Criminal InJustice: Aileen

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† Criminal InJustice is a weekly series devoted to taking action against inequities in the U.S. criminal justice system. Nancy A. Heitzeg, Professor of Sociology and Race/Ethnicity, is the Editor of CI. Kay Whitlock, co-author of Queer (In)Justice, is contributing editor of CI. Criminal Injustice is published every Wednesday at 6 pm CST

Aileen
comments by nancy a heitzeg

I’m in Chicago — at the American Bar Association Annual Meeting — preparing to speak later this week on the School to Prison Pipeline: Mapping Solutions. More on that soon.

In my absence, the Sociology of Deviance is watching and writing on Aileen: The Life and Death of a Serial Killer, the second of two documentary films on Aileen Wuornos by Nicholas Broomfield and Joan Churchill.

If you haven’t seen it, you should. It is a complex tragedy of victim become offender, of trauma and slipping sanity, of unending betrayal, of the possibility – at least initially — of self-defense. It is a story too of media sensationalism, of the social construction of a Monster who fulfilled the worst nightmares and the stuff of stereotypes — angry lesbian serial killer hitch-hiking prostitute whose victims also were sullied. It is a story of systemic corruption — cops on the take, snitches, inept attorneys, a death machine that overlooked madness in the lust for vengeance, and then Florida Governor Jeb Bush who cashed in the political capital.

There is more to say here — there is everything to say here – but for now, Say Her Name too.

Aileen.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IsgVFplffl0

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  • Bob Phillips

    KayWhitlock Bob Phillips Thank you, Kay! It is always good to “see” you. You may have noticed that I’ve moved considerably in your direction over time.

  • KayWhitlock

    Thank you, Nancy. So many people think, having seen Charlize Theron in “Monster,” that they know this story.  No, they don’t.  Much gratitude to you.

  • KayWhitlock

    Bob Phillips Beautifully said, Bob.  Good to see you.

  • Bob Phillips

    How little the society at large comprehends the role of victimization in the creation of an “offender.” During my time inside the walls this became quite apparent to me, though I lacked any sort of precise language with which to express it. Not least of all because I hadn’t come to terms with my own victimization yet.
    The best I could do was some intuitive sense that the more horrific the offense, the more horrific the victimization.
    These days I think the great teacher, Thich Nhat Hanh, puts it best: “When another person makes you suffer, it is because he suffers deeply within himself, and his suffering is spilling over. He does not need punishment; he needs help.”
    If Thay is correct, and I believe he is, this may help to explain the fundamental flaw in western, particularly American, “corrections.” We think that punishment is corrective; and it may well be for some minor transgressions by otherwise well adjusted people. 
    But for those whose offenses are rooted in their “suffering spilling over,” punishment only deepens the trauma, makes greater the suffering, and invites further, perhaps more horrific, offenses in the future. Until, finally, there is nothing left to do . . . .