I would quite willingly and without any remorse kill anyone who interferred with mine and that’s a fact.
Moreover, any man or woman who rapes a child is beneath contempt and is deserving of no pity whatsoever, death is far to good for these blots on society.
See, this is the same stupid question that gets trotted out every time someone says they are against the death penalty.
If someone raped my kid (i don’t have any kids), i would no doubt want that person dead. But i like to think i would maintain my principled oppositon to state-sanctioned murder.
And this is the precise reason why penal policy should be decided by rational and relatively impartial people, rather than by emotionally-distraught relatives of victims, or by people like you who apparently can’t distinguish between a general moral principle and a personal desire.
As i’ve already argued in this thread, apart from my principled objection to the death penalty, there have been too many cases recently where people convicted of capital crimes have been found to be innocent. In my opinion, the only thing worse than having my child raped would be knowing that they had also given the wrong man the needle and that the real perp was still out there.
You’re entitled to your beliefs about the death penalty; just don’t waltz in and imply that my beliefs are irrational, or that i’d change my mind if i were to become a victim. Neither is true.
Spogga, it happened here in Louisiana several years ago where an angry father excersized the death penalty on a person who had abducted, sodomized and eventually killed his young son. The culprit was in custody and was being transported through the airport terminal in Baton Rouge. When the culprit walked past a line of payphones the angry father who was faking a conversation on one of the phones turns to face the prisoner and procedes to shoot the guy right through the his right temple with a large caliber revolver.
Of course the father is arrested but no jury in Louisiana convicts him. He is instead turned over to the state mental hospital department evaluated and later released. The “execution” was caught on tape because there was a local news service filming when the event happened.
I know of a guy locally who for some reason the day after he was released on a rape charge because of a techincallity decided to committ suicide by jumping off the Red River bridge. One of the investigators on the case told me he got a little help from some others quite possibly the father and two brothers of the rape victim. Nothing could be proven so no one was arrested. Alot of this stuff happens and really never makes it to the general news.
Like I said in my earlier post, I work with a great many law enforcement professionals so I hear and learn alot from them. Its a tough job for them and we should be thankful they get up every morning and do their job as best as possible.
I have one client who is in law enforcement who has to get tested for aids every 6 months because while he was attempting to arrest a drunk driver who had just hit a car full of people and critically injured several of them was bitten by the suspect several times in an attemp to infect him with the aids virus the suspect carries.
The court awarded the officer $500,000 but the defendant has yet to pay because he and his father are both attorneys and have managed to use methods to keep from paying the judgement. Meanwhile, my client the officer, has to keep wondering if or when he will come down with aids. This guy is 35 has a wife and two kids. He doesn’t need this aggravation caused by an irresponsible and callous poor excuse for a human.
Oh and a side note. The perpetrator of this crime is not in jail. He is a ward of the state mental hospital system being evaluated as to why he did what he did.
I’m sure there are such people. But how many are there? And is there any correlation between their lack of remorse and the specific srimes they committed.
Again, you may be right, although if they have the ability to speak, and to plan, and to reason in any way, then they are still functioning on a human rather than an animal level, even if their behaviour is abhorrent. But don’t let reason stand in the way of your dribbling. Also, exactly how “many” such people are there? And who has made this assessment of their mental condition? You, from your observations? Or have you read all of their psychiatric files?
So your anecdotal information about a single case is supposed to convince us of a general priniciple? If the rapist you’re discussing is Derrick Todd Lee, then i have no doubt that your description of him is accurate. But it does not provide any real evidence about the reformability of otherwise of people who commit certain crimes.
And what qualifications do you have to make such a judgement? Could you summarize the results of your latest statistical or clinical studies of prisoner psychology and recidivism for us? Can you point to some article or book that makes a scientific investigation of the potential and the limitations of rehabilitation in rape cases?
You don’t say exactly what you do for a living, although you say that many of your clients are wardens. Are you a prison psychologist? A lawyer? An insurance salesperson? Exactly what are you able to observe in prisons that leads you to your conclusions about reform and recidivism?
Basically, my question is: Do you have a fucking clue what you’re talking about, aside from irrelevant anecdotes?
catsix, I appreciate your response. But it hasn’t been so easy for me. I get along quite well, but as I said, there isn’t a day that goes by that sometime during the day my mind touches on what happened. And it’s been twenty four years. I’m serving a life sentence, the asshole who raped me never was caught.
I have more of a clue about this than you will ever have. I could pull up long lists of statistics in an attempt to satisfy doubts but I don’t see the point because you have your point of view and you are sticking with it regardless of the evidence. Prove me wrong with your own data.
If you have read my posts you would realize I have been working 8 years with many people in the law enforcement occupation. Let me add this as well. I also work with every state agency in Louisiana including the Dept. of health and hospitals, child wealfare, office of family support, office of community services and the state mental health department.
My thousands of clients include child psycologists, parole officers, police officers, social workers, doctors, nurses, judges, procecutors and any other profession that you can pretty much think of related to the state’s payroll. I don’t have to conduct a statistical analysis because I have seen the vast amount of file storage the state has to keep just to keep tabs on all the molesters, rapists and other deviants roaming this earth.
I know this because my clients also consider me a friend and councilor. They do this because I offer a nonjudgemental ear. All too often after conducting our business I listen to the things that these people have to deal with on a daily basis. I don’t need a study to tell me whats happening I have first hand experience whether you like it or not.
mehndo why don’t you prove your point for me. I’m at least open to discussion.
