Ex-Subway pitchman beaten in federal prison

Ex-Subway pitchman beaten in federal prison: TMZ

Why would a child molester by housed in low-security prison? Child molestation is a very serious crime.

 

In the Federal system, a "low-security" facility is about equal to a medium-security state institution.

My question is, why was he in general population? Putting a child molester/kiddie porn fan in general population is like waving a red cape at a pack of angry bulls. Even among criminals, there is a perverse sense of honor, and those who victimize or exploit children usually do the hardest time of all.

 

I read a few details online, probably CNN. In any case everything posted on the internet must be true and my memory never confuses facts. That said, here are a few details:

-Mr. Fogle (former Subway restaurant pitchman) was housed in a prison that houses primarily (not exclusively) sex offenders.
-Mr. Fogle apparently has money so that he can buy privileges. Whether this is more commissary or bribing guards may be up for debate. In any case him having more does not endear him to his fellow inmates.
-The assailant is alleged to have been primarily trying to draw attention to his own plight. He believes himself too harshly punished for his crime. He was not necessarily angry with Mr. Fogle, rather he was using Mr. Fogle's celebrity status to get his own plight in the news.

I guess we can al believe what we like.

 

When Madoff was sent to Butner the news was parading former Butner inmates, guards and a few other experts all over television talking about the place and it was discussed how they had a special wing for sex offenders where they were housed together.

Having seen how exceptional some media reporting on higher ed has been I naturally take everything the major outlets tell me with a grain of salt. But that would sort of jive with what perrymk is saying with regards to his assailant also being a sex offender and wanting to draw attention to his own plight.

I would imagine Fogle has a double whammy going for him. If beating up a sex offender (in particular, one whose crimes were against children) is going to help build "cred" then that's a win. But he's also one of the only targets in that particular prison whose beating is likely to get you, as the assailant, mentioned in the national news. Even if he was there for white collar crime I imagine it would be tempting for some.

On an unrelated note, I think what Jared Fogle did was terrible and I'm glad he is looking at a lengthy prison sentence. I'm also glad that he'll never truly be "free" (even though I have grave concerns about how we register sex offenders in this country, but that's a topic for another day). But I also believe that prison violence does deter crime and, in fact, contributes to our abysmal recidivism rates. Jared Fogle was sentenced to time in prison and he should do that time. But society, in removing him from it, also has a responsibility to ensure that he is not brutalized while under its care, custody and control.

 

So, actually some of those details appear to be contested...

NY Daily News is reporting a 60 year old in for a gun conviction beat Fogle to "send a message to pedophiles."

Fox News is reporting the same.

So, it looks like, to Bruce's point, Fogle is just wandering around general population. And, to my earlier point, the precedent has been set that if you beat the crap out of Jared Fogle you'll get your picture in the paper.

 

I don't have extensive knowledge of the Federal BOP system, but at the county & state level in MA, sex offenders have the choice of being segregated in a seperate unit (with other sex offenders) or going into general population. I have no idea why Fogle would want to go into general, unless he thought that his half-assed celebrity status would keep him safe.

Also don't discount corrections officers making a "mistake" and allowing access to sex offenders. That was speculated (but never proven) when former priest John Geoghan (one of the centerpieces of the Boston priest sex abuse scandal) was murdered in the Souza-Baranowski Correctional Institution, which is Massachusetts's "Super Max" prison.

In death, Geoghan triggers another crisis - The Boston Globe

 

Security classification is based on a number of things i.e. being a member of a security threat group (gang), history of violence, and escape risk.

 

I have to agree Jarod is going to do some very hard time.

 

I thought I heard somewhere that Jared got his ass kicked again. I could be wrong though. I just don't understand these people. I mean the guy made millions from the simple fact that he lost some weight. He lived in a huge mansion, and had it all. Now it is all (or will be) gone.

 

Oh, I have no doubt that occurs. And corrections officer corruption is something that makes my stomach turn.

I had occasion to tour Southport Correctional just outside of Elmira, NY (where another maximum security prison sits atop a large hill). Southport is New York's Supermax facility.

