Savage Justice for Jared Fogle?

I just read that Jared Fogle, the former Subway pitchman recently sentenced to 16+ years in prison for possession of child pornography and paid sex with minors, has been having a difficult time behind bars. I posted about his sentencing immediately after it was imposed.

Well, to no one's surprise or, at least, not to mine, social media is aflame with posts from people who are thrilled over Mr. Fogle's prison tribulations and who are fervently hoping that he's being subjected to far worse than has been reported. You can well imagine what those fervent hopes entail.

So, in response to some of those comments, this is what I posted yesterday:

Maybe those of you who are so gleeful over the prospect of someone being relentlessly sexually abused might be a little less so if you were the victim or even the observer of such abuse. Of course, you'll reflexively counter that Fogle's getting back what he gave out. But even if that's true, and I'm not aware that we know that any of the children in the confiscated pornography or in his documented sexual encounters were endlessly, forcibly, and viciously sodomized, it doesn't legitimize the infliction of such grievous punitive abuse. What Fogle did was very wrong. And what you all are getting your jollies publicly fantasizing about is also very wrong. And just as a certain kind of sickness or defect undoubtedly causes people like Fogle to do what most of us never would because, thank goodness, we don't share that sickness or defect, so a certain kind of darkness lies at the heart of human nature that craves the kind of awful retribution we see condoned and celebrated here. We humans really are a sorry lot!

And in response to one particular person's comments urging that the same old same old be done to Mr. Fogle, I posted this:

no one deserves to be treated as a subhuman even if you, in your savage advocacy to the contrary, believe otherwise. Moreover, it could be argued that people such as yourself, in publicly urging that a fellow human being be essentially tortured to death, is guilty of worse than the person on whom he wants to see this torture inflicted. Yes, I would argue that all the people here, including yourself, who champion the "justice" of Mr. Fogle being raped and tortured for the rest of his days are more reprehensible in your conduct than Mr. Fogle was. And if I'm right, what do you advocates of savage justice suppose should be done to YOU?

Having written this, I realize that posting such comments won't change anyone's mind. If anything, it'll inflame those who disagree with them and further entrench them in their disagreement. So, I guess it's fair to say that I'm mostly just venting my frustration and disgust over human savagery, and it could be argued that this is, in its own right, a kind of savagery or, at least, verbal violence.

But I would also like to think that I'm publishing the truth, regardless of what effect the public conveyance of it has on those who read it. That is, wanting and publicly advocating that sick people be relentlessly sexually tortured and worse for their sick acts is horrendous and, arguably, worse than those sick acts themselves, and that such widespread embrace of this kind of "justice" speaks countless volumes for the essential and, perhaps, irremediable depravity of the human condition.

Stop Prison Rape

Andrew Sullivan links to an op-ed piece in the LA Times about the deleterious effects to male inmates and to society at large of society's tacit acceptance of male prison rape. We all know it goes on, but we joke about it instead of viewing and rejecting it as the inexcusable physical and mental torture that it is. According to the article, a 2007 survey by the Department of Justice showed 20% of inmates admitting to being coerced into unwanted sex, and 10% admitting to being violently raped during the previous twelve months. This is unconscionable! No one deserves to be raped!

Here is a telling passage from the article:

Morally, our tacit acceptance of violence within prisons is grotesque. But it's also counterproductive. Research by economists Jesse Shapiro and Keith Chen suggests that violent prisons make prisoners more violent after they leave. When your choice is between the trauma of hardening yourself so no one will touch you or the trauma of prostituting yourself so you're protected from attack, either path leads away from rehabilitation and psychological adjustment.

And we, as a society, endure the consequences -- both because it leads ex-cons to commit more crime on the streets and because more of them end up back to jail. A recent report released by the Pew Center on the States revealed that more than one in 100 Americans is now behind bars. California alone spends $8.8 billion a year on its imprisoned population -- a 216% increase over what it paid 20 years ago, even after adjusting for inflation.

That's money, of course, that can't be spent on schools, on job training, on wage supports and drug treatment. Money, in other words, that can't be spent on all the priorities that keep people out of prison. Money that's spent instead on housing prisoners in a violent, brutal and counterproductive atmosphere. And there's nothing funny about that.

And here is a link to a website and organization dedicated to ending this horrible abuse.