This is magnified to the nth degree in prisons; the hypocrisy is jaw-dropping.
You've got some persistent offender inside who smacks the living shit out of his kids and/or SO constantly and considers sex from his partner a divine right to be enforced through terror and violence, who could be jailed for that very reason.....yet he/she will absolutely consider themselves superior to the bogeyman-stranger paedophile or rapist, despite the fact the vast majority of these crimes are committed by those known to the victim.
They see no dichotomy in this. Those in prison have, by definition, had all the normal routes of autonomy taken from them so there's a whole raft of finer distinctions which have little meaning outside. It's different for women - there are still unwritten hierarchies but they centre round other things - but in men's prisons it's all about being above somebody else, jostling for that one rung higher on a pointless ladder because it gives the illusion of control.