Dylann Roof has been arrested. As many of my friends are pointing out on Twitter and Facebook, he won’t be tortured or raped or murdered in custody. He’ll be safe and sound.
The Post and Courier @postandcourier 2h2 hours ago
.@FBI confirms that Dylann Roof, 21, of #Columbia area is suspect in #CharlestonShooting. #chsnews
The SPLC has been providing information:
Photo of #CharlestonShooting suspect Dylann Roof shows patch of South African apartheid era flag
Second flag on Dylann Roof’s jacket appears to be that of white-rule Rhodesia, now Zimbabwe
SPLC: “Black churches have been the targets of hate crimes throughout our country’s history.” #CharlestonShooting
That’s far from a sure thing. Prisoners do get tortured, raped and murdered.
Are the rates as high for white prisoners as they are for black prisoners?
Ophelia: According to the one friend I had who went to prison for a time, prisoner-on-prisoner abuse tends to be pretty much even-handed. Given his notoriety, and the fact that African-Americans are vastly over-represented in the prison population, I suspect he’s going to end up in isolation for his own safety. It’s a brutal existence, given that we’re social animals, and it has serious long-term psychological effects, but I can’t say it’s any worse than he deserves at this point.
Guard-on-prisoner violence, on the other hand, seems to follow the usual lines of privilege; even the guards who aren’t privileged themselves know that men of color and known homosexuals are safer targets for abuse than white men, who are more likely to have resources to file a successful complaint. So unlike a person of color who needs to go into isolation, it’s at least less probable that the guards will take over where the prisoners left off.
As a side-note, I got a look at Roof’s Facebook page before it was taken down. It only had the one photo above on it, no posts from him. But he had about 80 Friends, and I took a peek at that list. Mostly other youths, but the weirdest part–the women were fairly racially diverse, but the men were heavily skewed towards being men of color–only a handful of other white men to be found. The page, by the way, seemed to be recent–the photo was loaded on May 15th.
Unimportant correction: May 22nd was the date for the photo.
Is it just me or does the angry glower resemble Alex (Malcolm McDowell) in “A Clockwork Orange”?
For torture via solitary confinement, there is limited data, but it appears black inmates are overrepresented.
For sexual assault, see page 17. For inmate-on-inmate misconduct, white inmates are victimized more often than black inmates (2.9% versus 1.3% in prison 2011-2012). For staff misconduct, black inmates were victimized more often (1.6% versus 2.6% in prison 2011-2012.
For murder, the rate from 2000-2010 was equal in jails (page 13), while it was higher for white inmates than black inmates in prison (page 20)
I don’t mean to distract at all from the victims in this case or Roof’s racism, but I get annoyed by throwaway lines that erase the abuse of prisoners, many of whom are in prison for non-violent offenses.