cubby said:
]That's not what I have been told by persons I know in real life who work in the prison system. Both as nurses and prison guards. I've been told by persons who work in Cook County Jail and who had worked in the same prison Jeffrey Dahmer was murdered that pedofiles are in fact targeted by other inmates who have children of their own.
I spent a fair amount of time myself working in the system. Obviously there are differing opinions on this one, this is mine
The guy who will stick a gun out a car window and shoot up a bus stop full of random people, young and old, does not really care about who he hits or what society thinks about it. He doesn't care if he hit a kid or your grandmother. The rapist who savaged an old lady yesterday doesn't have some moral standards that prohibit his raping a little boy tomorrow. The guy who forced the pleading c-store clerk to kneel before sticking the gun in his mouth and pulling the trigger doesn't cringe at the thought of doing the same thing to anyone -- including a child. The guy running the sex trafficking for the local gang, drugging and raping and pimping out teen and pre-teen girls, doesn't get outraged about sex and kiddies and rape and violence.
And every one of these people are just fine in general population. If they are tough. If they have friends. If they have a gang. As I said, and this is true, many of them would pimp out their own children if it allowed them to score some drugs in prison. They would, and do, do it in a second. That's reality.
The reason many child predators are in preyed upon is as I said in my original post (linked below). Now, that might not be the reason that the serial rapist GAVE when asked why he tried to rape the fat middle-aged pedophile, he said it was because he was outraged at this other guy's crime, but it's a mistake to put any more stock in what he says than in what our killer here said in his initial interviews. He preyed on him, not because he was a pedophile, but because he COULD.
Again, just my two cents.
ORIGINAL POST: Respectfully, I just want to comment on one thing that (in my opinion and experience) is a very commonly held misconception about child predators and prison.
There is a common held belief among the general public that sexual predators, and particularly those who target children, are loathed by everyone including inmates -- as if to say that even inmates find this behavior so horrific that they are compelled to action. Many even take satisfaction in this idea, that there will be some rough prison justice in the predator's future.
There is some small amount of truth and wishful thinking here covering a whole bunch of sillyness.
Almost everyone in a prison general population is a predator. They prey on anyone who they see as a potential victim, and most of them are not terribly discriminatory. At best they are sociopaths who really do not care about any of society's generally held ethics and morals. The gang kid might be in prison this time for stealing a car or selling some dope, but that's not the whole story. He has been involved in everything from random drive-by shootings, to drug and sex trafficking, robbery, extortion, violent assault and likely sexual assault, you name it. This fairly typical inmate doesn't give a flying F*U&K about some strangers kid. Most don't really give a damn about their own. The typical inmate would pimp his own kid out in a second if it enabled him to get something.
The real reason that child predators have such a hard time in prison general population is not that they victimized kids, but rather because the typical child predator is SOFT. An easy target. They tend to be older, they are usually not in the exception physical condition of the typical inmate, they are not used to fighting and violence, they are usually relatively new to the system, they have no friends already inside, and no gang affiliations. They are, in a word, victims for the other inmates to prey upon. And the inmates know that this is one category of victim that it is relatively safe to prey upon.
Which is why most child predators go straight into protective custody unit. They recieve the same priveleges and rights as any other inmate, they are surrounded by other similar inmates, many of whom are there for similar offenses. This is not to say that they are safe -- no one in prison is safe -- but they are as safe as one can be outside of death row or some kind of segregation.
But again, the idea that inmates have some ethical boundaries and that even these guys are horrified by crimes against children is, in a word, ridiculous.
Just my two-cents.
