When you think of Orange County, what do you imagine? Spoiled teenagers in flashy cars, identical multimillion-dollar houses strewn across the hills for miles and miles, picture perfect beaches and sunsets? That’s what we thought. Orange County is known for its wealthy population and beautiful people. What it’s not known for is its prisons. That’s not what necessarily comes to mind when you talk about “the O.C.”
But jails in Orange County have been in the news lately, and not because of their stellar cells.
According to an April 1 article in The Orange County Register, there have been several reports of inmates being mistreated: One was recently beaten to death – and, it seems, no one is acknowledging the seriousness of the situation. According to the article, allegations have been made for years that inmates were being brutally beaten by their fellow inmates, but no one seemed to want to listen.
It’s understandable, to a certain degree. An individual is sentenced to prison for a crime, whether it is a murder or a misdemeanor. Whatever they did was against the law, and they should have to pay the appropriate consequences for their actions. So why should we care that inmates get beaten up occasionally? They deserve it, right? Not necessarily.
The article refers to a news story that ran in the Register on March 28, stating that “While inmates beat John Derek Chamberlain to death, the senior deputy at the minimum-security barracks sat in the guard station, watching television.” That’s just not right; anyone can see that. Chamberlain was arrested for the misdemeanor possession of child pornography, a reprehensible crime, not to mention a repulsive one. Chamberlain obviously deserves to be in prison. But did Chamberlain deserve to die? Did he deserve to be brutally beaten and killed by his fellow inmates, while the guards ignored the situation completely? No. No he did not.
According to the article, Chamberlain was beaten to death due to the nature of his charges. Apparently, it’s not unusual for inmates to beat child molesters and other pedophiles, sometimes even with subtle guidance from the guards in charge. Who knew prison was such a corrupt, conniving place? It almost sounds like Washington.
In any case, it is completely ridiculous that prisoners are allowed to brutally beat each other to the point of murder. We’ve all joked around about men becoming other men’s slaves in prison and about what happens “behind bars.” It’s one thing to laugh about life in prison, but it’s quite another to have a man die due to a security guard’s indifference.
Don’t be mistaken, we are not praising child pornography. We are merely assessing the situation from a different viewpoint than other people. This man did not deserve to die, and this case should be investigated further, irrespective of the scowling mothers of Orange County.
It’s not every day that a cloud is cast over the sunny hills of the O.C. but with scandal after scandal occurring in the prisons within paradise, it feels like it’s going to be raining for a long, long time.
