Crime and punishment

Maxus · Post by **Maxus** » Mon May 12, 2008 3:15 am

I saw a story on the news about a man who's been banned from attending his son's eighth-grade graduation. Apparently, 19 years ago, when he was 17, he raped a 15-year-old girl. And even though he does not have to register as a sex offender, he's still being stuck with some of the same restrictions. One of which is, apparently, he cannot enter the grounds of a school. And the police said they've notified him of this and will have officers waiting to arrest him if he tries to attend.

And, you know, this approach to crime strikes me as totally the way to the go. In fact, I believe we should expand it. Everyone knows you can't fix criminals, and so you have to put restrictions on them to keep those animals from being tempted and suffering a relapse. It's for their own good, as well as the good of others. To wit:

-Criminals who commit theft must be kept from places where things might be stolen, such as other people's homes and stores.

-Druggies must be have all potentially abuseable substances kept away from them. ("Want aspirin? Too bad! Should have thought of the consequences before you popped those pills!")

-Traffic violators must be banned from coming within fifty yards of a car.

-Violent offenders must be kept away from temptation to do violence again, by banning them from coming within shouting distance of another person.

After all, these people can't control themselves and must be kept away from any kind of temptation.

CatharzGodfoot · Post by **CatharzGodfoot** » Mon May 12, 2008 3:29 am

Maxus wrote:-Druggies must be have all potentially abuseable substances kept away from them. ("Want aspirin? Too bad! Should have thought of the consequences before you popped those pills!")

It's more likely than you think.

ckafrica · Post by **ckafrica** » Mon May 12, 2008 4:19 am

I'm not sure if your being sarcastic or not Maxus.

It would seem to me that a guy who was convicted (?) 19 years ago and has assumably not reoffended (as he is not registered) is of little risk of reoffending now.

Maxus · Post by **Maxus** » Mon May 12, 2008 4:31 am

ckafrica wrote:I'm not sure if your being sarcastic or not Maxus.

It would seem to me that a guy who was convicted (?) 19 years ago and has assumably not reoffended (as he is not registered) is of little risk of reoffending now.

If sarcasm were earthquakes, California would be gone, because I just hit a 12 on the Richter Scale of Sarcasm.

I just have to wonder why sex offenders are treated like this and continually monitored and kept from ever totally reinegrating in society when violent criminals (like murderers and so on) aren't. I mean, I saw a news story where a bank robber ran into a bank, jumped the counter, shot a pregnant teller in the fucking stomach and then demanded the cash.

And, no, I'm not in favor of banning criminals from ever having even close to a normal life after they do the time. It strikes me that the sex offenders registry are fueled solely by distaste for sex crimes. I agree, they're not something you like thinking about, and it's nastier to think about than murder, in its own way. But doing everything short of putting them in a concentration camp, when you don't treat other criminals the same way, strikes me as the law being based on subjective taste, which it should not be.

And, further more, the point of the justice system should be to rehabilitate people, not to ensure that every released criminal has a half-life, so I'm against any kind of system where you continue to treat people as criminals even after they have paid the price the law requires for the crime. Otherwise, what's the point of jail time?

Edit: Er. I'm not in California. But saying there'd be a crack running up from the Gulf Coast all the way to Canada lacks the same impact.

Username17 · Post by **Username17** » Mon May 12, 2008 4:58 am

Especially because au priori I have no reason to believe that the man ever did anything wrong. In many jurisdictions having consensual sex with a 15 year old girl counts as rape, and in any case if people have sufficiently drunk sex that they wouldn't be allowed to sign a contract it would technically be rape on the part of the 17 year old.

Rape laws are really convoluted and cover a lot of things, only some of which are immoral. Everyone automatically assumes the worst because the crime includes some pretty crazy scary shit. But honestly, that's why we have judges in the first place instead of having criminal law handled by the XJ900. We have a set of laws and then we have people whose actual job it is to apply those laws to real situations. Putting blanket restrictions on people to exile them from society because they fall into a category - any category is simply insane.

-Username17

Maxus · Post by **Maxus** » Mon May 12, 2008 5:10 am

If it counts for anything, he did indeed commit forcible rape. Or was convicted of it, anyway. I still think that the point stands.

