Curious. A person defends the position of an animal that beats a child to death…no doubt with cerebral hemorrhaging, and finds this a funny term indeed.
kung fu lola- Truely great post. The research I have supected was there but didn’t have at hand… but do now. Thanks
Better pick a different country. While the things I am about to describe do not happen to everyone, Japan has a terrible record of human rights violations in relation to its prisons and justice system. The police have close to ultimate authority as their ministry is one of the most powerful in the bureaucracy and there is no provision for external censure of their personnel. In other words, only the police are in charge of policing the police.
You can be arrested for “questioning” without being charged with a crime and can be held for up to three days without oversight and without their having to notify anyone that they have you in custody. If they ask a judge for more time, they can hold you for another 20 days, again without having to charge you with a crime. While being questioned, you must be allowed to see a lawyer for 15 minutes. Once. They are under no other obligation to provide you with counsel. In violation of one of the explicit provisions of the Japanese Constitution, confessions are often used as the main evidence in a trial. Japanese lawyers estimate that upwards of 60% of the people in prison here would not have been convicted on actual evidence alone.
Confessions are sometimes extracted through what amounts to brainwashing and torture: sleep deprivation, starvation, stress positions, marathon questioning sessions, beatings, humiliation, etc. It’s very common for prisoners to be threatened with having their family members brought in for similar questioning. This is a much stronger threat in Japanese culture than it might appear.
The death penalty is still used in Japan. Executions are not announced in advance to anyone, including the condemned prisoner, and are normally carried out when the Diet is not in session to avoid any last-minute pleas from the family or the government. The only notification of an execution is a letter to the parents and usually a small blurb buried in the crime and punishment section of the newspaper…after the execution is carried out. They hang their condemned criminals.
Some sensational cases have come out. A year or two ago a man died of heart failure when he was put in leather restraints face down on a concrete floor and left for several hours. There were indications that he was beaten beforehand and was possibly gagged in addition to being restrained. No punishment beyond a censure resulted. A foreigner was apparently “lost” for several years after being taken in for questioning. He was imprisoned without trial and with few records of his ever being taken. Bit of an “oops” there. I recall that someone retired early over that scandal but there were no charges brought against those responsible.
Read The Enigma of Japanese Power for more information on the Japanese government and why the police are so powerful. Run a search on “Japan human rights prison” and you’ll find loads of info.
Sleel, this is based on taking your post at face value, as I’ve neither read nor heard of the book you cited.
Japan is often brought up in arguments over gun control and how they are still a relatively safe society, compared to the daily shoot-outs in every city in America. Often it’s attributed to a better societal model than we have in the US.
If what you offer as evidence is true, I’m more likely to believe it’s a case of the populace being scared shitless about being caught for commiting a crime. Especially one as heinous as kiddie sex, rape or murder.
And that’s where I’m torn. I like the idea of due process, but too often it’s used to “work the system”. If the idea of being caught doing something illegal is so disturbing, I can see why someone woiuld say to themself “Screw it. It’s not worth the consequence.” That person lives in mortal fear, but at the same time his potential victim is never harmed by him.
I wish there was a happy medium, but I’m in no way qualified to figure where that is. 
See what I mean about brainless? Show me where I defended Couey et. al. smart boy.
Anecdote(s) != data
Get a fucking grip. We have a few recent high profile examples of the worst kind of sex offenders. I am not saying they are the only ones this bad, far from it, but they do not represent the whole of what the legal system has called “sex offenders.”
Perfectly understandable if you think they should be flayed alive, that does not make you a reactionary. I personally favor putting them into a mailbag with two wolverines. By the same token anyone who says that treating all sex offenders that way is at best impractical is not a bleeing heart.
There is not a solution that will make everything better. Throwing out the constitution and turning into Saudi Arabia won’t make the problem go away. Giving the corrections and justice systems 10X the money they have now will not change our society and turn us into Japan. There is nothing we can do to reduce this problem to an “acceptably tiny” percentage of what it is now so we better get used to the idea that incremental improvements are probably the best we can hope for.
