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Noah -> RE: Tracking devices (11/11/2006 1:59:22 PM)
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quote:
ORIGINAL: Sinergy
... Our criminal justice system is based on the premise (not sure it actually works that way, but that is a different thread) that a person commits a crime, gets convicted, serves a prison sentence to reform them back over from the Dark Side, and rejoins society as a changed individual who only uses their powers for Good.
Hard to say what motivations existed for the thousands of people in all sorts of places over literally centuries of time who contributed to the shaping of this system as we see it today. Even harder to lump them all under one heading, I think.
(Can't help thinking of the warden in Cool Hand Luke: "What we have heah ... is a failure ... to communicate" platitudinously mouthing 'modern' sentiments in the execution of his not so terribly progressive approach to jailing.)
It is clear that in recent generations some people have attempted to reform the system to see it move more along rehabilitative lines. The fact that these people were seen as reformers I see as a good indication that at its genesis and for most of history the rationale for incarceration in Western society might be better characterized as retribution than rehabilitation. Nor do I think that the efforts of recent reformers (and some others less recent than those referred to above, even) have resulted in a fundamental shift to a view of incarceration as rehabilitative, in general.
I live near an SIC. That sort of prison is based on a rehabilitative model and it is also so broadly and deeply different than most prisons that I think the exceptional rehabilitative prison is evidence in itself that as a rule prisons are seen primarily as rehabilitative by almost no one.
We've all heard the expression "... paid his debt to society," and I think it has far more currency than "was suitably reformed" for the very reason that our justice system can be better seen even today as primarily retributive, with stripes of rehabilitative color here and there.
quote:
A sexual predator, by and large, is not treatable or reformable. Take the crime of rape, for example. The average rapist rapes 7 times before he is caught and convicted. He serves an average of 4 years. He rapes again within 6 months of his release from prison.
...
A term like sexual predator is heavily front-loaded, it seems to me. I think it is fair to say that lots of people prey on others for the sake of sexual satisfaction without breaking the letter or spirit of any laws--though they may break a lot of hearts.
I think they probably very often follow the pattern you cite of preying sexually in a serial manner, maybe their whole life long. Should they be banished to the countryside with or without GPS monitors or should we just fire up the gas chambers as one poster suggested?
I seem to recall news of some spunky housewife in a bible-belt county being arrested for having a Tupperware-like "party" where nighties and lubricants and 'marital aids' were displayed and sold. I don't recall the final disposition of that case but the cautionary point holds regardless.
I hope this only happens in rural counties so that someone like her will get to go home after serving her prison sentence, GPS anklet and all, staying a quarter mile from all schools and parks. Though in any case I presume she'd prefer that to the gas chamber.
And by the way, that "banished to the countryside" comment is not just facetious. Let's all bear in mind that laws to limit the circulation of certain people around gathering places of urban and also small-town children will almost certainly put rural children at greater risk.
What's the rationale there? "Greater good for the greater number"? To hell with the rural kids. Statistics are what matters, eh?
I get notices in the mail whenever someone who meets certain legal criteria moves into my school district. I get his or her name and address and photograph, unrequested, courtesy of some government program, I presume. The notices do not reliaably include any understandable-by-me way to determine if this person threw a Schtupperware party in Alabama, or tried to run a clean, safe BDSM club in a town with some politically ambitious and socially backward sheriff, or if instead this person has been convicted six times of child molestation. Some data is given sometimes, some of it very cryptic. One thing which seems apparent is that it isn't only offenses against minors which result in these notices.
I am left, in prudence, to assume some very horrible things and act accordingly where in fact this response may be manifestly unjust.
What a pity if I forbid someone to attend a recreation program in a park near this offender's house if in fact this offender presents no such risk, never showed any sign of targetting minors or even people of the relevant gender. What a shame if a whole block or neighborhood looses both peace of mind and property value because some guy who engaged in locally illegal sex with his also-adult boyfriend moves to town.
Am I against notification laws? Hell no. But seeing how ham-fistedly they can be executed I have a hunch that the state could botch actual executions in ways just as unforgiveable as the crimes the state seeks to prevent. But so many people want to storm the castle with pitchforks and torches around here it makes me shake my head.
So far I have never gotten a notice which said: "Whoops. Our bad. That poor bastard has been exonerated." And the thing is that eventually unjust instances of this kind of social branding could become so common and well-known as to minimize the stigma of these beaureaucratic stigmata.
Sometimes rushing to do a good thing and so doing it badly is much worse than pausing long enough to allow for doing it well.
And by the way, how unlikely do you think it is that some the red-flagged people will eventually band together for some kind of solace and solidarity? I shudder to think how much more destructive a team of these guys could be than an individual acting alone.
If we want to punish and kill people on the basis of "by and large" we might find that we live in a society which demonstrates why "guilt-by-involuntary-association" is not the world's best bringer of justice.
So as this societal conversation proceeds, how about if in lieu of needlessly ambiguous terms like "sexual predator" we at least try to focus our language? If we mean rapists, how about we say rapists? If we mean to refer to people who have broken sex laws in ways which were completely consensual (including that all parties were fully capable of consent) it might be well to sort the ones of those who are technically rapists from other sorts of rapists.
Lets not forget what a large and potentially loud and powerful minority in Western culture would hang all BDSM sadists and euthanize quite a few BDSM masochists just as blithely as some posters here want to order executions across the board without even becoming familiar with the particulars of any case.
Chances are that a review of state and local ordinances would reveal for many of us that the last play party we attended involved any number of activities for which those present could be labeled, electronically shackled, and banished as sex offenders if the proposed laws were aded to the current ones. I mean if anyone was bound at this party, for instance. If anyone was struck. Or ifnyone engaged in any sort of "sodomy" in the terms of some amazingly broad definitions applied to some old but unrepealed laws. Are all the laws everywhere against gay sex even off the books yet?
It is fine to express umbrage and I think a good deal of it is being expressed toward appropriate targets here. Indeed it may sometimes be the case that one injustice--in this imperfect world--is the best resolution we can construct for an even worse injustice.
All that said, some people here seem to be willing to move in draconian directions without due consideration if the implications.
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