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Posted on 03/20/2006 10:46:38 PM PST by goldstategop
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This is very morbid reasoning, but it's valid. It helps to ensure that rapists actually get caught and tossed in jail, and it protects the lives of rape victims. We get this in exchange for shorter sentences for rapists. This beats the hell out of not catching them at all.
I still say "poppycock".
Good Thomas Sowell article on the current child/rapist/deleted-adjective-judges insanity.
"Here's the deal: if there is no difference in penalty between a rape and a rape plus murder, then there is no reason for rapists not to murder their victims. Murdering the victim eliminates (in many cases) the only witness, so there's plenty of incentive to do it already. Not having any additional punishment for doing it aggravates this problem.
This is very morbid reasoning, but it's valid. It helps to ensure that rapists actually get caught and tossed in jail, and it protects the lives of rape victims. We get this in exchange for shorter sentences for rapists. This beats the hell out of not catching them at all."
I don't know if you know just how morbid the reasoning sounds. What happened to the reasoning that the mind of a rapist is really no different than the mind of a killer.
Might as well start teaching children in elementary school how to kill a rape attacker, because one thing is for certain, rapist do go free to rape again.
Not really. The predators can take injectable testosterone or other analogs and still function as predators. There are only two solutions to these predators and in particular those whom prey on children.
1. You can execute them.
2. You can lock them up for life with no parole. You can not cure a child predator!
A few generations ago rape was indeed a capital crime. A lot of people say that if rape was a capital crime, rapists would kill the victim. Did that happen more when rape was punished by execution?
I don't think so.
Here's a solution: Rape = quick execution. Rape+murder = slow painful death.
Plainly we can see that the current method of reasoning has not diminished the rapist population.
Can't argue with that reply.
I think so.
Otherwise it would go against the "normal" criminal behaviour.
The only way to know would be to look at crime stats from 40 plus years ago. Not just basic stats, but recidivism and the like.
The way things work now, criminals know that they will never face execution (except in Texas, thank God!), practically never die in prison unless another prisoner kills them, and likely serve one third of their actual sentence. That is, if they get arrested and then are judged guilty.
Bring back public pain and public shame and the crime rate will drop like a stone.
Since when is there such thing as "normal" criminal behavior? All criminal behaviour is abnormal.
Obviously: That's why I put it in quotes.
I hesitate to respond at all because I don't believe you are proposing that criminals act with total disregard to whether or not they get caught.
Of course they don't.
As Chesterton put it: "The madman is not the man who has lost his reason. The madman is the man who has lost everything except his reason."
I do agree that crime has a social component and that values are key. Certainly the depression-era crime stats show this.
"Shame" is a reflection and measure of society - and family - values.
These certainly are lacking today, and increased crime results, very true.
thanks for your reply..
I've got to read some Chesterton.
Understand that we're not talking about people who have consensual sex with those a few months under the age of consent. As Sowell points out, on the contrary, these are people who absolutely know that what they are doing is wrong and harmful. "I couldn't help myself" is a lie - "I chose to do it" is the truth.
It has become unstylish to refer to the retributive aspects of incarceration and accentuate the therapeutic. But the retributive cannot be dismissed lest retribution fall to the citizen instead of the state. And a therapy with a 67% failure rate is not one I'd care to base the safety of society on afterward.
And so, I think, the correct course of action is long - very long - sentences for such crimes until such therapy may be found that has a better track record of protecting children from repeat offenders. There is a 33% population that can be reclaimed now, and if they face an inordinately long sentence because of the 67% that's too bad - it's something that they should have thought of before they chose to commit the crime.
Thanks!
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