BTK Serial Killer Gets Prison Treats For Good Behavior

[The Straight Story]

BTK Serial Killer Gets Prison Treats For Good Behavior
Prison Restrictions Eased

POSTED: 9:48 am EDT April 24, 2006

WICHITA, Kan. -- Good behavior has earned BTK serial killer Dennis Rader the right to watch television, listen to the radio, read and draw in his prison cell.


Prosecutors had sought restrictions on such activities, saying they would allow Rader to relive his grisly, sex-fueled fantasies through images of women and children and written and broadcast accounts of his murders. But Rader earned the privileges through the Department of Corrections' system to encourage good behavior, said Bill Miskell, a department spokesman.

The eased restrictions aren't sitting well with some family members of Rader's 10 victims and prosecutors who helped put him behind bars at the El Dorado Correctional Facility.

"We're having a hard time understanding why somebody like this is allowed to earn privileges when all the evidence was presented as to how he can turn what most people would consider to be innocent into something that is evil," said Kevin O'Connor, a deputy district attorney for Sedgwick County.

http://www.local6.com/news/8955035/detail.html

[kurth]

1. Extra Alpo for the dog catcher?

[alcibiades_mystery]

2. Hate to say it - since this guy is a particular scumbag

But rules are rules. If he follows the rules, and these are the standard consequences for follow the rules, I'm not sure why he should be denied them.

[ComerPerro]

5. One question this raises, though

is:

If he is truly so warped and demented that he can take the most innocent images and use them to fuel his torture and murder fantasies, then how can he possibly be expected to reform if he is allowed continued exposure to these.


Of course, maybe his behavior can be monitored and his privileges could be revoked at some time if it is deemed necessary...

[alcibiades_mystery]

6. The guy got 400 year sentence

It has nothing to do with reform. He is being warehoused, period.

[ComerPerro]

8. Yeah but supposedly the point of prison is that people can change

[bloom]

9. not always

I don't think that anyone expects Rader to change.

[ComerPerro]

10. well, me either. But we don't want to indulge his impulses

[alcibiades_mystery]

15. No, that WAS the point of prison

for specific classes of offenders, for some years, but we're mostly beyond that now. Prison is rarely about rehabilitation or reform anymore. This was a mania lasting from the late 18th century up until about the 1970's. Prison now is mostly about warehousing people during their most dangerous period of life. This is true even of relatively minor offenders these days. There is, to be sure, still some marginal gesture towards "rehabilitation" and prisons still retian the name "corrections," but it is a dying form. It's about holding, not reform, regardless of the dutiful proclamations of criminalists.

As for Rader, he is an even more extreme case. His sentence alone tells us that the job of the prison is not to reform him at all. It is to hold him, period.

[ComerPerro]

3. This is gonna get national coverage soon, and it will be used

to paint the left as leniant on crime.

Sure, there's no link to liberalism or left wing though in this. But that doesn't matter.

The right will speak out and complain, paint it as some sort of "political correctness" issue, and use it to try to stir up some moral outrage among their base.


That being said, I would just like to remind everyone about who exactly the BTK killer was. A Christian Republican.

Nuff said

[alcibiades_mystery]

4. Because the Kansas Department of Corrections is a bastion of liberalism?

:shrug:

[ComerPerro]

7. Trust me, I've already heard a right winger argue that case

On the radio this morning, on my way to work.

Heard him say that this is all politically correct mumbo-jumbo from the left, peace activist, blah blah...

[alcibiades_mystery]

16. And anyone who hears that should nsay what I said

The notion that the Kansas Department of Corrections is practicing PC liberalism is absurd in the extreme, as anyone with a brain knows.

At a certain point, we'll stop being scared of their absurd argumentys and just start calling them absurd. It's ridiculous, to be laughed at, and the only response is to break into fits of laughter. Let's stop with the trembling in the corner bullshit.

[elehhhhna]

11. BTK IS A REGISTERED REEP. Say it loud.

[ComerPerro]

13. say it loud, say it proud

[elehhhhna]

14. they are perverts--all of them, deep down,

get a fat charge out of inflicting pain. There's no denying it. Too much evidence.

[npincus]

12. the a--hole will undoubtedly try to sell his art work.

Like Gacy.