In prison, people who cross the line with kids get dealt with.
That is the first line in this cartoon. Out here, Lindsay Clancy gets a fan club and a million dollars. The cartoon nails it. The meme is accurate.
On January 24, 2023, Lindsay Clancy killed her three children in Duxbury, Massachusetts. Cora was 5. Dawson was 3. Callan was 8 months old.
She does not deny she did it.
This is not a column about how prisons should be run. I am not condoning inmate violence. I am describing what already happens.
Men who go to prison for harming or killing small children do not fare well. Even among the worst of the worst, there is a line.
Child predators sit at the bottom of the inmate hierarchy. They get isolated on protective units because the rest of the population will not have them.
That code is ugly. It is also older than any cable-news segment about postpartum talking points. Murderers who killed adults still treat the killing of a child as a different crime.
They will share a yard with a bank robber. They will not share one with a man who hurt a little kid.
You can hate that world and still notice the contrast. Inside, the line holds. Outside, the line melted.
After Clancy’s trial ended in a mistrial on September 4, a GoFundMe for her parents cleared $1 million and then raised the goal to $3 million. Tens of thousands of people donated. That is a fan club with a payment form.
Prison is not a moral instructor. It is a brutal place. Even there, men who have already ruined their lives still know you do not touch a child.
Out here, a woman who killed three of them gets a following and a seven-figure appeal.
If even prison draws a line at killing children, why did donors put more than a million dollars on her side of the courthouse?