Dugan is bottom feeder of criminal society

We don't let prisoners pick their punishment in this country. And we don't let those being punished pick their prisons.

The crooks and the connivers ask, of course, especially white collar thieves and convicted politicians who want to do easy time at "Club Fed."

But if you've ever been to a prison, you know this: you can't leave at the end of the day.

The kind of prison where murders like Brian Dugan are kept are the most oppressive, as they should be. They are the maximum security "joints" that legendary labor boss Jimmy Hoffa once spent a stretch.

"I can tell you this on a stack of Bibles: prisons are archaic, brutal, overcrowded hell holes where the inmates are treated like animals with absolutely not one humane thought given to what they are going to do once they are released. You're an animal in a cage and you're treated like one."

Hoffa, who disappeared 34 years ago last week, was presumably put out of his misery in a vat of bubbling zinc.

But this is about the living bad guys. One of them, anyway. Brian Dugan, who has finally pleaded guilty to kidnapping, raping and killing 10-year old Jeanine Nicarico of Naperville in 1985.

Dugan, now 52, is now playing his cards in DuPage County court, supposedly to avoid the death penalty. He claims to prefer spending the rest of his life in state prison for the Nicarico killing and two other murders for which he is already sentenced to life.

"I wish you could look inside me, see the depth of my remorse and believe the truth in my words," Dugan wrote in a one-page letter first reported by the Daily Herald's Christy Gutowski.

We can't look inside Dugan and don't know if he is remorseful or not.

But it doesn't matter whether he is or isn't any more than it should matter whether he has "accepted responsibility for his actions" which is the buzz-phrase that judges and juries want to hear as they dispense leniency.

In his statement, Dugan claimed to be "haunted" by his own crimes. "I've remained a prisoner of myself, haunted by my violence, imprisoned by my self-loathing, doomed to defend my ugliest moments."

There are ghosts aplenty down at the Pontiac State Penitentiary where Dugan usually resides, regularly defending himself against the devilry of his past.

You see, "men" like Dugan are considered the bottom feeders of criminal society. Even on the prison scale that weighs mass murderers and mob hit men, it is child killers who are considered the heavyweight targets.

So when Dugan makes his "misery is me" plea, what he is really saying is that he is haunted by the constant threat of prison justice.

In convict society, they waterboard child killers with pots of boiling H2O from the mess hall kitchen.

The Dugans of the prison world are considered trophies to be awarded to the biggest bidder. A few years ago, an Indiana inmate who had murdered a 10-year old girl received a prison tattoo intended to remind him of his misdeeds.

The underworld justice was administered across his forehead by fellow inmates. He now sports large letters that read "Katie's Revenge," in honor of his young victim.

Dugan knows that at any moment he could be subjected to a razor blade facial, a shank rubdown or a cranial boot massage. That's how cannibal-killer Jeffrey Dahmer saw his final moments: on the floor of a Wisconsin prison cell looking at some rubber soles.

So don't think that Dugan will return to the spa life at Pontiac Correctional Center, where the walls are painted a lifeless monotone gray.

The "shank-reduction committee" that meets once a month could meet once an hour and sometime, someone will figure out a way around the restrictions and make a homemade knife with Dugan's name on it.

Weapon or not, Dugan knows that someday the butt of an inmate's hand could land on the middle of his face. From nowhere, the uppercut would drive his nose bone into his brain and he'd suffer an agonizing death.

It would be the same kind of agony he administered to that little dimple-faced girl named Jeanine. For Dugan, being "haunted" by that possibility every day, seems a far deeper punishment than the instant death of an executioner's needle.

• Chuck Goudie, whose column appears each Monday, is the chief investigative reporter at ABC 7 News in Chicago. The views in this column are his own and not those of WLS-TV. He can be reached by e-mail at chuckgoudie@gmail.com and followed at twitter.com/ChuckGoudie