Can't stand this attitude re prison attacks

[BySnappyUmberFish]

After the murder of Ian Watkins and the assault and (very possible) death of Ian Huntley, social media and news articles have been flooded with comments such as 'Give that man a medal!!' 'Not all heroes wear capes!!'.
These people seem to forget that the killers are in prison for as equally heinous and despicable crimes as the aforementioned two. They have also most probably not attacked them over what they did, but over debts, drugs or just to gain some notoriety.

I am fed up of hearing comments like this.

Can’t agree more 👏🏼

Yes, it was full of them on here.

I also feel for his and Watkins mothers, they have to live with this every day.

I don’t want him to die, but if he did it wouldn’t bother me.

I would rather he died at an old age, having to contemplate daily what he did.

The thing is people feel justified in their approach based on who the victims are and what they know about them, whereas the perpitrators are rarely known.

It’s easy to wish the likes of Ian Huntley dead because of what we know. And yet, if it was a more heinous criminal than him (and yes, they do exist) and he was the one wielding the crowbar would people be saying “give that Ian Huntley a medal”?

They absolutely wouldn’t. Because they know who he is and what he did.

Whereas the men who attacked him are faceless strangers, and yet they are almost certainly guilty of equally if not more heinous crimes themselves.

Let’s not pretend that they care about children, or women, or whoever else the victim has attacked/murdered. They do it for notoriety and nothing more.

Ian Huntley’s death will be no loss to society, but that doesn’t make the means fit the end.

Two wrongs don’t make a right.

me too. i want them to live long, unhappy, miserable lives, full of fear.

Couldn’t agree with you more.

Despite their crimes prisoners also deserve to be safe. It's concerning to think how easily this can happen in prisons, imagine it was your relative who was inside.

While I don’t comment on the posts, I understand and support them to an extent. For me personally there is a very big difference between killing a man in a fight for example and murdering children or committing sexually motivated murders.

None are acceptable but I could never consider them as bad as each other.

If my relative was a sexual predator or child murderer I would be congratulating their killer.

I don’t think offending pedophiles deserve to be safe anywhere.

His attacker raped and murdered an innocent woman.

He murdered 3 people, one of them a pregnant woman.He also raped the pregnant woman. That's not the same as 2 men in a drunken brawl and one dying.

I’m not talking about this specific case, it was just an example.

I think he was also a rapist iirc, in which case he deserves the same treatment in my opinion. I still don’t feel bad at all for Ian Huntley.

YANBU
I think some people are also blind to the fact that if prisoners can do this to each other, they can also do it to staff. There is nothing to celebrate about any of this.

I tried to explain my thinking on another thread. Here goes.
Today there will be people in prison who have been convicted of offences who are actually innocent. In other words there has been a miscarriage of justice. Some of the offences would be considered heinous.
If we think that vigilante punishment is OK then we are OK with innocent people being assaulted or murdered.
So, no, I don't want vigilantes in prison. I don't care what the prisoners have done, the law has dealt with them according to the law. And I don't want people who are found to be innocent to be further punished by others.
We aren't monsters.

People like Ian Huntley won't be mixing with the general prison population and a quick google shows the man who attacked him commited horrendous crimes too. I'm sure the families of the attackers victims don't need to see people congratulating him online.

Do you think he really cares?

The sooner he dies the better.

I think the majority of people who said these comments changed their opinions when they had a moment to really think about what they where saying. The others are probably 12 year olds

Do you honestly think murderers and rapists deserve to be safe?? Their victims weren’t. I don’t really understand that viewpoint. They couldn’t live in a civilised society. I hope they live in fear of their lives tbh, isn’t that part of the punishment? If they live carefree in prison then prison is not really serving its purpose.

I was happy when Ian Watkins died, he’d shown absolutely zero remorse for what he did, the man was a complete waste of oxygen who was never going to be of any use to society and the world is better off without him.

I don’t heap praise on the perpetrators though, they are in there for similar if not worse crimes. The people who do, obviously haven’t engaged their brains and thought about that.

The point is that this can happen to any prisoner at any time. It can happen to staff too, and none of that is ok.

I feel for the victims and their mothers and families.

I’d disown any child of mine who committed any act of this nature.

Only the victims deserve sympathy

It has always been true that you can tell all you need to know about a society by how it treats its prisoners.

I agree with you, prisons should be safe for all inmates. However I fail to feel much sympathy for the likes of Ian Huntley either

If the prisoners are not safe then the staff are not either.