Adults who rape children should not be punished.

Is this about that guy who avoided the death penalty?

Listen, I'm going to tell you a terrible thing.

The courts made the absolute right decision.

By making the punishment for that particular crime as bad as the punishment for murder, you remove a large incentive to refrain from killing the witnesses. In fact, by punishing child molesters w/ the death penalty, you create a situation where it makes sense for them to kill their victims. You might want to google search perverse incentives, or take a look at Coker v. Georgia.

good point.

agree with this claim? now greet your local ef bee eye agent at your door ... :-)

don't even spell out their name! they're everywhere!

you're not really British, are you?

Frankly, if I had to say which act is worse, killing an adult or molesting a child, I'd have to say molesting a child, but Kraken has a point.

yes i am british. let me prove it. the fbi are twits.

Whatever you say, agent XISTH.

However, people who cannot prevent themselves from acting in ways that violate the rights of others should have their ability to do so taken away from them.

I believe in societies protecting themselves, but not in attempting to harm others unnecessarily.

I view crime as being one of three problems: education, health care, or inherent genetic problem.

For the first two, I think you should lock the people up and try to fix the problem. Give them the tools to do better. But you do not release them until you feel fairly confidant that they will not do the crime again (theft, murder, rape, whatever). Humane treatment, but protecting society. You don't just let murderers or rapists go. Nor would I just let them go after any arbitrary amount of time - they would need to be cleared by doctors (multiple) who believe that they have truly changed.

Some cannot change. Especially with serial killers and child molesters there is a very high chance that the person is simply incapable of controlling these behaviors. If we cannot find a medical cure (such as chemical castration) and be fairly certain it will work, then I believe they should be locked up for life.

But I don't view it as a punishment. And I don't think it should be done with anger or malice.

It's exactly the same as with children. You do not punish them with anger, you teach them how to behave better. When you are losing your temper with a child, you have already weakened your ability to fix the problem. While some people apply punishments to children in sensible ways, when we talk of punishing an adult, we always mean it with malice and cruelty, and our system is built on this notion of extracting vengeance. And it is not good.

To be clearer, the notion of punishment fixes us on stupid questions like: how much punishment fits this crime?

That is stupid. First off, it's immeasurable. If you're talking rape, murder, or torture it doesn't make any sense to say that is worth X amount of punishment. There is no way to create a balance of these things.

But more importantly, why do we want to hurt the person? Oh, of course the victim or those close to the victim do - that is human nature. But as a society, why do we think hurting people helps anyone?

What we should be focused on is: what will it take to make sure that this person never commits a similar crime again?

And we don't focus on that because we're so obsessed with punishment.

Hurting people weakens them. Weakness encourages crimes. Our prisons often turn out worse criminals than those who entered (now with better contacts!).

If we focused on help and healing, we might actually have a better society. And those who can't be healed we wouldn't feel some weird requirement to release just because they served their time. No, let them live, let them be productive, but keep them within a contained environment.

There's a fine claim about immeasurability in that.

Hard to word though.

"The harm caused by physical crimes against a person, such as rape, cannot be measured."

Not bad. I could nitpick it... there are metrics you can use, just not ones I'd view as really good for the concept we are trying to get at.

Logical Dog: While we're on the topic of nitpicking, what do you mean by "crimes […] such as rape"? Are you simply using rape as an example of a crime, or is there some subset of all crimes you are referring to?

I'd say a lot of physical crimes can work this way. Torture, for example. Even a mildly violent mugging can have nasty lasting effects. It can really harm a person's sense of safety and security. It can change the day to day way they deal with the world and view strangers. A lot of crimes have the potential to do a lot of harm, although they won't always. There's just a high variability for how the victim(s) will react and what affect it will have that is not really predictable. But these sorts of harm aren't really measurable for the most part.

Rachel: I could nitpick it

OK then, nitpick away. :-)

JR: Pretty much any injurious physical violence, not just rape. Since "harm" includes psychological harm, it's not measurable.

@JR: Rachel got there first with the answer

Logical Dog: Perhaps that's your real claim then:
"Psychological harm cannot be measured" or something similar.

I think without the connection with physical crime, it becomes a bit mundane (though maybe it is mundane either way).

I don't think it's too mundane. My gut reaction is to agree that psychological harm cannot be measured, but the pedant in me says that is too shortsighted a view of things.

It is yours to claim if you want.

Well, measured precisely. You can measure various aspects of it. And you can make rough comparisons. I just wish most people wouldn't.

Such things are important for studying things scientifically and helping people to heal or prevent damage. But when people go around casually trying to define how much pain someone is in or how much they ought to be suffering from what happened to them then very bad things happen, like people being told they are making too big of a deal out of what hurts them or people telling people who are coping that they are faking it and dangerously repressing their feelings and they ought to be hurt more.

Not all measurements of hard to measure things are bad, but most of them are badly thought out. It's a tough area and hard for me to clearly state exactly what I mean.

Yes, I'm familiar GRK with the problem of making the punishment so severe that the rapist has an incentive to kill the victim/witness.

There have been plenty of child molesters who have avoided the death penalty; and I see no reason to insist on such a penalty in cases where adults rape children, even if I believed the death penalty was the right way to go, which I don't.

