At first, I thought it was at Tucker, but apparently it was at the East Arkansas Regional Unit.

At any rate, the person who murdered the guard was there for murdering his father, at 18 years of age. The guard was apparently attempting to take away away his contraband shoes. Contraband shoes?????? Again, I am not trying to defend this guy or what he did, but it sounds like he snapped after too many bullshit regulations like this one.

treat humans like beasts and they turn into beasts. Prisons for profit, supermax detention, removal of all human dignity... Why don't killings of guards happen more often, I wonder...

I worked for a short time as a "corrections' officer... and you are correct... even though just minimum security, I saw things that disgusted me...

he told us some pretty horrendous stories. The one that stuck with me.... definitely not for the squeamish. So heads up for anyone that doesn't want to read it...

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while doing rounds, one of the prisoners held their hand out to him to hand him something. That "something" happened to be the prisoner's own testicles. He had cut them off with a homemade knife.

for people with third rate high school educations that can't get a job anywhere else, but are willing to work a precinct. Most of the guards are just as beastly as the population.

personality. In some areas these are some of the only good paying jobs. Plus I heard G. Gordon Liddy refer to them as sub-human or something like that and anything G. Gordon Liddy says I would like to refute. Is it possible that the job makes them a little off? I certainly would become so if I had to deal with such things on a daily basis.

Whatever this guy's problems, he murdered a woman! He was 18 in 2000 when he was convicted of killing his father, but this is January 2012 so he's at least 29 now and maybe 30. What the hell?! Are we going to blame the guard because the system is corrupt? I've known folks who worked as prison guards, and the ones I knew were good people just trying to make it. They weren't well educated, but I myself am pretty well educated and I'm driving a goddamn bus! I feel sorry for this woman who was murdered. Forgive me if I don't shed a tear for the person who killed her!

"Wilson said authorities would turn over their information to prosecutors, who will determine whether to file charges against the inmate."

Whether to file charges?! What the fuck?! I can help them with that. He stabbed her to death! Murder One! Jesus Christ! What the fuck is this country coming to?

extreme gratification - AND - be counted as well worth it, I'm so very sorry to say.

Inmates are killed for certain types of shoes. That is why they are banned. The strongest prey on the weak. It's nothing new.
The system is just trying to help the weak ones survive.

Which is probably the reason they are contraband.

Spring steel = knife.

Sounds like he 'snapped' when he was 18 and committed murder. I'm not at all surprised he did it again.

The perp here was not the same person I was thinking about.

in lockdowns, denied visits that day (or for days)...as another DU'er said, I'm not excusing or making excuses, but I imagine the guards are undertrained and the inmates treated inhumanely.

oh yeah, you did say you werent excusing it.

Prison didn't turn him into a psychotic puke, he was already one. Probably will be until the day he is dead.

WTF!

When society allows little chance of a respectable dignified existence, an alternate source of pride is established. Be that gangs, or whatever.

Society has throwaways. They dont just accept that. In fact, they overco=mpensate. Those with the highest self esteem, are violent felons. We will reap the whirlwind, when the new breed of janitor children grow up. And get back at the society that relegated them to scrubbing pads.

How are men that get hassled for even the slightest delay is yes massah, gonna feel like being productive?

While some countries are running out of violent anti social types, we are breeding them like rabbits. And like the other inmates that are paying the price, so we citizens are paying the price. In insecurity, and fear.

Or just delete!

No sympathy for him-he was WHERE HE BELONGED when this happened.

what happened to her, so that we can have even just half of a chance to keep it from happening even just one more time. That effort honors her life, even when the learning is not perfect it is one more step in the right direction.

He should have had a king sized bed and a wide screen TV in his cell. He should have had 3 meals of his choice every day plus snacks at his hearts content.

My heart goes out to that guards family. I thought it was policy in prisons that if a cell had to be entered that at least 2 preferably 3 guards were there.

Prison guard is the worst possible job in the world I think.

seeing our children well? He doesnt seem so well. Most people dont kill their fathers. A little late, when society has rejected a kid as BAD.

that would be right at home on that site not to be mentioned. They think the rest of the world is just like the world that they perceive around themselves. Too much black/white, us/them mentality.

who knows how that kid's father abused him. You are too judgmental and karma may catch you.

The karma of seeing real murderers as the perpetrators and not the victims? Yeah. I'm scared to death of the horrible karma that's coming my way.

Look to your own judgements, and worry about what karma will come your way.

HONEST about what they are, which includes HOW they got that way, both by their own volition and ALSO by things beyond their control, especially ***IF*** those things beyond their control are things we can affect one way or another. NONE of that means that they should not accept the consequences for THEIR actions.

tough guys like you are just the kind of meat their waiting for in there.

I'm also not a murderer with a sick thing for shoes.

They're saying the murder would be less likely if prisoners were treated humanely.

I know you can see the difference.

I don't think that the one denies the other.

