Although I am glad she survived, what I really pray for her is that she gets the years of professional therapy from qualified professionals she is likely going to need after such a tragedy. I can't begin to imagine what this would do to me mentally, and I'm 29, not 8. My heart goes out to her and her mother.

Bad things happen, it's how we react that makes or breaks us.

I'll put this in bold so that everyone can see it over the noise.

Deterence is not the primary purpose of punishment!

If our concept of justice is solely limited to functional pragmatism, we've missed the point. Punishing someone for a crime they commit is not justified because of some future perceived value (deterence, getting them of the street, etc.) but because of their past act. Justice is retributive, or it is not justice. If it is pragmatic, it's simple social contract, nothing more.

-sm

This gets to the heart of it. The next question would be: "Do we even need justice then?" Or "Why do we need justice?"

Much as I'd rather just shoot them dead where they stand, I'm personally usually more comfortable with the rule of law.

Deterence is not the primary purpose of punishment!

This is a problem, then, because the current prison system does not reflect this. It is, at this time, both retributive and rehabilitative. Because it rides this line, it serves neither.

I'm still not certain the death penalty satisfies anything useful.

The death penalty does deter crime. Not one murderer put to death will ever kill again. That's good enough for me.
This kid admitted it. There's no wondering if we got the right guy. Research shows that sex offenders cannot be rehabilitated.
I don't see why I should pay to feed, clothe, house, give healthcare, and free lawyers for murderers, rapists, and child molesters. That money could go to law-abiding citizens who need it, rather than predators.

This little girl will have to live with the memory of what was done to her for the rest of her life. He'll get out of jail, and probably do it again. She'll never forget.


And I agree with the public execution. I think if punishment (all of it) were public, it could perhaps make people think twice. The death penalty, used as it's supposed to be, would probably go a long way to reducing crime. But we pay millions of dollars for their bullshit appeals, AND all the years they sit on death row. That's why it's so "expensive." If they admit to the crime, that should be that. All slapping them on the wrist will do (and I consider juvenile life a slap on the wrist, especially since their records are sealed and when they get out it's as if they've never committed a crime) is teach them that they can get away with it.

That's my opinion, and I know many don't agree with it. *shrug* Think what you like, I suppose....


Sidhe

*sigh* I think I love you.... :love: ;)

This is the best idea I have heard all day.

The death penalty does deter crime. Not one murderer put to death will ever kill again. That's good enough for me.

That is true, but I find it to be a poor solution only because we've seen far too many innocent people put to death that were found not guilty years after their execution. A punishment that cannot be corrected and reversed in the event of a trial error, evidence error, frame-up, etc, seems highly flawed. The strong want of the public to see a criminal put to death is not good enough for me to endorse it when putting them in jail for life is just as effective in preventing someone from killing again.

Research shows that sex offenders cannot be rehabilitated.

I've heard this a lot but I've not seen any evidence to support it, yet. Source, please?

I think if punishment (all of it) were public, it could perhaps make people think twice.

Yeah, there are some other great countries out there that do this. You'll notice almost none of them are Westernized. I've heard the Saudis have had great success in crime reduction and that is it a great place to live...

But we pay millions of dollars for their bullshit appeals

Are you suggesting we don't give people this option any longer? Why? Appeals are all part of a very normal process. Again, there are many governments out there in this world that don't offer them and I'm sure you'd be very happy to live under their rule.

AND all the years they sit on death row.

AND you'll note that there are a large number of cases where those that sat on death row were found innocent of their convicted crimes before they went to the chair. Again, there is a reason people sit on death row so long and it has nothing to do with the system's want to suck your precious tax dollars and turn it into food and housing for someone convicted of a serious crime. This is the process. If you want the death penalty, you'd better get used to seeing a lot of it.

All slapping them on the wrist will do...is teach them that they can get away with it.

Agreed. Maybe its time we actually started treating people/the cause/the problem.

A sex offender has never, ever been rehabilitated? I don't think that's quite accurate.
I don't see why I should pay for George Bush's stupid war in Iraq, but I don't have much choice about it right now. That's the price you pay for living in the good ol' USA.

Should we cut shoplifters' hands off, too?

Yes, this is the next question, and it gets significantly more difficult from this point forward. The answer to this question will rest heavily on how we understand moral value.

For the moral objectivist, the answer is fairly simple: justice is a retributive act merited by immoral acts. If I steal $20 from you, retributive justice holds that three acts have happened:

(1) An act of transgression toward you, that should be repaid by me giving you back $20

(2) An act of trangression toward the social group that we belong in. By breaking the social code against stealing, I have weakened the social fabric by an indeterminate amount. This is a harder retribution to fix, but our current legal code recognizes that it exists. I think it is also a moral fact. This is why if I steal, I might have to pay back additional fines on top of repaying the money.

(3) An expression of internal impropriety, a breaking down of my internal moral ordering that prevents me from performing bad acts. This leads to two additional demands of justice: (a) equipping the person with the means and impetus to reorder their internal moral sense (rehabilitation). (b) if the internal impropriety is significant enough (i.e. a willingness to do violence to others) then a removal from the social arena until that moral ordering is repaired.

For people who hold to a different sort of moral scheme, Justice becomes a much harder, much less tangible concept. If you are a moral relativist, then all justice becomes social contract, and whatever demands a society places on each other becomes the basis for justice. For a utilitarian, this becomes even harder, because all moral acts are measured by their eventual consequences. For the utilitarian, imprisoning a wrongly accused person would be perfectly acceptable if the net social gain outweighed the individual losses to the innocent person.

I know we have people on this board who are social relativists and consequentialists (utlitarians), and can throw together a better representation of how those views construe the idea of justice. I'd be eager to learn ...

-sm

Confession, especially by a minor under interrogation, is not a good indicator of guilt. That said, I have the impression that there is more than the confession implicating this particular kid.

The victim named him as the perpetrator, he confessed to the crime, and there's likely to be physical evidence from the sexual assault that implicates him as well. Trifecta.

If you feel comfortable hiring someone on the Megan's Law database to babysit your 5 year old, you're certainly welcome to do so.

I take the position that it's not a good idea to give an arsonist any matches, though.

I don't spend a lot of time reading research. I admit it. I also think that a good percentage of published research is carefully phrased bullshit, funded by large grants. This is not to say that there isn't a lot of good psych research out there, though.

I have, however, spent a good amount of time dealing with men from a nearby program for sex offenders, and also speaking with their staff.

These are men who are supposedly rehabilitated. They have a wide range of offenses ... some against adults (you know those sexually violent predators you hear about? I know over a dozen), many more against children.

I get to inventory their property.

When I find pages ripped out of a K-Mart circular featuring boys modelling Underoos, I doubt the effectiveness of treatment, no matter how well the system thinks these guys are doing.

Would I hire a registered sex offender to babysit my kid? Nope, of course not, and that's not what I was getting at.

I don't lose any sleep worrying about sex offenders rights or lack thereof. My point was only to say that Lady Sidhe's statment wasn't accurate. True, most sex offenders probably can't be rehabilitated, but to say that is true of every single one simply isn't accurate. That's all I was gettin' at.