A Texas prisoner accused of killing 22 older women over two years, preying on them so he could steal jewelry and other valuables, was slain Tuesday by his cellmate while serving a life sentence, prison officials said.
Billy Chemirmir, 50, who was convicted last year in the slayings of two women, was found dead in his cell at a prison in rural East Texas, Texas Department of Criminal Justice spokesperson Hannah Haney said. He was killed by his cellmate who was also serving a prison sentence for murder, according to Haney.
Chemirmir’s death comes about two weeks after Texas’ 100 prisons were placed on a rare statewide lockdown because of a rise in the number of killings inside the facilities, which prisons officials have said were related to drugs.
Haney did not release the name of the cellmate, how Chemirmir was killed or what may have led to the slaying.
The lemmy circle jerk is real when it comes to law enforcement and capitalism hate.
The idea is that rather than the government running prisons at a loss, private companies run the prisons, and the jobs the prisoners do make a profit for the prison’s owners. The imprisonment itself just constitutes an expense.
It kind of makes sense on paper (“well they broke the law why are we paying all this money to support their lives!??”), but it’s a bad idea in practice as it creates the wrong incentives. You end up with entities that desire more people in prisons because that’s how they grow their profit margins… and that obviously comes with some sketchy implications (e.g. lobbying for more non-violent offenders to get jail time, longer sentences, etc).