Absolutely
I’ve been thinking about this a little more today (spent the day photocopying - lots of good cogitating time), and while I think it’s great in theory that we try to rehabilitate young criminals rather than get revenge on them, and I get that their brains aren’t as mature as that of a 30 year old, but that doesn’t change the effects that young criminals have on their victims and the society we’re living in. I overheard some young guys talking on the bus one day; one was telling the other that he was turning 18 soon, and he’d have to stop doing crimes now. They bloody well know what they’re doing is wrong; there’s just no particular incentive to stop them from doing it. That’s the downside of our approach to young criminals; it’s all about protecting and helping the criminals, and the consequences of their actions seem to be overlooked. That isn’t as big a deal when they’re wrecking bus shelters and stealing everything that isn’t nailed down (but it certainly makes my city a lousier place to live), but when you start talking about crimes that have serious consequences for the victims, it seems like young criminals get off very lightly for the amount of damage they cause.
I think you need to differentiate between someone that is physically a child and someone that is mentally a child. Elevn and twelve year olds are having sex. That means they can force sex on other. Yet they are still children.
We draw a line somewhat arbitrarily as there needs to be a line somewhere for the law to work. The same way we decide when people can drive and drink alcohol.quite simply it may not be perfect but it is the best method we’ve got.
So do teenage rapists and murderers clean up their act once they reach their mid 20s? The percentage of teenagers who are that sick and socially maladjusted is pretty small, so excuse me for believing it’s not a “growing up” issue. Partying too much, not taking school seriously, being an ass, hanging with a bad crowd – sure, those are growing up issues that are fairly common. Gangrape?
At one point do you think he should be treated as a child and why? 17? 16? 15? 7?
It is uncomfortable, but we have to draw a line somewhere and stick to it for the law to work.
It seems to me that you are saying no one can clean up their act. May as well give life sentences for everything and anything.
I’m guessing that most of them grow up into adults with Anti-Social Personality Disorder.
There are many people out there who just don’t get that there are predators among us who really don’t have normal human emotions such as empathy or compassion and will only fake having such feelings as a manipulation tool.
In most cases, these kinds of people are the product of a terrible home environment, and that’s very sad, but the reality is that some people are so broken that you can’t fix them (at least not with our current understanding of antisocial personality disorder). No therapy can teach someone to have a conscience or to care about other people’s rights if they just don’t have that capacity. For me, the issue isn’t wanting revenge/punishment - I just think we need to protect ourselves from the predators out there by keeping them away from people they can hurt.
First, I posted 16 up above.
Second, in my post to you I was talking about criminal records being wiped clean, not punishment. I think for a violent crime, those records should never be wiped. Treat a 12 year-old murderer as they currently are under the current law, but I see no compelling reason why that crime has to be hidden. It should also be used to deny them the right to possess a firearm, too, and I say that as one of the most pro-2nd supporters on this message board.
I find this most disturbing.
Personally, I hope the least that happens to anyone found to have knowingly downloaded images of this crime is their computer gets seized, wiped, and donated to a women’s crisis center.
Let the punishment fit the crime in that particular case.
Hmmm…
I’m going to extrapolate from another social context-and maybe unwarrantedly so.
Gang rape, in which a girl is drugged and raped by a large contigent of frat boys at a frat party, is something that is a semi-common affair in the U.S. One of the frat members will find a girl who’s perhaps a bit of a social outcast, bring her to the party, and, well, get her drunk, with or without the benefit of a date rape drug(which is just a new technological advance on alcohol). When she passes out upstairs, the frat boys line up.
These are big opportunities for them to prove their masculinity to one another and to bond with each other. While some of the males present at one of these things probably are sociopaths of some sort or another, I think that most people underestimate how much being part of a group reduces feelings of culpability and removes inhibitions.
I suspect that’s exactly what was going on here. When you(or I) are in a group, there’s a perceived reduction of responsibility. If the people at the rave, later on in life, and sober, came upon a woman being assaulted and screaming for help; I suspect their response would be to either try and stop the attack, or to at least call the police.
I wish more people knew about this-it’s one of the first things we learned in my social psychology class-the more people present, the less perceived responsibility by any one person.
Y’all remember that…because now that I have told you this… you need to determine to be that one person who steps up and accepts responsibility.
You see something that doesn’t look right, join me in being the PITA who checks it out, the busybody who says that crap doesn’t fly here. You see someone in trouble, DO SOMETHING!