Because the murderer might have been mistreated? The question is, was he mistreated? His first murder was when he was a free man. Are you going to assume he was justified in killing his father because he wasn't treated humanely? There would be a lot more parental murderers if that was the case.

I'm say that deliberately mischaracterizing the positions of other posters is, to be charitable, not very nice.

The violence and abuse found in the prison system leads to more violence. The concept is easy to grasp. Discussion of it is a logical outcome of the OP.

This is just fucking crazy! Thanks for speaking up.

Last edited Sat Jan 21, 2012, 12:29 PM - Edit history (1)

A question for those right-wing slime-balls who complain about the wages government employees make: How much would YOU have to be paid to step into a prison to work for a living?

My 20th anniversary working for the Illinois Department of Corrections is next Friday.

I don't want the union-busting right-wing shitheads to scatter flower petals before me as I patrol a gallery, nor do I demand accolades, sonnets, or "attaboy" slaps on the back.

I want to send my kid to college.

That's it.

And I don't think that's too God-damn much to ask for.

They don't like doing that "work" thing--they prefer telling others to do the work FOR them!

And...take care in there.

So that you have no say about safety?

That goes without saying.

I can't imagine working in a place knowing that half or better of the people I'm dealing with would kill me given the chance.

But isn't it a usual policy that more than one guard should be in a cell? Isn't general guard to inmate ratio about 1 to 6?

6:1, but divided between three shifts. At any given time, I'm working on my own in a building with 120+ inmates. The statistics always cited are bullshit designed to mislead people.

I can't speak for all state prisions, but at the federal level the imates are treated with the respect they deserve. Guards are killed all to often, but not as often as imates. As prisoners behavior problems escalate they are put in higher security units, with less leeway.

"Bullshit regulations", are there to protect imates and guards both. My wife is a intellegent, educated, humane, loving person, and there is every chance that the poor woman who was murdered was the same.

There is only one way of showing his displeasure at the society that threw him away. Killing a guard. Simple.

How do you think men will react to a system that has jettisonned any pretense of rehabilitation, in favor of retribution?

If he's let out and kills someone else, you can't just say "aw shucks" we made a mistake.

We can never know that a person will not repeat a harmful action.

work is very therapeutic to me, so I think of remediation that includes the option for HONORABLE work that benefits others, especially victims. Farming and gardening, in particular, could help prisoners' families AND victims.

I know there ARE people who WILL game any and ALL systems, but at least they could be identified with accountability and treated differently from those who demonstrate in their behavior that they are in fact concretely changing.

Systems should also mediate the relationships amongst the prisoners, shouldn't they? Again, to identify what kinds of CHOICES people are willing to demonstrate that they ARE in fact making and then respond to those choices with appropriate options.

Johnson may be sentenced to it this time.

Our society treats the murders of cops, firefighters and prison guards differently than the murders of the rest of us, and for good reason. Yeah, he's looking at the needle in twelve to fifteen years, after all his appeals are exhausted.

I ask because I've seen a number of people on this thread pronounce that this guy was already a psycho killer ect but was he or was he turned into that in prison?

I ask due to of an experience I had while working in a Bone Marrow transplant clinic a few years ago, there was patient who also was a prisoner he was always brought in in full manacles hands waist legs feet even though he was unable to stand on his, he was in the final stages of leukemia. I once had to argue with one of his guards to get even one of the manacles removed from his hands few a few moments so I could do a blood draw, at any rate we knew he had murdered his father at 18 too, a couple of the nurses became curious and started looking up court records of the guys case, turns out the father had been sexually abusing the guy since he was a young child and liked to 'discipline' to put it politely the Mom as well, under the circumstances we could not believe this guy was in for on murder 1 but the case was tried in an earlier time and in a small rural community

The only thing that they have in common is the original crime albeit they may have had different motivations. The man in the OP killed a guard over a pair of shoes and though there may have been circumstances that would explain such actions in a way that elicits the compassion of others (like your story does), there is no indication of what was the cause of the original murder. I would also hazard a guess that the man in your example never killed again since his crime was one that a good defense would have convinced the jury that it was in self defense since the abusive father was a constant physical threat to both the boy and his mother. I believe in self defense when your life is threatened and children with abusive parents feel their lives are under constant threat. I also believe their lives are under constant threat and the evidence of this is all too common.

Would you or anyone feel the same compassion for the man in your example if he had also killed a guard while in prison? Over shoes?

My objection in this thread is that the woman guard is assumed to have mistreated the prisoner and therefore her murder is somehow understandable because we've all heard how demeaning prison is.

It doesn't matter that I agree with that assessment. But he murdered her and that's a fact in the story, yet there are DUers on this thread who imply that somehow she deserved to be killed even without any evidence that she humiliated or demeaned him.

I don't see how your example is anything like this guy. There is no comparison and I wonder why you seem to blend them together. Maybe I just misread your post.

that locking them away will prevent murderers from killing again?
What can you do to him, jail him for life for a second time?