That’s called moderate??
The issue simply boils down to the fact that its near impossible to convince someone to stop doing criminal activity, be it rape or petty theft. Prison may not work but at least isolation keeps them at bay for a while and the innocent can be sent home. Chopping off this or that is just as useless but not reverseable.
If you’re really in love with chopping parts off, go live in a Fundamentalist Muslim culture for a while and see what rights you have and how ‘criminals’ are treated. Its not the utopia you’d think it would be.
We call upon the wisdom of Solomon. During the trial, we tell rape suspects that if they willingly allow us to slice their balls off, they will go free. Those that accept this must surely be guilty, since they’d KNOW that they were guilty, and would want to avoid a trial in such a case. HOWEVER, those that decline must surely be innocent, since they’d know that they were innocent and would have faith that the legal system would find them innocent.
So, those found guilty in such a manner will be castrated AND be thrown in prison! I’ve just solved all the problems with the legal system! I shall call this “Spoofian Justice”.
If a person is a threat to the public, then the threat has to be removed. Arm and leg cutting sounds good, but its complicated and expensive. Can you imagine what would happen if the convict died while being operated on? We’re talking about the Mighty USA…there would be lawsuits from the convict’s family until the cows came home.
If I was running things, there would be an isolated island where we would drop off criminals. A hoe, a packet of seeds and a kick in the pants is what they would get. A boat drops them off, and that would be that. Several vessels would patrol the waters around the island, with instructions to shoot anything that swam.
Funny no one has mentioned chemical castration which is being used, I believe. They give sex offenders Depo Provera shots daily don’t they, then they can’t get it up. Naturally when the shots stop and the Depo leaves their system they can still do whatever.
Hooray! The Island punishment theory! I’ve been advocating this for years! Let them make their own society on the island–and find out just how it feels to have a society where the strong and the mobs make the rules!
Just make sure the island is surrounded by a healthy shark population!
I have heard that some offenders who have been chemically castrated become more violent with their victims than they were previously, due to frustration over not being able to achieve sexual satisfaction. Has anyone else heard this?
I think that the results on this are mixed. I don't believe it technically causes impotenct (though I may be wrong) but rather is SUPPOSED to lessen sexual desires. My understanding is that the empirical evidence on the success rate has actually been pretty bad.
Geez … the guy in the article fondles a 12-year-old girl and then masturbates, then has consensual sex with a 15-year-old girl, and he’s branded a “pedophile” and sentenced to 21 years?!
It’s like I’ve always said … we ought to call adults who have sex with 15-year-olds “pedophiles”, which lumps them together with adults who have sex with 7-year-olds. I personally prefer the term “ephebophile” for someone who enjoys sex with teen-agers (“ephebus” being the ancient Greek term for an adolescent – the term also implied a certain set of rights and responsibilities that descended on a young man in Hellenistic Greece).