Why should society bear the cost of this rehabilitation? I agree that what you propose would possibly work, but does the benefit to society outweigh the cost?
In manufacturing, you have a certain percentage of defective units. Throw 'em on the scrap pile.
I think that the real solution is for the government, acting on behalf of "society" -- we the people -- to identify and destroy people like Couey early, before he has a chance to destroy an innocent child's life. You know as well as I do that this character has committed similar, if less notorious, acts early in his career.
This should happen in a dispassionate, predictable way. The fact that government does not do this is the reason that every time something like this happens, we always have people expressing helpless rage by proposing gruesome tortures or, even worse, hoping that a prisoner in the general prison population will do what our government should have been done in the first place.
Well I didn’t really mean to suggest that it should. Those decisions are to be made by the people’s representatives (in this case at the individual state level). But if such treatment were effective I believe that it would be less costly to the taxpayer than keeping a prisoner for life. I don’t believe (and I am sure you don’t) that many of the more liberal states will pass laws to execute pedophiles (many of them barely imprison them).
I think that the real solution is for the government, acting on behalf of "society" -- we the people -- to identify and destroy people like Couey early, before he has a chance to destroy an innocent child's life.
I believe here you mean that pedophiles should be executed for lesser crimes of sexual molestation.
The states have it in their power to pass laws to make such crimes punishable by death. They might be overturned on appeal to the Supreme Court (State or Federal). But I would think that the crime would have to be fairly severe to warrant death (more than touching). As much as I hate pedophiles I can’t accept the idea of executing a person for what they might do.
Every so often we read about some young man who has molested a child. I think that if some kind of therapy were available to change the way his brain is hardwired (I have recently read that the human brain is not fully developed until about the age of twenty-five) we could stop his re-offending.
And to go back to the subject of paying for rehabilitation as a condition of release the man could be required to enlist in the military. This was done in the past and I believe that the idea does have merit in this case. For one point it puts the offender in a position of being under fairly constant supervision. Two he could be assigned to combat duty (in time of war) were he could repay his debt to society. In combat he would be in constant sight of his fellow troupes.
The military being aware of his pedophile past could be sure that he was periodically retested.
This is all supposition but I think it is worth some thought. As we all know the present society that we live in does not take capital punishment lightly. The possibility of a medical treatment for these brain damaged retches needs to be looked at.
As for being cheaper to kill him; jus think of all the money Florida will spend on the public defenders and courts as Couey fights his death sentence.