Crissa · Post by **Crissa** » Mon May 12, 2008 6:10 am

Rape cases are the least likely to result in a prosecution, anyhow, of reported violent crime.

-Crissa

Talisman · Post by **Talisman** » Mon May 12, 2008 11:48 pm

I agree with your points, Maxus - that it's unfair to condemn ex-cons to a half-life and numerous arbitrary restrictions, regardless of what they end up doing with themselves; and that sex crimes are treated differently from crimes of equal "magnitude" simply because they're sex crimes. However, the fact is that a significant portion of criminals (of whatever stripe) do, in fact, continue to commit similar crimes after their release.

It's obviously ridiculous to brand "CRIMINAL" on their foreheads, figuratively speaking. It's equally bad judgement to simply turn them loose with a "go forth and sin no more." Unfortunately, both of these thins happen far too often.

IMO, an ex-con should have to endure a period of probation tailored to the nature of the offense. For example, commit a sex crime and you have to register as a sex offender for X years - after that, assuming no new problems, you can get on with your life. Car crimes - hit-and-run, whatever - might require some mandatory driving programs and you'd have to take the safe-driving test every year for X years. Et cetera...a middle ground between playing watchdog forever and just turning potentially dangerous people loose without a care.

CatharzGodfoot · Post by **CatharzGodfoot** » Mon May 12, 2008 11:59 pm

treatment

Who would have thought that punishment isn't usually enough to deter those who have already committed the crime?

PhoneLobster · Post by **PhoneLobster** » Tue May 13, 2008 1:08 am

I believe the word you were reaching for there Catharz was "Rehabilitation".

It is SUPPOSED to be a major concept behind most modern western penal systems. But its often forgotten in the seething morass of ignorant populist blood thirst for vengeance.

The idea is that time in prison is not just punishment, its actually supposed to be "treatement" that puts you back on the straight and narrow.

The reality is its virtually the opposite as time in prison actually tends to push people towards further crime.

But the failing there is that at the same time as we realise that outdated and stupid Victorian ideas about reform methodology don't actually work we also collectively are forgetting that they were at some point actually intended to do anything other than fail.

CatharzGodfoot · Post by **CatharzGodfoot** » Tue May 13, 2008 1:47 am

Rehabilitation sounds like you aren't going to force them to take drugs.

Draco_Argentum · Post by **Draco_Argentum** » Tue May 13, 2008 10:14 am

If someone is a legitimate re-offence risk they shouldn't be released. If they aren't a risk then leave them alone.

CatharzGodfoot · Post by **CatharzGodfoot** » Tue May 13, 2008 3:25 pm

Draco_Argentum wrote:If someone is a legitimate re-offence risk they shouldn't be released. If they aren't a risk then leave them alone.

Everybody is a legitimate [re-]offense risk. How certain does your belief that someone is going to commit a crime have to be before they're locked up for life?

Draco_Argentum · Post by **Draco_Argentum** » Thu May 15, 2008 7:24 am

We have psychiatrists for that sort of thing.

PhoneLobster · Post by **PhoneLobster** » Thu May 15, 2008 10:32 am

Draco_Argentum wrote:We have psychiatrists for that sort of thing.

Er? For deciding what percentage of non reoffenders to lock up for life? WTF?

Psychiatrists can't even accurately tell us how likely someone actually is to reoffend.

They sure as hell aren't someone to whom we can magically abdicate responsibility for the 20% of innocent dudes in jail if we as a society choose to draw the line at 80% likelihood of reoffense.

Crissa · Post by **Crissa** » Thu May 15, 2008 4:53 pm

I believe there was a line by one of those men who created the US... "Better a hundred guilty men go free than one innocent man executed."

Something like that, anyhow.

But dude, the guy raped someone. How do we ever recover trust? That's not like theft or graft or some mutual violence. That's up there with murder, abduction, maiming...

-Crissa

Calibron · Post by **Calibron** » Thu May 15, 2008 7:06 pm

I actually with Crissa on this one(gasp), rape, especially of someone who's not even an adult, is an offense where one has quite probably ruined or destroyed someones life; much like murder or intentionally severely maiming someone.

