The cruelest punishment of all

[pegkerr]

I was reading an article about Dennis Rader, the BTK killer who has just been sent off to spend the rest of his miserable life in prison. This paragraph caught my eye:

Prosecutors asked the judge at sentencing to recommend Rader be barred from seeing or listening to news reports regarding his murders, prohibited from possessing anything with which he could draw or write about his sexual fantasies, and disallowed from making audio or visual recordings other than for law enforcement purposes.

The prosecution request surprised defense attorneys, who said they have not had time to research the issue.

If this prohibition stands, I wonder if this means he will be prevented from writing anything at all for the rest of his life. The death penalty is terrible (and I don't believe in it), prison for life is terrible. But being prevented from writing for the rest of my life would be, to me, unimaginable, perhaps the cruelest punishment of all.

There was discussion on this entry yesterday about the question of redemption in those who have committed grievous crimes. I can think of some who did perhaps redeem themselves in prison (e.g., Robert Stroud, the so-called Birdman of Alcatraz); one commonality between them is that they were allowed to read and write, which allowed them to reflect upon their actions and imagine a better outlet for their passions, even if, like Robert Stroud, it could only be in a small thing, like canaries.

Discuss.

Comments

[minnehaha.livejournal.com]

Imprisonment serves three separate purposes in our society: deterrence, revenge, and rehabilitation. I think a lot of the weird sentencing problems stem from not really understand which of the three we should be doing, which are moral and ethical, etc.

B

Prison...

[mizzlaurajean.livejournal.com]

should only be used to keep people who are a danger to others. Granted there are many ways to define that. Study's have shown that it fails to be a significant deterrant and even worse at Rehabilitation. Don't get me started on what I think is fundamentally wrong with our prison system.

I think it is fitting to prevent him access to the media that surrounds his case since we know that most serial killers thrieve on the publicity. I think preventing someone from writing or drawing is inhumane. It's probably the healthiest way for him to vent his psychosis.

[metmamandy.livejournal.com]

That seems unnecessarily harsh... throw the man a bone, he's being punished.

[heavenscalyx.livejournal.com]

I certainly think there should be a court injunction to keep him from profiting from his crimes by writing about them. But banning the man from writing or drawing at all? What about, oh, I dunno, therapy? I know he's never seeing the light of day again (for which I thank the judge), but there has to be some... purpose to each life, not just continuing to breathe and eat. If he has the ability to reflect, to seek some kind of redemption within himself, why not provide the necessary tools? It can only improve his existence on the next several times around.

And (says the researcher buried deep inside my skull) maybe records that he leaves or provides would help those who are trying to find a way to prevent/head off/cure this kind of psychopath.

[cedarlibrarian.livejournal.com]

I certainly think there should be a court injunction to keep him from profiting from his crimes by writing about them.]

I could be wrong, but isn't that already illegal, to profit from your crimes? Stanley "Tookie" Williams donates the money he makes from his books to a non-profit organization.

[em-h.livejournal.com]

My parents taught arts in several prisons -- my mother did theatre, my father creative writing. Two of the people they taught actually went on, partly through my parents' influence, to have careers as writers (one as a tv scriptwriter, the other writing short stories). One of them had been a recidivist (car theft mainly) since his teens, but after he started writing he never went back, and in fact, as well as writing, ended up running halfway houses and doing social work with at-risk youth. The other is still working in tv as far as I know & has won some awards.

It's not the only way out -- another man who appeared in a few plays my mother put on, but had no real artistic or intellectual interests, has pulled his life together very nicely as a long-haul truckdriver (still drops in on my mother if he's passing through town). But I really do think that my parents did some substantial good with their prison work.

Unfortunately, the climate of the times has changed, and arts programs for prisoners now tend to be seen as "coddling" or something like that, rather than a way of helping people imagine other lives for themselves.

With regard to this specific case, given that Rader is clearly not ever getting out of prison, I can't see what conceivable purpose is being served by denying him pencils and paper, which is what the phrase certainly sounds like. I suspect they're worried about him selling his "story" to newspapers.