The problem with going too far the other way, focusing on rehabilitation to the exclusion of justice, is a mistake too: Some child molesters unfortunately do fool the doctors who "clear" them and a judge is persuaded too, and then the molester goes on to rape another child (or more than one child--depends on how long it takes to catch the rapist the second time around). That is an unacceptable way for our criminal justice system to work.

Whether or not one is dispassionate about the punishment phase is irrelevant. Society has an interest in enforcing its will (in this case, in not letting children be raped) and in holding the power, through the state apparatus, to cause pain and deprivation to its citizens who act against its interests. This power is manifest through forcible incarceration, fines, and in affecting one's reputation or criminal record. This harms the perpetrator whether one wants to acknowledge that truth or not. Reading individual motives into the implementing of this harm just dances around the problem, as the motives can be as various as people are.

Certainly the punishment should fit the crime: that's why we don't give shoplifters lethal injections. That would not be just.

So, your objection to the system I propose is that it could not be executed perfectly? And instead you propose a system that cannot be executed perfectly?

You haven't explained how your system will do more good than mine. Of course no system will be executed perfectly. Also, sometimes innocent people will be found guilty and guilty people will be found innocent. But that is no reason to throw out trials altogether.

UMMMM, people i think we have gotten way off the original claim here, THE PERSON WHO MADE THIS CLAIM NEEDS TO BE RAPED. Are you nuts, i dont care what the circumstances are, if an adult rapes an innocent child, THEY DESERVE PUNISHMENT, no i dont think death penalty depending on how hanus the crime was, but my god imagine the child. Put yourself in their shoes and think how, severly being raped will affect their entire life, especially with intimacy. Blakesgarden you need to be ass raped and then tell me if you still agree with this claim you fucking idiot.

@SexyRenee: Uh.. Blakesgarden disagrees. Rachel agrees.

I don't really care.

The important thing for me is that once a person is convicted of a crime, then society is reasonably protected from the risk that that person may re-offend.

Punishment seems to be more about revenge than anything else, and that's not something I have any enthusiasm for.

If the punishment, in addition to being vengeful, can plausibly have some long term benefit to the person, then I'm willing to tolerate that punishment (Death or torture for example seems to be purely vengeful and not at all beneficial).

OMG, I am so sorry blakesgarden, I am new to this so since you made the claim I assumed that you agreed with it. I apoligize to you for the nasty things I said about you. LGD, thanks for pointing that out to me, Damn I feel like a dumb ass. Oh well maybe I'll make a claim that people new to this site make many mistakes, lol...

I am the only person who agreed with this claim, and I do believe that raping children is a horrible thing to do. Read the comments to understand my view. I simply believe that ~punishment~ is pointless. However, I am totally in favor of never letting most of them near a child ever again.

PUNISHMENT IS POINTLESS???? Oh, Dear Rachel, you have some good views, but I just cannot understand how you can think that a sick rapist, or murderer would not or should not get the death penalty. I don't really agree with it, I think it is murder, but what can I do?? Our Government will punish people for their crimes. Now it really is up to "us" The Jury, member's of our own society. And yes the Judge.. So if you think about it, we are the ones making decisions for these sick people's future. I think the crime should fit the punishment. Now, I just read today that 2 men that had robbed 4 convinence stores, with an unloaded gun, were sentenced to 45-60 yrs. in prison. Parole after 20 yrs. Now that is NOT justice. But like I said we decide. Oh, and we also need to think of the physical pain. I have a good friend who was raped and he cut her left hand off and disfigured her private's. She now is on Oxycontin 4 times daily for the pain. She is terrified to even leave her home. So tell me? Can you measure psychological pain??? Or physical pain??

forgiving child rapists and preserving their lives is completely over the top. How horrifying it would be to the victim to know that their tormentor was still alive and might one day break loose to finish the job...

The idea that there are those that cannot help themselves is ridiculous. I have OCD, I understand compulsions. If the compulsions ever became so grotesque and the medication wouldn't work to curb them, I would kill myself. Suicide is a far more acceptable end than giving in to that compulsion. There is no excuse and no room for forgiveness. No second chance. Depending on the situation and the victim (like Renee's example and people I have met in support groups), rape can essentially end one's life. Punishment does not always have to be about teaching the offender. I personally put very little value on the life of a rapist. Remove his or her genitalia and lock them away in a gulag in Siberia. Feed them wormy gruel until they waste away in frozen agony somewhere on the tundra, far away from their families and victims.

The response should be more about justice, peace and closure for the victims, restoring the sense of safety that has been stolen from them and helping them get on with their lives without fear. THEY are the innocent ones. THEY are the ones that deserve the most concern. Not punishing the attackers would be akin to victimizing them a second time.

First off, this has nothing to do with forgiveness. I've taken no stance on whether or not you should forgive a rapist. If they are at all likely to repeat the crime if free, then I believe you shouldn't. I'd only forgive someone if they significantly changed and truly regret what they did, wish they had not done it, and would never do it again.

Second, I don't think torturing criminals is good for victims either. It just feeds the wrong parts of them.

Yes, you need to assure them that the criminal can't get free, but The Mime's plan does that absolutely no better than mine does. They both involve having the person alive and locked away for a while.