>>8334481I'm not going to read through a hundred eighty replies full of retarded bullshit to see if someone has said this already, but the actual reason is that people value hierarchies enormously and nobody likes being on the bottom. Criminal scum are the bottom of the hierarchy in society, so they create their own hierarchy so they have someone to look down on. They base it on the type of crime and the type of victim. A gangster who kills another gangster is feared and respected; a chubby loser who diddles helpless kids is the opposite. At the same time, they're trying to prove to themselves that they're good people who care about kids (which is what good people do) and since there's no kids in prison and most violent criminals are more or less incapable of actual long-term caring, they try to demonstrate their inner goodness by being especially violent towards people who hurt kids.
It's why nobody would fuck with a gang enforcer but they fuck with mass shooters all the time, even the ones with low victim counts. Trying to convince themselves they're fundamentally good, at least better than the absolute worst.
