I’ve been in prison for the past
25 years. And in that time, I’ve watched men come and go and come back
again...and again...and again.
The reasons so many offenders
find themselves back in prison with such frequency are not always clear. But
sometimes they are. Sometimes it’s obvious that an offender is sure to return.
Yet the Connecticut Department of Correction (CDOC) does nothing to provide
these people with the specific, individualized help they need. Hell, it doesn’t
even have a proactive means of identifying those needs. The prison system is
simply not responsive in that way.
Consider the case of Chester (not
his real name), an inmate I’ve known for more than a decade who is rapidly
approaching another release date. Chester is a sex offender. Specifically,
Chester molested the 8 year old daughter of a woman he was dating. He was
caught raping the girl in the bushes of a Connecticut lake while the three were
on a picnic. Clearly Chester has serious psychological problems, and at the
very least, needs treatment. Punishment alone could never fix him.
But punishment - and not very
severe punishment, I might add - is all Chester has ever really been subjected
to; this despite the fact that he has continued to exhibit a prurient interest
in young girls. Throughout the time I’ve known him, Chester has been obsessed
with pornography. And the younger the girls featured in the pictures appear to
be, the more he seems to like it.
While it is true that the CDOC
banned hard-core pornography from its institutions many years ago, that has not
stopped Chester from seeking the stimulation he desires; it has merely shifted
his interest to so-called soft-core images; which is to say, images that comply
with the CDOC’s very specific restrictions on sexually explicit material.
However, Chester has spent years
testing the limits of those restrictions. To be sure, many of Chester’s photo
orders have been rejected by the prison’s mailroom staff because they violate
department policies. And this of course enrages him. He always challenges the
rejections through the CDOC’s grievance procedure, which he almost always
loses. By Chester’s own estimation, he has filed more than 50 grievances in
recent years. Indeed, he often has several grievances pending at the same
time.
Nevertheless, Chester’s addiction
to young-looking girls continues to be well fed because there are mailroom
staff who apparently can’t be bothered to reject the photos he orders. Thus Chester
is probably allowed as many pictures as he is denied. In fact, he currently has
an entire album of photos that clearly violate CDOC policies. But nobody can be
bothered to address that either.
That said, it’s doubtful that
simply denying Chester pictures of naked girls would ever be enough to correct
his deviant behavior. That policy, even if it were effectively enforced, would
only make sense if it were part of an integrated approach to addressing his
criminogenic needs. Chester, like other chronic offenders, needs a regimen of
strict accountability and intensive counseling targeted toward his antisocial
values and thought patterns.
But in all the times he’s been in
prison he’s never had anything even close to resembling that. That’s just not
what prison is or ever has been in this country. Ultimately, having spent the
two decades he’s been behind bars trying to gain vicarious access to young
girls, it’s hard to imagine how Chester won’t reoffend once he is released,
which will be in about four years. And in ignoring Chester’s open deviancy, the
CDOC has not only failed his previous victim, it has failed his future
victim(s) as well.
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