Evil Captor
From **kung fu lola **
The Bleeding Hearts that you identify yourself with are the one’s collecting the data you ask for and the way it is skewed is obvious. Considering the numbers suggested here, how many childrens lives, not to mention the lives of their loved one’s, have been destroyed by this fucking piece of shit. Why? Why keep them alive? They have voided the warrenty on life and now must be recalled. Not a second child should suffer.
Evil Captor
Thanks. Glad you can still say so.
I must have read too much into your quote, “No parole, no “good” time, no nothing. You get sentenced to ten years, you do ten years of hard time. Period.”
After looking at it again, I realize when you referred to “hard time” and “no nothing” you were referring to reductions in sentences solely. I originally read that as “hard time”. That phrase has a LOT of meaning in prison jargon and it is different than length of sentence. I apologize for the misinterpretation.
However, as I did point out, many states have truth in sentencing. The most an individual can reduce their sentence is 1 day a month for participating in approved rehab programs. Over a 10 year sentence, that is a maximum of 120 days or 4 months. Not much at all when you think about it (plus, there are not enough programs for that credit for most inmates to get it their whole sentence).
I agree, however, that the prison system is a revolving door. Over 1/2 the offenders in Ohio are released within 1 year. But, this is the reality of the law and many criminologists have argued that U.S. laws are some of the most punitive in Western culture. We have some of the highest incarceration rates in the world, rivaling, and beating, many totalitarian regimes.
The principles of deterrence theory, put simply, stipulate that punishment must be swift, certain and severe to create deterrence. This is in the early days of Criminology: Beccaria/Bentham and the like. However, given the U.S. justice system and the freedom of America, the swiftness and certainty of punishment can never be assured. Too many civil rights would have to be sacrificed for certainty (that pesky Constitution again) and swiftness is bogged down by a highly complex bureaucratic system. Thus, there is no way to achieve any substantial specific, or general, deterrence from the Corrections system.
However, there has been some proof that crime prevention strategies of “What works”, “broken windows” and “weed and seed” have been marginally effective. But, the criminal justice system is a REACTIVE system. It reacts to crime and therefore this society must stop relying on the CJS to prevent crime. It is just not feasible given the configuration of U.S. society and culture.
Am I the only person wondering how a guy can shoot someone being escorted by the police in the freaking head, have it caught on film, and not spend a day in prison?
Does anyone have a cite on that, btw?
Jury. There are actually a few groups calling for a national standard and pool of professional jurors. Though I have no idea how that would work, may as well be a panel of judges.
Not to hijack my own thread, but think of the OJ jury. Now think of the first 12 people you know and compare the two groups. Aside from grasping basic DNA evidence, which dozen would you want deciding if a person lives or dies?
No, the people collecting the numbers are the smart people who really mean to put an end to predation by scum like Couey. They are the ones who are willing to make the effort to collect the data we need to reduce the ability of guys like Coluey to live, or failing that, to be a predator while they live. Studying the hell out of them might just guve us the clue or clues we need to figure out what will keep them from :offending" – a really weak word, I know, for what they do.
Look, if Couey goes through a shredder – a shredder running at extremely low speeds – and spends hours being mangled to death – I’m not gonna shed a drop of sympathy for the bastard. But being mad at the guy, being willing to kill him and others like him, may not be what’s needed to solve the problem he represents. I think it’s more im portant to save the next Jessica Lunsford than to get revenge against Couey. I think the most likely avenue for doing that is by studying the hell out of thses guys, finding out what makes them tick, and then … adujusting them. The place to use the anger about what they do whould be in getting support for whatever changes in civil or criminal law are needed to put a stop to them. But I’m not gonna back it, and most people won’t, unilt they have gbod reason to believe that whatever it is we come up with WILL prevent future atrocities. And that’s gonna take research.
Also, wouldn’t hurt to get more funding for guys like Lissa’s husband, so they can work the creeps over with the tools we have now.