[sartorias.livejournal.com]

The key phrase, I think, is (I paraphrase) 'which can facilitate his sexual fantasies.'

There are so many books that might open doors hitherto closed in his mind. (I would begin by giving him Boethius.)

[copperwise.livejournal.com]

Well, I understand what everyone is saying and I agree in principle, but in this case I'd like to point out that writing about his crimes was part of his method. The dozens of letters he sent, giving clues, taunting the police...he made detailed to-do lists for each "project," as he called his victims. He has publicly stated that someone else should have noticed there was something wrong, and done something about him.

Introspection isn't this guy's strong point.

Nothing is preventing him from giving interviews to psychiatrists seeking to study him. A full record will be available. Anything they need they will have ample opportunity to get.

Part of the punishment/rehab/prevention concept in the prisons is to prevent the criminal from contact with anything that served him in his crimes. Child sex killers, for example, aren't allowed pictures of children, even family pictures of their own children or nieces and nephews. They attempt to remove all stimuli related to that particular criminal. In this case, writing his taunting letters and fantasies and little notebooks of plans was integral to his persona. So they're taking that away.

As important as writing is to all of us, I think we need to remember that it can be abused like any tool. If he seeks to go within himself and work out his issues, there's nothing wrong with spending a whole lot of time on his knees communing with himself and with his God (and remember he still claims to be a devout Christian, he says this is all because of a demon that got inside him). I'm sure that many thousands of illiterate people throughout the centuries have managed to do introspective work with thought and prayer, minus the ability to write those thoughts down. I think in his case that's a proper method.

[callunav.livejournal.com]

I worked for a while with a girl (teenager) who required 1:1 staffing within a locked-door detention facility in order to reduce the risk she posed to others. She was awaiting trial on two counts of attempted homicide.

A lot of people said she was psychotic, and maybe she was, though not in the ways I've encountered psychosis before. She was probably mildly delusional. She was also wholely manipulative, to the point where I think she'd lost track of how to tell what she was really feeling, between one role and the next that she performed for the rest of us.

Journalling was probably her favorite activity. She liked to compose songs and write them down. She loved to design new fashions and improbable women's clothing. And she liked to write about what she was thinking. A lot of what she was thinking involved the process of selecting her next target, how she saw them as vulnerable, what she would do to win their trust, and how she would create an opening for trying to kill them.

She told me that she would like to actually murder someone. She thought it would be interesting. She was mildly regretful of all the trouble her previous attempts had caused in her life, and also mildly regretful that she'd been stopped before she had completed her attempts.

It became very clear that her knowledge that her journals would be read was an enormous part of the attraction. She wrote, I believe, honestly; it wasn't by any means everything that was on her mind, she picked and chose, but after spending 8 hours a day in direct contact/conversation with her, 5 or 6 days a week, for a few months, I believe that it was honestly what she was thinking about, and that there was a compulsive quality to the writing process for her. On the other hand, it was also a performance, with the staff and the therapists as her audience. And it was a diversion: it put her in the mode in which she was powerful, cunning, invulnerable, which was altogether a better-feeling place to be than, say, feeling bewildered and trerrified, frightened, isolated, and abandoned, all of which she was down at some bedrock level she rarely acknowledged.

And yet, although there was very much a performance aspect to the writing, although she clearly knew that everything she wrote was read by staff - she was *eager* to have it read - and she was perfectly ready to talk about it with people, nevertheless she responded with explosive rage when anyone made any decisions about her treatment based on her writing.

But when her treatment folks decided to forbid her to write about violence , death, and a few of her other trigger-subjects (they had to, if there was going to be a chance for her in court, because the journals were evidence - and they also thought it wasn't helping her), the ban enforced by removal of all writing tools for a period if she violated it, after the explosions and the assaults, and the unlimited rage, it did seem to keep her more focused on the present, on her restrictedly normal every-day life. In other words, it may have helped a little, at least as much as anything did. She'd been in therapy since she was 5, and in one treatment facility or another since she was 11, I think, and at this point no treatment facility in the country would take her: the goal by the time I knew her wasn't therapy because that had been tried and failed. The goal was to teach her how to control her behavior enough that she could be with other people.