Um ** SunTzu2U ** I have to cry foul. You do not catch aids from saliva
Unless he tried to use the bite marks, and then bleed into them your “client” is worrying needlessly. There is some research that suggests there is actualy something in saliva that reduces the transmition of AIDS.
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Whether the courts sometimes let guilty people go is irrelivant to this case. He was tried and convicted. He will now spend several years in jail costing the American tax payer up to four times more money to put him to death than it would cost to just keep him there. I for one do not think he is worth it.
As it happens I happened to have a class on this yesterday. I can’t find a link atm and would have to cite my notes. The lecture was given by a socioligist who works for the child protective services in Wisconsin. The number of sexual abuse cases they deal with on a yearly basis in Milwaukee county is in the thousands (sorry I missed the exact number) Of these they prosecute 20% (mostly the most heinis.) In the last year these cases have children ranged from 7 weeks to 17 years. In cases of child rape, 65% are the natural father. 80% are family. Only 1.2% are strangers. This means that almost 99% of these cases are people the children know. These are the cases they get the calls on.
The problem with putting the guy to death is that in my county, and yours, there are hundreds if not thousands of little girls and boys living in this hell, and now this jury has given their abusers more ammunition to keep them quiet. “see honey if you tell no one you care about will believe you and I will die and it will be your fault” In my county, and yours, the annual budgets for child protective services is less than it will take to keep that guy alive. He is already a waste of a life. I want the money to be used to help the victims.
What point? I didn’t have a point to make, except to ask you to back your assertions up with more than anecdotal evidence. You are the one who is making the assertion that these criminals are unreformable, so it’s you who should provide some evidence, not me. I’ve never said you’re wrong, only that you have failed to make a convincing case. If you make a claim, you should be prepared to back it up.
You say that you could give me statistics, but that you won’t because i wouldn’t change my point of view. This a very convenient tactic often used by people who can’t make their case. You have absolutely no reason to believe that i would not be amenable to considering proper evidence; your tactic is simply one of obfuscation.
So what if you’ve been working eight years with people in law enforcement? So has the janitor at the local police station. The fact that you can provide anecdotes about certain aspects of the prison system does not support your initial claim, which was, if you remember, that these people cannot be reformed. Again, i ask, where is your evidence of this? And no, simply pointing to the number of filing cabinets, as you made a lame attempt to do in your last post, does not constitute evidence.
I am no criminologist or psychologist, so i really don’t know what percentage of prisoners might be reformable, or whether the level of reformability is related to the crime committed. It could well be the case that there are certain categories of prisoner that are not amenable to reform, and it might also be that rapists are among this group. But just because YOU keep saying it doesn’t make it true. If you’re going to claim that people who commit a certain type of crime are inherently and indisputably unreformable, you need to provide some evidence other than anecdote and hearsay.
Oh I’m sorry I forgot to point out that the perpetrator was also bleeding from the near fatal (to the other auto’s occupants) auto wreck he caused and trying to infect my friend that way as well. He even said he was going to infect my friend while he bit, fought and bled on him. They struggled for approximately 3 minutes before help arrived so my friend suffered from multiple lasserations and bites. How sick is that?
Ok I’ll sum it up with what a criminoligist, a warden and a criminal psycologist have stated to me on several occasions. They all spoke with me separately so there was no way to for them to collude with their answer.
They each stated that approximately 30% of all released convicts will be caught breaking their parole within 6 months. 60% in 2 years and 70-80% in five years. I want to emphasize being caught here because many convicts get to committ multiple crimes BEFORE they are caught and brought before the law for their crimes.
I’ll refer back to the Derrick Todd Lee case. He managed to rape and kill at least 5 women that we know of before he was apprehended. These 5 women would be alive today had he been put to death. No, lets just put him into a 6X9 and serve him 3 square meals a day. Let him develop a hobby or two and then prey on other women by writing sob stories to them about how the Man put him down. Oh BTW I have eaten prison food quite a bit and while it may not be kobe beef its still not bad. Try eating spagetti with only a spoon some time though. They won’t let you use plastic forks or knives in prison because they have been used as weapons on the guards.
We are lucky to have prison guards willing to work at poverty level to watch these animals for us. How many of you would take on the job for about $16k a year? Hmmm…any takers?
** SunTzu2U ** Ok you forgot to point out the real facts of the case. It still doesnt matter. It is so far out of the discussion of this case as to not even qualify as a straw man.
Also, if you look at the Lousiana statute they used he would not have had possiblity of parole, so whether he would rape again once he got out remains yet another Moot point.
Derrick Todd Lee, as investigators are beginning to believe raped and molested several other women and children but managed to not get prosecuted for it. He wound up going to prison on lesser unrelated charges. Its just that after the second time he was released they were able to place him as the murderer and rapist. Furlibusea please note that part about inmates writing to other women while in prison. They get these poor, weak, ususpecting women to believe in their bullshit. They get them to do all sorts of things even as far as meeting them in prison. Just because these people are in prison doesn’t in itself protect innocents from their actions. They can mess people up mentally too by constantly sending mail and messages to their victims.
There have been incidents where a female guard was raped by an inmate so just being locked up for life is no guarantee that the rapist won’t act again.
Ideally, I am for death for child rape, but furlibusea’s point forces me to reconsider.
I propose abolishing the death penalty & replacing it with the Mark-of-Cain and Avenger-of-Blood law. Mark the rapist/abuser on the forehead with his crime & then if he does get out into society, let him experience society’s justice, and give the offended (or if the offended died from the crime, the nearest kin) ALONE the right to take ultimate retribution.