Duck Duck Goose said:
I think the problem is right here. If this guy had got a jail term that was appropriate to his crime he would not have been able to do anything to the poor 4-year old.
I would look at castration or the cutting off of hands as emotional reactionism(?). If society dealt with these animals adequately in the first place a lot of the frustration felt by the people in this tread would be allayed .
Putting a man in prison, it’s possible to give remuneration. Cutting off a man’s testicles is irreversible.
If you castrate a man and he’s later found innocent, how do you apologize? It was for JUSTICE? Fuck that, justice messed up. How much money will make up for the man never enjoying sex again, never having his own children, being forever forced to live on hormone treatments yet STILL always be imbalanced. How do you pay for irreversibly changing a man’s life to almost the greatest degree possible?
Whether it’s acknowledged or not, the libido is a prime factor in most of our lives. It is responsible for much of our motivation and drive, it gives a flare and zest to life that can’t be replaced by an assortment of hormone pills.
Cutting off someone’s nuts is NOT the way to go. If someone is irreparably insane, kill them. It’s the safest thing to do. If someone is capable of reform, allow them the chance. Immasculation is punishment and punishment only. The purpose of sentencing is not simply to cause pain to criminals. Part of civilization is rising above petty revenge. We want these people to one day be fully functioning members of society. We want to reform them and bring them back into society healthy, happy, and productive. We don’t want to react in anger and cut their balls off, put their eyes out, or simply torture them.
Because that’s what this is, torture. Nothing less.
I would like to thing we are above simple sentencing for vengeance, that we are capable of intentionally trying to better our society and help our fellow citizens along that path. Punishment for it’s own sake does not fill that need.
No, castration isn’t good enough. It should be amputated and that person should experience phantom pain!
Phantom pain…HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA!
wiping a tear from my eye
I almost forgot about phantom pain. HAHAHAHA!
Actually, castration of sorts has been done to psychopathic sexual predators in the U.S. on an experimental basis. There’s a drug – its name escapes me at the moment – which causes a man to lose all sexual function, as though his testicles had been removed. If you stop taking the drug, though, sexual function returns.
Use of this drug has been referred to as “chemical castration.”
Castration is not necessary. The problem is right here. If we know the man is a person who hurts people (rapist) and we let him out to hurt more people its our fault.
It’s a basic fool me once, fool me twice problem.
For the life of me I can’t understand why you nutty California people can keep the bad guys in prison. Here in Louisiana almost noone ever gets out on parole. You get sen to prison in LA and you will most likey die there. There is a nice graveyard at the prison. A&E had a prison special on the other day, and in it they filmed the LA parole board. Prisoners would come before the board and say how really sorry they were and that they would be good now. After they left the parole board members would laugh, and deny their parole.
FWIW I actually don’t support a total life sentence for rape, after your about 65 I don’t think your much of a danger to anyone anymore. For murder you can die in prison.
I think every human being should be castrated on birth. Eggs should be harvested from every female, and implanted with desirable DNA at a later date, to be grown into another person. People should have cyber-links implanted in their brain stem so they can connect to another person via fiber-optic cabling, and experience mutual pleasure that way. If someone forces his cable into someone else’s implant, they can have their own implant deactivated as punishment.
Oh, yeah, and we should have a caste system of Alphas, Betas, Gammas, Deltas, etc.
Over in the “death penalty” thread i had a brilliant idea. Reversable surgical Lobotomies. This would work for these scum, too. Think of it, a home full of “happy” droolers, incapable of thinking of commiting crimes, as these are incapable of thinking. Not cruel, but guarenteed no recidivsm.
SPOOFE: Can I be an Alpha? Puuuuleeease?
Just a couple of comments:
Rape: Let’s separate this from the feminist philosophy (not meaning offense…feminism has brought society many wonderful things, but it should not dabble into psychology). Rape is not a power crime…per se…that is to say rapists rape for many different reasons. There is in fact a highly complex classification system for rapists…I don’t remember them all offhand, but they include “gentleman” rapists (I am not kidding)…who indeed do rape mainly for the sex, power rapists…who rape for the feelings of power, but also for the sex…and sadistic rapists, once again mostly sex, but they get their giggies out of making another person hurt. So the motives behind rape are multifaceted and complex and usually have very little to do with some grand male plot to keep women down. Rapists deserve death, and most males will acknowledge this (mabey not death, but you get the idea)
Castration: If you want to stop rape, gotta take the schlong off with the boys. Removing testosterone from the male system will not turn of his desire for sex. So the whole package has gotta go. But this will probably not stop him from victimizing women in some other way.
I cannot understand this, the guy commits what like 6 or 7 rapes and only gets 7 years?
I keep reading and seeing on the media how tough the US justice system is. WTF?