I hope you're not reading this waiting for the conclusion that makes sense of it all. I'm not sure there's any sense to be made. I'm writing this essentially to say that I've been up close and personal in a case like this, and I was just as ambivalent as anyone is from a distance. When she was barred from writing about her obsessions, she was more out-of-control, more self-injurious, more immediately violent. But writing about her obsessions didn't vent them harmlessly, it augmented and strengthened them.

I've been there. I've thought about this a lot. I still don't have any answers.

[pegkerr.livejournal.com]

Thanks so much for giving me the benefit of your experience and insight--even though you, like the rest of us, have no easy answers.

[mizzlaurajean.livejournal.com]

I think it's a different thing to resrict and direct what someone in her situation at that age may write about then a middle aged man. They are in very different places on the developmental wheel. There is no chance or point to trying to straighten this guy out. Not that he doesn't deserve therapy or anything like that.
If someone's journal writing seems to feed inapropriate behavior I think it may be acceptable to restrict it to whatever degree determined appropriate.
Every case must be considered some what individually and all the factors that brought them to the place they are at. And the first more important question for consideration is the age of the child or adult your are talking about.

[callunav.livejournal.com]

And the first more important question for consideration is the age of the child or adult your are talking about.

It seems like it would be, doesn't it?

I can't tell, though, whether you're proposing that the difference is that one has more legitimate authority over a young person than a middle-aged one, or that youth may be assumed to still be capable of change, while middle-aged people are not.

In either case, I'm not sure I agree. It's been one of the hardest things for me, working with both teens and adults: facing the realization that in all likelihood, this person will never significantly change. And it's happened to me in working with both teens and adults...and then there are both who /do/ change, in spite of amazing odds against them.

It's excruciating. No matter how old a person is, 15 or 75, when they're in the grip of a pattern of thought and behavior which is ruining their life and making it impossible for them to be with others safely or sanely--it's like the thing that will help is right there just outside your grasp, just outside *their* grasp, which is more important. It's painful and exhausting and it sucks, for the people trying to help and the people who need help, both.

[mizzlaurajean.livejournal.com]

No it had nothing to do with legitimate authority. It depends on the young person. It depends on the metal state of the person young or old a the time, lots of factors.
The ability to change varies from person to person but theoretically the younger they are the better their odds. Preferrably before the age of 10 when we have the last significant drop in our neural flexibility.
But the goals are very different in these two instances. It is important for her to be able to be with others safely even if it is within confinement. The BTK killer isn't necessarilly unsafe in the same room with others. And he will never walk the streets freely. That doens't mean it's not important he get help, everyone deserves that opportunity. Given his circumstances it isn't going to have the same effect if he makes big changes to his ability to simply be with others. He still won't get the chance at freedom.
In the girls case she hadn't been successful killing anyone, right? In which case helping her grow and change and not want to do that means she could live freely. Which is hughly different from this guy who has repeatedly victimized and tortured and murdered people. Even if he could be "fixed" so to speak he has forever lost the privalage to live freely. I agree with you in either case it sucks for them the system failed them too little, too late. And our system will only continue to fail big time until we focus on prevention.

[lkw18.livejournal.com]

I think what everyone has said is very interesting and brings up good points.

My only opinion is that if I were one of the victim's family members, I sure as hell would not want Rader to be able to have any creative outlet whatsoever. He ended so many lives and I don't think he deserves to have a life with creative mental stimulation. I truly hope he does makes peace with himself and with God, but like copperwise said, he can do that through prayer and meditation. If I were one of the family members, I wouldn't even want the possibility to be there for him to conjure up any fanatsies.

[vaguely.livejournal.com]

Not being allowed pen and paper for the rest of my natural life would be the equivalent of killing me.

I've actually told everyone who knows and likes me at all that if I were ever incapacitated in a way that prevented me from writing that they might as well kill me, because I live through ink. And I am serious about that.

I don't feel sorry for this scum at all, but in a way...I hate to think of that kind of life.