Stephen Donaldson was arrested for public protest.

But it was another first -- a brutal episode in a Washington, D.C. jail -- that catapulted Donaldson to national prominence in 1973, as the first survivor of jailhouse rape to discuss the issue publicly. He called a press conference to describe his experience after being jailed for trespass at the White House during a peaceful Quaker protest against the bombing of Cambodia. His jailhouse experience was at first relatively innocuous until the warden of the jail, suspecting that Donaldson, a former Associated Press reporter, might be writing an expose of brutal prison conditions. The warden transferred him to a cellblock with violent offenders, where he was gang-raped approximately 60 times over a two-day period. Upon being released, he underwent rectal surgery at a Veteran's Administration hospital. He later testified about his experience at a Washington, D.C. city council hearing. The Washington Star-News, calling for the resignation of the head of the D.C. jail, called Mr. Donaldson "a man of uncommon understanding."

Stephen Donaldson spent most of the rest of his life working to publicise, and to stop, prison rape.  He died of AIDS at 49 or 50 years of age (AIDS contracted as a result of being gang raped in prison).  

is your position then that he should not have protested in the first place, since he knew that arrest was a possibility?  or, if your position is that his arrest and detention were obviously wrongful, then unless and until we can guarantee that no arrest or detention will ever again be wrongful, would it not be better to make the conditions of incarceration less brutal?  prison rape can very easily be a death sentence, due to the role of prisons as a dispersal mechanism for AIDS and other diseases and the generally low level of medical care available to inmates.

but going back to general principles:  does this endorsement of 'laissez-faire snakepit punishment' indicate that you are, in principle, in favour of torture -- as a suitable punishment for certain selected people, who commit certain acts which are particularly loathesome?  if so, would you be willing to perform the torture -- or rape -- yourself?  if that would not be right, would you pay agents of the state to do it?  should we have official torture rooms?  [and how different would this be from stoning, acid-throwing, amputation, whipping, beheading, etc. all of which we right[eous]ly consider barbaric when inflicted by the authoritarians of certain other cultures for crimes which they consider loathesome?]

or is it easier/sufficient to throw offenders "to the dogs" and let them be victimised by the same people who are already in prison for hurting, raping, torturing, etc other people?  i.e. the Australian Penal Colony concept -- throw them all down the memory hole and let them eat each other?  declare them de jure non-humans and write them off the law books -- as the US has done to the inhabitants of its little gulag at Gitmo, most of whom have committed no very great crime?  Kafka warned us about this. Solzhenitsyn lived through it.

and it is OK to torture animals?  i.e. if to torture people is merely to treat them "like animals," presumably torturing animals is OK/normal also?  surely not...

should the pilots who dropped WP on Falluja be tortured because they did a disgusting thing to innocent people?

if you categorically "do not believe" that men in US jails are badly treated ("like animals"), does this mean you believe that all the (many and exhaustive) reports of prison abuse are utter fabrications?  Stephen Donaldson and all the thousands of other men who reported this abuse are all pathological liars?  HRW, Amnesty, and other watchdog groups are just making all this up?

colour me puzzled.

The difference between theory and practise in practise ...

"That story doesn't imply a love of violence.  It implies a nearly unspeakable hatred of people who hurt children.

Right. It isn't a love of violence.  That would be wrong, of course.  Instead, what's implied is an acceptance of, a tolerance for the violence which, it's hoped, should sate and avenge your hatred for the people who hurt children.  "Hurt" being a mild description of what some people do to children.

 So typical is the American thirst for revenge that prosecutors routinely take every opportunity--both before and after conviction--to arouse and enflame the jury's emotions, to incite this very hatred you've described.  That DAs do this so routinely cannot be purely by accident.  They do it because for so many people, the lack of good grounds to convict the accused can often be off-set and overcome in the jurors minds by distracting them with the horrifying details of the crime, which, logically of course, have absolutely no bearing on how sound or unsound is the actual evidence presented against the accused.

 It works, juries too often convict because the idea of allowing someone who just may be guilty go free on so heinous a charge is too much for their good, decent hearts to bear.

And, yes, I do believe that man deserves whatever he gets.