From what I’ve read, this is a myth…well, that’s not really the right way of putting it. As I understand it, a rapist or child molester will be singled out for abuse, beatings and often rape (ironic, isn’t it) IF HE IS WEAK and can’t protect himself. It’s not like the prisoners are abusing this guy out of some concept of righteous justice or anything; they just realize that everyone hates child molesters and rapists, so it’s an easy target and the guards and others will be less likely to stand up for them. The thugs just want someone, anyone, to rape and brutalize, and if there happens to be a weak person around who’s also a molester or rapist, then that’s who they’ll pick.
But if the rapist is some tough guy, it’s not like he’s going to be picked on because of what he did. Do you have any idea how common rapes are among gangs, especially gang-rape? It’s considered a rite of passage for a lot of inner city savages. If the rapist is a gang member or some other brute, he’s not going to be singled out because of what he did.
Child molesters are often weak and puny people and so they’ll come in for abuse in prison because of that, more than the fact that they’re child molesters. But the latter is, of course, a very convenient justification for that abuse.
This is all secondhand information. Someone who has experiences inside a prison may be able to add more.
I may support an offshore island, exile, if you will, for criminals who have irrevocably broken the social contract with society. Live out there as they may, the state provides basic training for maintaining utilities, infrastructure, etc… and air drops supplies once a week. No guards, no walls, no enforced structure. Just evicted. With lots of sharks swimming about, or something like Alcatraz on steroids.
No, but I don’t think anyone should die. I’ll admit I’m strange though, I personally feel that it’s a tragedy that Hitler had to die instead of, say, changing his mind.
I’m not a big fan of the death penalty, but I don’t have any moral or ethical problem with crippling a rapist. Preferably by the insertion of a rusty butterknife under the patella(s) and a quick twist of the wrist. Anesthesia? Of course not.
My “gut” would say to torture them to death, along with quite a few other people I don’t like. Which is the kind of thing that makes me think I shouldn’t listen to it. I think that the sort of people who go with their guts often tend to be the sort of people who end up sparking discussions about if they should be executed or not.
I know you’re “wondering about our visceral reactions”, but they don’t seem particularly useful (and have the potential to be disingenuous). My gut says that people who walk too slowly in front of me should be executed, but that doesn’t really have much bearing on anything relevant.
As a gut reaction, I think it depends on who the person being raped is. If it is a child, especially one of my daughters, then I suggest not only torturing and killing them but also their extended family and everyone in their ancestral homeland. If it is a crack whore, then that is just part of the job description and just needs a simple police report plus some minor assault charges. Date rape probably sucks but I don’t think it deserves the death penalty. A swift hammer blow to the dick would do.
Well, part of my gut says to go with the civilized* approach—impalement, and lining the streets with the pikes. “Special circumstances” means they get a blunted pike.
The other part of my gut wants to go with a reasonable, scientific approach…stripping the condemned of all salvageable organs and tissues, and then rendering whats left of the corpse down into synthetic gasoline.
“Nemo me impune lacessit.”
*The failure to specify which civilization is not not my problem.
My gut (which has a mouth attached to it - it’s the usual anatomical arrangement) says that rape is indeed heinous, but not so many orders of magnitude more heinous than other crimes of violence that it should justify a punishment that is also orders of magnitude harsher than those for other crimes. (My gut further says that I have just perpetrated a heinous sentence of another kind, but them’s the breaks.)
Perhaps I’m odd, but I don’t think that doing something unpleasant with a penis to someone’s vagina is necessarily more horrible than doing something unpleasant to someone’s skull with a claw hammer, and ISTR that, say, many German housewives circa 1945 philosophised that it was better to be under a horny Russian infantryman than under an RAF bomber, and were able to compartmentalise and get on with their lives.
Date rape deserves punishment of at least the same severity as stranger rape. A date is someone that a person is supposed to be able to trust. So if stranger rape deserves the death penalty, so does date rape. Just because he asked her out first doesn’t lessen the severity or brutality of the crime.
Do you by some chance think I did not know this? The point was not that they chose between the various bad things that could happen to them, but that they accepted that what had been thrust upon them was, looked at with a certain cold detachment, not after all the worst of the possible alternatives. Therefore the term “philosophise”; perhaps “rationalise” would have been as appropriate.
My gut is with black rabbit, and with Malacandra. Which is odd, because I usally don’t agree with Malacandra. But yes, I also don’t buy that being raped is suffering a fate worse then death. It is terrible, make no mistake, but it isn’t murder.
But yes, I also don’t buy that being raped is suffering a fate worse then death. It is terrible, make no mistake, but it isn’t murder.