Posted on 03/20/2006 10:46:38 PM PST by goldstategop
Horrifying stories about the rapes and murders of children, and about judges who go easy on sex offenders who prey on the young, have prompted some state legislatures to tighten up the laws and restrict the sentencing discretion of judges.
Few in the media or among the intelligentsia have been as outraged about these sadistic crimes against children as they have been about whether terrorists' phone calls have been intercepted.
Part of this is current politics but part of it is the continuation of a tradition that goes back more than two centuries, de-emphasizing the punishment of criminals.
People who today point to the flaws of "society" as the "root causes" of crime are echoing what was said in the 18th century by Condorcet in France and William Godwin in England, among others.
So are those who speak loftily of "alternatives to incarceration" or who continue to rely on hopes of "rehabilitation" or "prevention."
People with this mindset engage in much hand-wringing about what to do with sexual predators. While many ordinary people would say that they should be locked up -- and, if they are too dangerous to be at large, we should lock them up and throw away the key.
But those whose whole sense of themselves is based on their presumed superiority to ordinary people can never go along with such ideas. They balk even at notifying the public when some convicted sexual predator is released into their neighborhood.
Their thinking -- if it can be called that -- is that sexual predators who have been released from prison have "paid their debt to society" and so the slate should be wiped clean and these sadists allowed to hide their past.
It is amazing how many innocent young lives have been sacrificed for a half-baked phrase.
Going to jail doesn't repay anything. People are put behind bars as punishment and to keep them out of circulation. Child victims of rape and murder cannot be made whole. The debt can never be repaid.
The most we can hope for is to spare other children and their parents from the anguish inflicted by evil people -- not "sick" people, but evil people. Sexual predators know exactly what they are doing, know that it is wrong, and either don't care or enjoy it all the more for that reason.
Saying that they are "sick" implies that there is some treatment or cure that other people can apply to them. How many more lives are we prepared to sacrifice on the altar to that notion?
The illusion of being able to control sexual predators who are set loose in secrecy among families with children has taken many forms and has been couched in much soothing rhetoric.
"Supervised" parole is one of those soothing phrases. The reality is an occasional reporting to a parole officer who has huge numbers of parolees -- who cannot be controlled the other 99 percent of the time when they are not reporting.
The latest pretense of control is the global positioning satellite which can be attached to sexual predators.
Think about it. What would a global positioning satellite have told us when a sexual predator had two girls imprisoned in his basement? That he was home. What reassurance!
While rising public pressures to get serious about protecting children have forced some state legislatures to make some efforts in that direction, resistance and evasion are still the order of the day in many places.
In California, the state legislature is considering bills to use global positioning satellites to track released sex offenders -- but only those deemed "dangerous."
The sponsor of one of these bills describes GPS as "incredibly valuable technology." Not doubt it is -- if you are lost and want to find your way. On the other hand, if you don't want to be found, you can always take it off.
The bills in the California state legislature are presented as alternatives to a ballot initiative by which the voters could impose "Jessica's Law" with some real teeth in it as far as sentencing is concerned, instead of these political alternatives to reality.
(Denny Crane: "I Don't Want To Socialize With A Pinko Liberal Democrat Commie. Say What You Like About Republicans. We Stick To Our Convictions. Even When We Know We're Dead Wrong.")
Mark for later.
You have to be careful, though. If molesters are treated the same a murderers, then more molesters will be murderers. They have nothing to lose, afterall, by killing the victim/witness since the punishment is the same.
So long as you properly define "sex offenders" and "child sexual predators" I'm with you.
How would you define them?
(Denny Crane: "I Don't Want To Socialize With A Pinko Liberal Democrat Commie. Say What You Like About Republicans. We Stick To Our Convictions. Even When We Know We're Dead Wrong.")
And this is taken from punishment 101 at your nearest liberal college or university? The only "careful" that needs to be watched for is making sure the switch is "on" and not "off".
