Spartan Daily

Prison creates more murderers

This article originally ran in the Feb. 8, 2011 issue of the Spartan Daily.

Fyodor Dostoevsky once said, “The degree of civilization in a society can be judged by entering its prisons.”

Edward Schaefer, a 44-year old man who was in prison for hitting a little girl while drunk on his motorcycle, was stabbed to death on July 26, 2010, in San Quentin.

Upon finding this out, I was largely apathetic.

“I guess that’s why he’s in prison,” I figured and went about my business.

However, the U.S. prison system remains so far out of sight and out of mind in my normal day-to-day life. This seemed a prime opportunity to investigate how common violence occurs within the U.S. prison system.
A 2006 study by the Commission on Safety and Abuse in America’s Prisons reported that violence still poses a large problem for inmates.

The study showed that gang violence, rape and officer brutality crimes often go unreported by both prisoners and corrections 
officers who fear assault if they report the incidents.

More than two-thirds of inmates who leave the penal system are reincarcerated within three years of their release, according to a 15-state study by the Bureau of Justice Statistics.

So it shouldn’t be surprising that my initial reaction was to not care what happens to Frank Souza, who took Schaefer’s life.

Souza had finished three prison terms prior to the murder conviction, which 
he was serving when he killed Schaefer.

He was scheduled to be in prison for 70 years for killing a homeless man in San Jose.

A witness reported after the incident he was shaking and almost smirking, “like he had done a good deed.”

I have never met Souza personally, but it seems as though there were certain issues that were not resolved.

This is a signal that our justice system is failing to rehabilitate, and some individuals are becoming more dangerous as time passes.

A study from the Bureau of Justice Statistics indicates five percent of prisoners reported sexual victimization.

Considering that 12 percent of prisoners at the federal and state level are 
incarcerated for sexual crimes, this means that either half of U.S. inmates convicted of sexual crimes continue to perpetuate their offense in prison, or our system is encouraging more individuals to commit more kinds of crimes.

Souza is trying to avoid the death penalty by challenging that he was “lying in wait” before killing Schaefer with a seven-inch shard of metal on the prison yard.

His legal representatives are claiming that over the last 30 years the law has become vague and convoluted and are hoping to rule it unconstitutional.

I cannot blame him, as prison life may be something he has become familiar with over time, and he may well want to hang onto it.
It is a shame though that Edward Schaefer had to lose his life, while serving the punishment a jury of his peers prescribed to him.

It is a shame that Frank Souza never got the help he needed, and spent his whole life in and out of the prison system.

It is a shame that these men and 1,613,740 like them live in a world totally disconnected from mine.

And their world is getting worse.