I think my greatest usefulness lies in what I've had the opportunity to demonstrate -that the most "hopeless" criminal in existence can be salvaged; that he's worth salvaging, on both humanitarian and hard-headed social grounds. Retributive justice and the execution chamber aren't the answer. In seeking a solution to the crime problem, I believe that vision can and should be substituted for vengeance. I'm convinced that there is much that is narrow and negative and wrong in society's attitude toward and treatment of the man who is said to be at "war" with it, and who often is at war with himself.
—Caryl Chessman
For those of you who do not know who Caryl Chessman was, he was a criminal, and a nasty one at that.
He had a record of robberies, assaults, and serial rape, and he was sentenced to death for kidnapping under California's "Little Lindburgh Law" for kidnapping his victim, he dragged her about 22 feet out of the car before raping her.
Acting as his own attorney, the trial was 15 years before Gideon v. Wainwright, he managed to put off the execution for a dozen years.
While in prison, he wrote 4 bestselling books and dozens of articles, all dealing with the carceral process, and calls for clemency were made by such luminaries as Eleanor Roosevelt, Pablo Cassals, Aldous Huxley, Ray Bradbury, William Inge, Norman Mailer, Dwight MacDonald, Christopher Isherwood, Carey McWilliams, Billy Graham, and Robert Frost.
He was a violent criminal, and he was a remarkable thinker, and a remarkable writer.
One wonders what he could have done if his life before crime, and his during his (very) numerous encounters with the law were a little bit more humane.
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