It would be a start.
Today’s TO DO list- Buy hammer and 33,000 spikes 
Evil Captor- I can find no fault with all you have said. I think only our ideas on how to proceed, and not with the end result necessarily, may differ. No more Jessica’s. I kinda think dissection may work. Worth a try.
Tapioca Dextrin Didn’t you read this? Only a small number of those listed need to be taken out.
Originally posted by kung fu lola
Orighinally posted by FriarTed
It will require a lot fewer spikes then. Perhaps a prision work gang pulling up the spikes from abandoned railroad tracks? Cost efficiency at it’s best.
It would also be good to know what makes these people like they are. I’ve heard that most were abused themselves as children. It’s like a cycle that never stops. Also, how does the US compare to other countries.
That is a myth. Only 10% of sex offenders report they were sexually abused as children. At the International Association of Reentry conference, the Director of Sex Offender Programs for one of the larger Corrections Systems in the U.S. made this statement. He was talking about trying to demythify the idea that sex offenders are victims.
In the sex offender program at my husbands prison, there is no talk af their prior victimization. The focus is on the harm they have done and teaching them, in part, to empathize with the harm they do unto others. They are referred to license psychologists and psychiatrists if they report mental illness as a result of prior abuse, but they are not absolved of their responsibility in the program for this.
The sad thing is, all entities, who are objective, admit there is no proven effective method of treating sex offenders. Not even chemical castration has proven to be overall effective.
This is mental for these guys (it is based in really fucked up thinking patterns), which is why they are trying cognitive behavioral models, but my husband has serious issues with these models as well because the nature of the model may lead to security problems at the facility. He recently authored a 3 page memo stipulating his objections to the cognitive behavioral approach and his desire to find a model that truly works rather than something that “sounds good”. He refuses to put his name on any program that claims an offender is “treated” when there is no evidence to prove the efficacy of that treatment.
(Bolding mine)
Lissa, I have a question I hope your husband, or one of his colleagues can answer. It involves seeing pedophelia as a mental illness rather than a patterned crimal activity. (If that makes sense)
What made me think of this is that schizophrenics can often be violent, without any chance of controlling impulses and urges without medication and therapy. (And even if this is a fair analogy, I still want the kiddie pervs locked safely away.)
Anyway, I’m aware of the efforts of reforming them, what I’m wondering is how much research is being done to study the brain? What I mean is, are there studies being done to examine any chemicals in the brain or things like that? With the advancement in psychotropic drugs for myriad afflictions, does it look promising that we’re near finding a physical treatment?
Or is it more likely that these people are just somehow inherently evil and we have no chance of ever having a reliable treatment? I’d expect any answer to be more opinion in this regard, but any info would be appreciated.
Thanks
Well, I just quizzed my husband and he admitted that he was not really qualified to fully answer your questions. However, he told me to share what he knows.
For the most part, the idea of a sex offender being “mentally ill” from a clinical sense, and that being the cause of the offense, is highly disputed. Although many sex offenders exhibit symptoms of other mental illnesses, there is little evidence to indicate that this is the cause of the behavior.
Most studies have shown that the major reason is messed up cognitive patterns. This is why there is a link between violent porn and sex offending behavior. However, these studies raise the chicken and the egg notion. In other words, did the person, after viewing violent porn, seek out victims… or… did an individual with the propensity for sex offenses seek out the violent porn to enhance those fantasies.
As for studies of the brain, he just did not know. However, he did know that the idea that sex offenders are created primarily by a sexual overdrive is not true. This is why many sex offenders do not stop offending even after they are chemically castrated. It is a way of thinking. The very idea of doing these things to a victim is the excitement.
Many Sociologists assert that sex offenders are created by a society that objectifies women and treats them as property. When young men have atittudes that women are not valuable and are created solely for their pleasure, these issues erupt. This could be applicable to children as well.
Nubby wishes he knew what caused the problem so that they could possibly fix it. But, he is not convinced that any current program , that he is aware of, is effective.