Rapists are notorious, especially the child fixated ones, for recidivism and are incredibly difficult to rehabilitate.
Several reasons for this, they are usually kept away from the general prison population as they would be severely damaged and are classified as vulnerable, HAH!!,but when they are in their own little cliques they feed on the perverted fantasies of others like them, and while in prison, they often behave as model inmates appearing to conform looking for all the world like they have mended their ways but of course their targets are not available to them so they behave rationally - until they are released.
Some of them look like you might expect them to, kinda weird and sleazy, but usually they are fairly anonymous and you get the occasional one who you would never suspect until you looked at their docs.
Castration is a thought but whatever happens they must do their jail first and it should be in large doses.
IMHO these people rip at the very fabric of human society which is built, to a large extent, on trust at the most basic level. Their punishment must reflect this.
Note to Labdude: This is not California–this is downstate Illinois, Land of Lincoln, the Corn Belt. The local paper that is carrying the story apparently has the interesting editorial habit of only posting the more upbeat stories on its website. The “police blotter” is conspicuous by its absence, except where it concerns a juicy murder with the perpetrator caught red-handed. So I’m sorry that I can’t post a link.
I think Yojimbo and others have a good point–if this guy was still in prison, he wouldn’t have been able to do more bad stuff. However, the problem with that is, there just isn’t room. We’ve had an ongoing controversy for years in this area over where the state can or cannot put another badly needed medium-security prison. It’s the NIMBY syndrome all over again (that’s Not In My Back Yard). Everybody agrees we need more prisons, but nobody wants it in their town. Everybody agrees, “Oh, yes, it would definitely create more jobs”, but nobody wants those jobs to be in their town.
I was hoping some people in this thread would respond to the question of whether castration actually has any deterrent value, anyway. I know that “once a child molester, always a child molester” is supposed to be true, also that as Persephone pointed out, you don’t need a penis to rape.
But my thought was, “justice must not only be done, it must be seen to be done.” In the Arab countries, the penalty for stealing is to cut off a hand. Nobody AFAIK stands up and says, “Yes, but what if this is an innocent man? We might be wrongfully depriving him of his hand.” Do you think that maybe if the penalty for rape here was castration, that it might dissuade some otherwise marginal potential rapists? I mean the guy that’s just kinda thinking about it, not the serious psychotic. They say that in Saudi Arabia you can leave your car unlocked and the keys on top of the hood, and nobody will even touch it.
Also, if the penalty for child molesting was more serious, say castration, instead of simply being labeled “sick” and having lots and lots of kind, caring therapy, maybe some of those people who get their jollies out of oral sex with toddlers would think twice.
I realize that I am coming across as something to the right of George Wallace, but I’m really not like that, OK? I’m just here to talk about this on a “what if?” basis. I’ve got 3 kids that I safely steered through all this “strong kids, safe kids” malarkey, and now that my oldest is, quite frankly, a babe, the thought of someone knocking her down and doing what this guy did to three women so far makes me want to go out to the kitchen and start sharpening knives.
Just curious–how many people who have responded so far in this thread saying, “Castration is cruel and unusual punishment” also have nubile teenage daughters who are just on the brink of starting to seriously date (meaning, being alone in a car with a guy who may or may not be trustworthy)?
I AM a nubile teenager. While I’m not crippled with fear of an attack, I do think about it a lot.
I asked my BF last night if he thought guys in general would be more cautious of committing crimes if the penalty was getting castrated. He said yes. That pretty much is what I thought. The hard-core sicko perverts who would rape and humiliate women no matter what would probably not be stopped by castration. However, I think DDG is right, maybe the people who are still capable of some kind of logical thought would be put off by the thought of living life sans genitilia.
Duck Duck Goose:
I am hesitant to accept the idea of any sort of extreme punishment as a more effective deterrant to crime than prison, because I don’t think that most people who commit crimes believe they are going to be caught. If they don’t think they will be caught then the potential punishment won’t make any difference to them.
Yes, people do oppose the barbaric system of justice in arabic countries, it’s just not widely reported in the USA. How often do you see news about other countries reported in your newspaper or television station? Pretty much only when the president of the USA visits that country.
For people that support torture and amputations as a method of justice, you can take a look at Saudi Arabia, in which those practices occur.
Amnesty International - Saudi Arabia campaign - culture of brutality
I personally believe that promoting torture and other forms of physical punishment in jail is another way of teaching people that violence is acceptable for the right reasons. It diminishes our humanity. Of course, someone will say “well if it was your daughter, you would want to make them suffer physically.” Does that mean we should adopt this as a system of justice? Heck, I know some people that have told me that if someone stole their car they would like to find them and run them over / castrate them / whatever. I fail to see how having a brutal system of justice is an improvement over detention and/or treatment.
