Most people have never been to (or in) prison. In their minds, life in prison must be more or less similar to what is depicted on TVs and in movies, but it is not always like that in reality.
Prison life is indeed filled with threats of violence and psychological torture due to isolation. Of course, it all depends on the security level of that prison, to begin with.
Minimum security prison is the easiest as the facility is intended to house a category known as “white collar criminals” comprised of non-violent individuals who pose little to no physical risk to the public.
Maximum security – sometimes referred to as high security or supermax – prison is as strict as they come and built to keep the most dangerous criminals, including convicted murderers, away from society.
Death row inmates are usually incarcerated in supermax prisons. However, for a select few convicted murderers, imprisonment in maximum-security correctional facilities is not as bad as it may appear to be from the outside.
Some serial killers have certain privileges that make no sense to any law-abiding taxpayer.
For example, Richard Speck, who was supposed to be incarcerated for at least 400 years at the Stateville Correctional Center for the murders of eight nurse students, engaged in sexual activities and illegal drug use behind bars with some other inmates. Speck was not the only privileged convicted murderer in the world.
10 /10 Dennis Rader
Convicted on ten counts of murder in the first degree, Dennis Rader was sentenced to 10 consecutive life imprisonments without parole and is incarcerated at the El Dorado Correctional Facility.
In the maximum-security prison, Rader spends his time in solitary confinement with an hour of exercise per day and three showers per week.
In 2006, he was granted access to television, radio, reading materials, and other right behavior privileges.
This eased-restriction policy does not sit well with his victims’ families and the prosecutors who helped put Rader behind bars.
9 /10 Ted Bundy
It was no surprise that Ted Bundy decided to represent himself in trials. Bundy was partly a law school dropout and mostly a violent man with a twisted mind.
He admitted to killing 30 women, and in court, acted as a one-person show of witness, defendant, and lawyer.
His privileges began not in prison but during the court proceedings in which he was the accused. Bundy walked around unshackled and was loosely supervised in custody.
He even escaped prison twice and somehow managed to charm the judge who sentenced him to death.