While pondering how life in prison would be for BK, it struck me that he has hit the "researchers jackpot".
Think of all the interviews he can conduct with other violent offenders. He can quiz them on their emotions, motives, feelings while committing the ultimate crime, etc.
He won't need to write a book about "his crime." He will publish research studies about the deviant mind and how those convicted individuals commit the ultimate crime and its long-term effects on them. He may even work for prison reform and rehabilitation. This could lead to his doctoral thesis.
I don't trust BK.....One or more of the families involved will probably need to file a civil case against BK and perhaps his family. As part of the verdict in the civil case would be the most realistic method to stop BK publishing anything related to his crimes.
I haven't looked into it, but some states ban inmates from publishing anything or cooperating with authors. A quick Google seems to say that it is on a case-by-case basis in Idaho and up to the director of the prison.
Of course, Judges can also put such things into the sentencing.
He is allowed to have visitors but they must be preapproved and pass a background check. Visits are scheduled solely at the discretion of the prison management. So, Ramsland would have to go to Boise (closest place to stay to Kuba, where the prison is) and get one hour at a time in supervised visits. Probably no more than once a week. Everything he said would be heard by guards.
But I surely am curious as to how this is handled by Judge H, and then by IMSI.
For prisoners on the strictest security regimen, they of course can only communicate via prison phones (I assume they have those security windows between them, but they cannot be in the same room as the visitor or touch them).
It will be interesting to try and follow this aspect of the case, for sure. I doubt that Dr R will make her visitation plans (if approved) public. If she publishes in non-academic presses, she may not actually state her research protocols and how many hours she actually spent with him. She doesn't say in her book about Rader, just that she ceased making visits.
When she wrote the book about Rader, she found prison visits to be "non-productive" and therefore corresponded by mail and by phone with him. I suspect that the presence of guards made it so that she couldn't get the information she wanted. She also relied on many other sources besides Rader himself (including the work of another researcher) and of course, Rader notoriously made a detailed confession. At any rate, she made her first contact with him via writing a letter. BK will be allowed to send and receive letters. Ramsland published a lot of the letters she received from Rader verbatim. That would be very interesting in the case of BK.
It's true that a civil case might stop him from "co-authoring" the book. But I'd very much like to see Judge H put something in place in the upcoming sentencing. Ramsland of course did not credit Rader as a "co-author," but instead calls the book his "confessions."
JMO