You mean this could happen?
http://www.firstcoastnews.com/news/breaking/news-article.aspx?storyid=54049
Chemical castration can solve a lot of problems.
thanks for your reply.
Since Megan's law we have so broaden the term "sex offender" to include such a range that it becomes almost useless. It's akin to labeling "violence offenders" for everything from battery to serial murderers.
Your definition, for example, is a subset of registered "sex offenders."
I think it would do more to label the actual offense, rape of a child, for example, to describe the criminal.
What the punishment should be for the variety of offenses lumped under "sex offenders" is a valid topic for debate.
I agree with you that pedophile rapists should get extremely harsh punishment.
However, I agree with the poster about capital punishment for this crime. While the criminal deserves it, it would more likely result in more child murders than it would in less rapes.
thanks again for your reply..
No, it's from Criminal's Education 101. You can be sure criminals know exactly the punishment for their crime. Even petty theives know the line between misdemeanor and felony and avoid it carefully. Kidnappers know when it becomes capital, robbers know when it becomes capital - and all but the most inept do whatever they can to avoid capture and conviction.
If there is no penalty, only potential benefit, from killing the victim, criminals will very likely escalate the rape to murder.
Require the state to buy a home in each judge's neighborhood, and convert it into a half-way house for released predators. Let's see how many get released then.
I do not agree with Criminal Education 101. That uncivilized creature that kidnapped those two girls seems well schooled in Criminal Education 101. These freaks are running the criminal justice system.
As I recall even Jesus had some pretty harsh things to say about those who would corrupt an innocent child in this way. Something about a fate even worse than that of Sodom and Gomorrah. Even Jesus wasn't sympathetic to this type of person.
By Robert James Bidinotto
Free to Rape Again
When the FBI's Behavioral Science Unit in Quantico, Virginia, research the backgrounds of incarcerated serial rapist, they found that 41 of them were responsible for at least 837 rapes and over 400 more attempts. In a study funded by the National Institute of Mental Health, Emory University psychiatrist Gene G. Able found that 453 criminals admitted to molesting more than 67,000 children. Those who abused girls had an average of 52 victims each. But men who molested boys had an astonishing average of 150 victims.
The 1994 National Recidivisim report states that the recidivisim rate is 68% for all criminals released from prison will reoffend. That is over a million new crimes and victims simply because these criminals do NOT serve their full sentences.
NOVEMBER 1994 BY ROBERT JAMES BIDINOTTO
MUST OUR PRISONS BE RESORTS?
Therapy for mental health, aggressive behavior, domestic violence, sex offenses and substance abuse has grown into a prison cottage industry. Yet after decades of attempting behavior modification, the overall results of rehabilitation and therapy are meager. When asked by Reader's Digest how many sex offenders he has rehabilitated in his years on the job one New York State prison counselor bluntly responded, "None."
Inmates, for their part, are not fools: participation in education and therapy can chip time off their terms. "The saying among inmates is 'get a program,' says criminologist Charles Logan of the University of Connecticut. "They know that it will help with the parole board."
Studies by the U.S. Bureau of Justice Statistics have shown that between 60-70 percent of inmates revert to crime after release. A model federal prison at Butner, N.C. applied every known rehabilitation technique to inmates for over a decade. The results: no reduction in recidivism and no improvement in convicts' employment prospects.
After extensive study of prison rehabilitation criminologist Logan concludes: <,b> "Despite claims to the contrary, no type of treatment has been effective in rehabilitating criminals or preventing future criminal behavior."
1) "Few in the media or among the intelligentsia have been as outraged about these sadistic crimes against children as they have been about whether terrorists' phone calls have been intercepted" ~ IMO...how true!
2) They balk even at notifying the public when some convicted sexual predator is released into their neighborhood. ~ IMO, doesn't make sense to me.......if you have a vicious dog in your yard, you'd better have a sign to warn people. Especially if it has a history of attacking people!
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