Deterence. Feh! Rehabilitation. Bah! These are all feel good words bantied about by people afraid to look into the sick twisted depths of their soul. It’s there in each one of us. When dealing with violent, predatory crimes, the answer lies in RESPONSIBILITY.
It is quite simple, relly. Society has a RESPONSIBILITY to provide each of it’s members with certain rights and oportunities. The right to live freely, without fear. The right to an education. The right to make a life for yourself, in whatever field you chose. The right against descrimination. It’s a long list. In return, however, each individual has the RESPONSIBILITY to live within the boundries of society’s laws, and respect everyone elses right to the same. The solution is simple, darwinian and unpalatable to many. What I propose is that certain crimes be clasified as “disenfranchising felonies”. Pre-meditated murder. Forceable predatory rape( Not date rape ) Agrivated assault with intent to maim or kill an innocent person. The list would have to be agreed upon. I would also throw repeat offenders in this group. Kill someone in anger? Ok Prison. Keep doing it when you get out? You qualify. When the state was going to seek such a finding the death penalty would be the result of a conviction. The defendant would be provided, at the states expense, top, TOP legal talent to defend him/her. No expense would be spared, extensive DNA testing would be used, the trial would be treated with an almost super human amount of respect in respect that the outcome potentialy could deprive an individual of his sacred right to life. If, IF, all of the above was done, and the defendent was found guilty, He/she would get one complete appeal, with the same standards of proof necessary, and if the defendent loses again, he or she would quickly be executed by lethal injection. Provisions would be in place for a life imprisonment to be sentenced instead of death, if the prosecution couldn’t prove death was warrented. The advantages of the above are numerious. #1, It would be expensive. The state wouldn’t take such a step unless it had very compelling evidence. #2, By providing the defense with Jonny Cochran or such, nobody would get convicted because the PD was a wet behind the ears novice who just passed the bar. #3, It gets to the heart of the matter. Deterence is often a joke, because criminals don’t usually think they would be caught. Rehabilitation is not posibile with many of the more extreme criminals. What would be happening is that society would be admiting that the defendent, if guilty, has abrogated his responsibility to society, and we reluctently are revoking our responsibility to protect his life. A repeate rapest who is released from prison and forces a child, a child, to preform oral sex? You’ve proven that you cant live in society. You’re outta here buddy.
FWIW, I am a fairly moderate person, and if someone perfected a way to banish such criminals to, say Mars, I would support that instead the above. Some acts are beyond the pale, and should be delt with as such.
Arnold:
The above process would, IMHO, actualy strengthen the humanity of society, by adding another demention to the criminal’s whine " Society owes me this." It recognizes that, but ads the coda, “you owe society that”.
If the riots following the first Rodney King beating trial (and the outcry following the O.J. Simpson criminal trial) are any indication, “the people” do not want to get “justice” from the justice system – they are instead out for blood. They heap their collective hatred onto the accused, just like Captain Ahab heaped the sins of the world onto the back of the White Whale, and insist that the accused “pay for his crime”. It does not matter how conclusive on inconclusive the evidence is against the accused; the worse and more heinous the crime is, the more the people will scream, “Guilty!”
Our criminal justice system is not set up to be a Court of Vengeance. The main guiding principle behind the common law of every State (yes, even Louisianna 
) is that it is better to let a guilty man go free than to punish an innocent man. This is why punishments that cannot be undone, such as execution or lobotomy or (theoretically) physical castration, are only applied in a handful of cases, and then only after a long appeals process has exhausted the legal possibility of reasonable doubt.
Are we really afraid that convicted rapists, if released from prison, will find another victim? Or are we more angered by the notion that a rapist who serves a prison sentence and is then released “got away with it”?
Look at Singapore: Ultra-harsh punishments, near-zero crime. Do they go and cane everyone there? No, but people realize that if they DO break the law, they’ll be hurtin’. Deterrence in action.
Now, I, for one, am hardly advising that we adopt Singapore’s code of law, but I think it’s pretty evident that we need something harsher than a slap on the wrist and free cable TV for those who break the law.
SPOOFE Bo Diddly
The culture of Singapore is very different from that of the US. I don’t believe for one minute that their lower crime rate is due solely to brutal punishments for offenders.
American prisons aren’t exactly a Club Med holiday either. I have yet to meet anyone who wanted to go to prison, or anyone who had been in prison and wanted to go back.
I can’t help but think of the case where a man was released from prison after 8 years. He had been convicted of a raping an 18 year old woman. After 6 years, she fessed up that he did not rape her. She had never seen him before she picked him out of a line-up. The rape was a hoax, it never happened. Took 2 years to get the guy out of prison.
I don’t think castration is all that good of an idea.
Found the info on that case. Here it is. http://www.ipt-forensics.com/journal/volume10/j10_3_6_13.htm