A) That's a debt, to society and to the victim, that may not be payable at all.
B) You've made it clear that you won't play by society's rules, and thus society must make exception if you are to be a part of it.

PhoneLobster · Post by **PhoneLobster** » Thu May 15, 2008 10:32 pm

where one has quite probably ruined or destroyed someones life; much like murder

That attitude is both ridiculous and offensive.

It is that sort of attitude that helps to make rape victims feel socially isolated, "ruined" and otherwise devalued. It also promotes the ways of thought that see rape victims as somehow trash or no longer honourable/marriagable/normal/etc...

Rape is a horrible experience that can deeply effect the victim but it IN NO WAY devalues the victim as a human being or devalues or ends the rest of their life! You may as well stating right there "Rape victim, you are dead to me!"

The second major problem with that statement is the age old, if we treat rape as murder then every rapist benefits from also being a murderer.

And that sucks because like I said, if its JUST rape then the victims life isn't actually over, but if its rape and murder it most certainly is.

But dude, the guy raped someone. How do we ever recover trust?

However bad the crime as long as we judge it to be lesser than the most severe crime, which in the case of any crime that doesn't actually kill someone we pretty much MUST in a sane society then we eventually HAVE to release these guys whether we want to or not.

And though you could use some form of further control beyond prison sentences if being on the sex offenders list "ruins or ends" the offenders life then its basically back to the situation where rapists benefit from being murderers again and where does that get us?

And lets remember that in some parts of the US being on insane draconian sex offenders lists without serving any real prison time has led young men who were convicted for engaging in consensual under age sex to commit suicide because of how bad it is to be on that list.

Calibron · Post by **Calibron** » Thu May 15, 2008 10:58 pm

I was talking more about underaged rape, where the psychological damage may very well ruin their life.

Rape of an adult can of course be terribly traumatic, causing fear of men, relationships, sex and other things, crushing self confidence and any feeling of security to name a few, but only the most fragile of psyches will actual fail to lead a fairly normal life after allowing time to recover.

Really Phone Lobster the way you take a piece of a sentence and make massive judgments about a persons stance, attitudes, and character just astounds me. In no way do I devalue victims of rape, and just because some people do; and a statement I made could, if misunderstood, be construed as to be tangentially related to that unfortunate attitude does not make my views "ridiculous" or me prejudiced against these victims. There's nothing wrong with being abrasive, but learn some tact for goodness sake.

PhoneLobster · Post by **PhoneLobster** » Thu May 15, 2008 11:19 pm

In no way do I devalue victims of rape

You quite literally said that it ruins and ends their lives so badly that it is the same as killing them...

has quite probably ruined or destroyed someones life; much like murder

And NO you don't get a free pass for saying that by claiming you were saying it about children.

Sorry but this isn't the quotes out of context game. This is highlighting the core point of your post without the excess. There is no way in heck you can expand that quote to pretend that the above quote is you saying anything other than exactly what I read it to say.

Oh and might I add if you extend to add "or severely maiming them" you are seriously ALSO telling victims of maiming and the handicapped everywhere that they too may as well be killed.

Bigode · Post by **Bigode** » Fri May 16, 2008 1:00 am

It doesn't fvcking matter what the crime is: everything ever must have some clear punishment/societal reinstallation period/measure, and, once it's ended, the person should be a citizen like everyone else - the debts are paid, or the individual is at a reasonable chance of not reoffending (that's why, certainly, psychology has a part on this: you'd only let someone free once the odds were of no recurring offense). If you'd make a crime's punishment be life-long, just end the life (which I don't actually consider unreasonable).

Also, being compromised specifically to not ever having an innocent "dealt with" (depending on whether you view it as "punishment" or "solution"), despite any possible cost in unpunished criminals doesn't go much far: be sure that if you miss the mark enough, you'll have more innocents suffering by actions of free criminals than innocents saved from judgment errors.

PhoneLobster · Post by **PhoneLobster** » Fri May 16, 2008 3:48 am

The concept of not punishing the innocent is a LOT more complex than just wanting to avoid a guilt trip or because of some particularly shallow interpretation of utilitarian morality.