The halls were eerily quiet. And we were told that prisoners were never in the hallways together. They were removed one at a time. No contact whatsoever. What was interesting about it was that they had two rather nice little chapels (one was reserved for Muslims the other was for Christian and Jewish services). There, they said, only 2-3 inmates were allowed inside at a single time and always with at least that many guards.

If an inmate killed another inmate at a place like that I think it would have to either be intentional or an act of supreme negligence.

 

Jared, apparently lied to his new sugar daddy. He told Bubba that, although he (Jared) did not have a "foot long," he at least was packing six inches. After further examination Bubba found out that it was more or less three inches. So Bubba beat the crap out of him because he felt betrayed by Subway, or at least his pitchman, for false advertising. True story, or so I heard...:biggrin:

 

Ay que KC, you are a travieso.

 

I understand the pitfalls of using Wikipedia as an authoritative source but my sprint through google scholar listings for sex offender recidivism research yielded a bunch of studies that were 1) not that recent, 2) gave conflicting data/conclusions, 3) spent a lot of space criticizing the other studies (in other words, standard social science results). In any case, there's at least some evidence that focused treatment reduces recidivism substantially. I'm not going to pretend to understand the complete picture of why people beat each other up in prison. Some of it seems common sense but there are certainly more subtle factors at work that I don't understand.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sex_offender

 

Having worked as a prison administrator, I can say that preventing inmate-on-inmate violence is a priority. It makes the job of correctional officers much more difficult. So if those COs were permitting the inmate-on-inmate violence described, they would not benefit (within the confines of their responsibilities). But they could very well benefit in an extra-curricular fashion. I'd look there.

 

"Sex offender recidivism" is a very broad term; there are some sexual offenders (those with Exhibitionistic Disorder, Frotteurism, etc.) where treatment can be effective and beneficial. However, it's generally agreed that other sexual offenders (pedophiles, violent rapists) cannot be cured, which was the reason for the rise in civil commitment laws.

 

There is a difference being being "cured" and reoffending, though. The statistics show that the majority of sex offenders abuse children who are known to them (family members, students etc). The majority aren't cruising around picking up kids off the street at random. That's one of the reasons why states like Maryland don't impose restrictions on where a registered sex offender can live. Other states have complex systems where a person can only travel locally after submitting carefully planned itineraries. I was just reading an article about a gentleman in Texas who is doing 10 years in prison because, at the 9.5 year mark of his probation (his case stemmed from the fact that at 19 he dated and had sex with his 16 year old girlfriend who is now an adult and is appalled that he was punished for their consensual relationship) because he stopped somewhere that wasn't preplanned.

I think the idea of civil commitment makes sense. If a sex offender who served his sentence is doing something dangerous, lock him up before he offends again. I get it. But a lot of these punishments seem to be based upon an emotional response to the idea of sex offenders rather than any objective analysis. And, with so many cases involving things like public urination and "Romeo and Juliet" cases, that's naturally going to skew the recidivism rates. A 19 year old who has sex with his 16 year old girlfriend is probably a lot less likely to "reoffend" 10 years later.

 

As you suggest, all sexual offenses are not the same and neither are the offenders. In Massachusetts there is a three-tiered classification system based on the assessed likelihood of reoffending.

Classification Levels for Sex Offenders

In fairness I should also point out that there are a lot of female sexual offenders out there too. Most people are surprised how many.

 

I'm no expert in the system. But I see guys like Jared Fogle being the sort of people we want to keep track of. And I think it's a good system, in principle, but I worry that such a system also has the potential to hurt people.

I just happened to have read this article around the time I started commenting on this.

 

Massachusetts is also in the minority of states that don't have full community notification, except for Level 3's. For Level 2's, you can only find out if there are any in your geographical area, not their name, picture, etc.

More so in recent years, with the seemingly skyrocketing numbers of female teachers caught having sex with their students. Even still, the victims in those cases are often considered "lucky" to have been seduced by an older woman, but when the genders are reversed, the public is calling for the male teacher's head on the end of a pike.