I think of the slaying of the treasure of a person, University of Utah track star Lauren McCluskey, and I think of her alleged murderer, Melvin Rowland.
I read in the New York Daily News, and it strikes me, how "He had recently left a halfway house after spending nearly a decade in prison."
We failed, then, did we?
My mind rushes to think of prisoner reform, of the idea that it is -- or should be -- the intent of prisons to reform the prisoners -- that no Lauren McCluskeys should be killed. And, I wonder if at times like this, we should go back to the prison as fast as we go back to the scene of the crime.
You search the scene where efforts were made to reform the criminal as much as you search the crime scene itself. You investigate what went wrong with prisoner's rehabilitation as much as you investigate the crime. What you find might hold a key to changing the next Melvin Rowland, and to saving the next Lauren McCluskey.
If you investigate the crime itself, you might learn the specifics of what happened. But, if you investigate the prison and the prison policies and the prison classes and counseling and how Melvin Rowland responded and what helped or didn't help, and what his beliefs and feelings and thought patterns were . . .
And, what he needed in order to change . . .
Only then might you learn what really happened. Only then might you learn why he chose to kill. Only then might you find what wasn't done and what might have been done to reach inside the soul of Melvin Rowland and change him.
There is more value to studying what went wrong in the reformation process than there is to studying the crime itself. Why then, do we only investigate the crime and not what went wrong in reforming the criminal? If we were wise, we would investigate both.
What went wrong? Why didn't we reform him? What could we have done better? We should ask the questions that might lead to changes in the prisoner.
(Edited 10/24/18)
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