Here are a few bits and pieces.

If we are locking up people for life because they MIGHT re offend what about all the people who haven't offended yet but also MIGHT. You are actually advocating setting a precedent where law abiding citizens are obliged to not only prove their innocence, but actually prove their innocence of crimes that haven't even happened. Its taking guilty until proven innocent to a truly remarkable extreme.

Actually considering the impact of locking up the innocent compared to freeing the guilty is not an equation where we can seriously say that releasing the guilty is the greater evil. There are VERY few criminals who's impact on society is even remotely as great as the impact of societies hob nailed jack boot on some innocent individual imprisoned forever by the ignorant blood thirsty mob. To pretend that it is good to lock up any measurable quantity of innocent people is to pretend that those you are locking up with them are all unreformable super powered psychotic serial killers or something (you know, like Dick Cheney).

Society also has much greater resources, responsibilities and impacts than the individual. When one guy imprisons an innocent for a life time that is a mistake. When society imprisons some PERCENTAGE of innocents for life that is wide spread oppression and a knowing crime against humanity. One guy doesn't know better, society invariably DOES. One guy can't really take the risk of releasing a possible innocent, society invariably can.

Now in a tangential point.

You guys DO realise that psychiatrists don't actually have a magical crystal ball that can tell them the reoffense rates of individuals right?

The BEST we can hope for (and its not even a concrete hope) is statistical accuracy in prediction over LARGE samples of potential reoffenders. And if you want to use that then at that point we as a society have to decide what percentage of innocents we imprison.

Even with psychiatrists magically capable of telling us with statistical accuracy what group of reoffense rates an individual falls into we can't use that as an excuse to fob off responsibility for imprisoning innocents to some army of guilt ridden psychiatrists desperately trying to pull numbers out of their asses to beat the statistics and let one more innocent guy out or keep one more reoffender behind bars.

If YOU want to lock up some measurable percentage of offenders who would otherwise have gone on to lead a guilt free life fine. But that's YOUR decision, the psychiatrists at best adjudicated YOUR chosen boundary of morally acceptable oppression and imprisonment of innocents. You do not get to say "Psychiatry!" and wash your hands of all responsibility.

But anyway if you want to go with "OK if its 90% chance of committing said crime we lock up the lot including the 10% innocents" then fine. But if so I want to start seeing some of you arguing from that position putting your hands up to be part of the 10% innocents locked up for life on behalf of society.

I'm sure as hell not volunteering...

angelfromanotherpin · Post by **angelfromanotherpin** » Fri May 16, 2008 6:26 am

The United States is the imprisoningest country in the world, or indeed the history of the world. A greater percent of our population is in prison than were in Stalin's Russia or in Apartheid-era South Africa. Or in Kim Jong-il's North Korea, unless you count that entire countryas a prison, which you probably could.

Seven million U.S. citizens are in the corrections system. If you don't count the people on parole or probation, there are still 2.3 million U.S. citizens physically in prison. China only has 1.6 million, and they have around four times as many people as the U.S. 'Land of the free,' it ain't.

If you think that sounds bad, the reality is worse. I'm not just talking about OZ-style atrocious conditions, though they do exist. Prisons are a heaping barrel of suck for the law-abiding citizens too, because they're very expensive, and don't work. The U.S. pays 60 billion dollars a year to support prisoners and rehabilitation is rare, with roughly two-thirds of releasees re-offending within 3 years.

Now, the ballooning prison population is chiefly the result of absurd mandatory sentencing laws courtesy of the War on Drugs, and abolishing that boondoggle is a whole rant by itself. But I'm actually in favor of abolishing prisons in general. Most punishments should be fines, canings, and labor. If someone really needs to be separated from the population, I recommend banishment. You'd still need jails to hold people pending trial or appeal, of course.

josephbt · Post by **josephbt** » Fri May 16, 2008 6:29 am

PhoneLobster wrote:everything

This is one of the best replies i ever read.

SphereOfFeetMan · Post by **SphereOfFeetMan** » Fri May 16, 2008 6:36 am

angelfromanotherpin,

I agree with almost everything you said, but why did you include canings?

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Crime and punishment

Crime and punishment

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