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Stephann -> RE: Keepin'It Real - Locate Offenders in your area! (2/23/2007 9:01:59 PM)
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quote:
ORIGINAL: Sinergy
While I agree wholeheartedly with your comments, Stephann, the problem with yout logic is that pedophilia as a crime is dissimilar to crimes against property.
A sexual predator generally cannot be rehabilitated. Cannot be scared away from molesting children with the fear of being put into general population if they are caught. A better approach to how to deal with them would come from viewing them not as a criminal per se but as an individual who would be a danger to either themselves or others if released.
I might consider it a criminal offense for the first offense. Juries do make mistakes. People are wrongly convicted.
But as far as recidivists are concerned, if it were up to me I would give them the opportunity to either agree to mandatory castration as a condition of release, or 3 hots and a cot behind bars for the rest of their lives in order to protect the general public.
Sinergy
Thanks for the response. I don't agree that they cannot be rehabilitated. I do not agree that they even require rehabilitation, in order to live productive and generally 'normal' lives. The course we are currently taking will leave a very blurry, almost non-existent line between 'criminal' and 'potential criminal.' If we lock a man away, not because he has committed a crime, but because he has the potential to commit a crime, there is no fundamental distinction involved with requiring mandatory questionnaires and lie detector tests to identify potential criminals, and to incarcerate them to prevent the possibility of their criminal actions.
I'm quite aware that I am mostly yelling into the wind here (not against you, personally, but in general terms of this discussion.) I highlighted your term 'sexual predator' because it's an illustration of a fundamental point of view; there is no legal or psychological usage of this term. It's a slang term, the same as one might call another person a 'killer.' Unlike a murderer who must kill, or attempt to kill overtly, innuendo of sexual perversion (especially involving minors) leaves a lifelong taint. In using such terms, we dehumanitize these individuals, reducing them to a sub-human status, and thus enabling our own socially acceptable sadistic tendencies to run free. Murder is wrong, except when the 'victim' is a child molester. Even if your assertion that their crimes have no similarity to other types of crime, applying different rules to different groups of people opens the door for horrible abuse of those rules. Essentially, to make sexual predator crimes a distinct class, it would require professionals capable of making such determinations (i.e. psychologists) and in identifying the cause to be an illness, the predator would assume a mentally ill status (quite possibly well deserved, mind you) and no longer held responsible for their actions by society.
I advocate the threat of castration as a condition of parole, should they repeat their offenses for such offenders; understanding that castration won't always inhibit a pedophile's drives, but it would seem a more effective deterrent towards the crime than, say, execution. For men who commit violent rape, I think the state should have the authority to order chemical castration (for the purposes of having legal children upon release from jail, I don't see any reason they couldn't donate sperm first; this should sooth the ACLU a bit.) I think like capital punishment, it wouldn't always be an appropriate punishment; but again, I think it would be a strong deterrent. Again, I think the real answer isn't to keep a large percentage of America's young men in jail; I think the answer is putting those men to work, giving those men something to lose, and giving them a great deal of real incentive not to fail.
Stephan
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