YOU may be the one person in the position to stop something horrible from happening or continuing. DO IT!
Make the world a better place.
(This public service announcement brought to you by one cranky aging dyke with lots of crap to do.)
I can’t agree with the idea that Canada should be more like the US in terms of criminal justice. In fact, I find the current move toward harsher sentences really disturbing; it risks destroying one of the things I like about my country. There are no major crime problems here, I’ve never felt unsafe, and I feel that the emphasis on rehabilitation, especially of youth criminals (thanks Spoons) is largely responsible for how safe we are. So this new, tougher stance on crime comes completely out of left field to me; I think it’s largely a scheme used by the current government to motivate their political base, and the more they succeed in putting it into policy, the less safe we will be. Or at least we will imprison for life people who could be productive members of society but happened to make a mistake.
What I feel we need is not tougher minimum sentences and less use of suspended sentences and parole, but rather more discretion for judges to impose sentences that fit the crime and the offender. People need to realize that “criminals” are not a different race that preys on normal people and must be separated from society forever, but often people like everyone else who made a mistake but can be readmitted into society after a time. But people are increasingly afraid, and they want to feel “safe”, not to be presented with a solution that may actually work but sounds “weak”.
Not to say that the current event is not a horrible crime, of course, but I tend to agree with BayouHazard’s interpretation. Of course, we shouldn’t decide policy based on isolated cases, but on hard facts. But when the government refuses to accept facts that contradict their ideology, such as the fact that crime rates are down (seriously, they said this statistic was wrong because supposedly “unreported crime” is up, however they manage to know that), I start weeping for what’s happening with this country.
Aren’t most murderers first-time (and only-time) offenders? Rapists are probably different, although once again it depends on the specific offense and offender.
Harsh sentencing turns the majority of criminals into hardened criminals-that is, it makes them worse, at least on this side of the border. Needlessly, in many cases. There *are *a small subset of people who are, well, just going to be predators, though, and it’s hard to figure out who those are and respond appropriately. Our (U.S.) solution seems to be to treat most offenders, including nonviolent drug offenders, as if they are hopeless predators…
Prison is an environment of brutality. It is allowed to be. It should not be allowed to be. It should be unpleasant, yes, but prisoners should not be allowed to be brutalized by other prisoners or guards. Opportunities to improve oneself should be provided-the idea being that anything that turns a criminal into a good taxpayer is a good thing, even if it means (gasp!) spending money on jailbirds.
Prison as it is now is an environment where you become more psychologically damaged…and learn how to be more of a threat to others from other prisoners fairly often.
Prison culture-in which one is sorted into a hierarchy of victims and victimizers-is trickling out into the broader U.S. society, IMO. I think this is a Really Bad Thing.
Add in the fact that a convicted felon can barely get a job at the best of times-and you’ve created a permanent criminal underclass.
Oh yes, of course. Some people do need to be separated from society forever. But a good number of people who commit crimes, even serious ones, can be brought back into society.
This is what really scares me about US prison. The fact that it is brutal, and people seem to think it is a good thing. Even on this board I’ve seen the wish that such-and-such offender be raped in prison. Even non-violent ones: as an example, I’ve seen people gloating over the fact that Bernie Madoff (who certainly did something bad and should be punished, no doubt about it) would be sent to “pound-me-in-the-ass prison” and not “club fed”. I don’t get it and I find it disgusting.
It’s likely to be a good investment in the long run, but prisoners are probably the less popular group in our societies. Anything that is perceived as “pampering” them is going to be opposed.
ETA:
Yes. One reason why I hope we don’t import the sex offender laws that are so common in the US. (As I understand it there is a sex offender registry in Canada, but it’s not open for everyone to see, people are not obligated to divulge that they are on it, they don’t stay on it for their entire lives, and usually cities don’t have these extremely restrictive laws aimed at having no convicted sex offender live legally on their territory.)
The thing that gets me when I hear about this sort of thing nowadays is, it’s easier than ever to call the cops without anyone knowing you did so. Pretty much everyone under 60 carries a cell phone these days, so all you have to do is step into the broom closet and call 911.
Hell, you could probably call 911 from right there in the room and manage your end of the conversation to make it sound like you were telling a buddy all about it, urging him to come over and join the fun. Nobody would blink an eye.
You make an excellent point, BayouHazard. I can see the perceived individual responsibility going down like you said in a group like that. I can also see teenagers being more reluctant than ever to go against the group - in my opinion, teenagers are more friend and social focused than they’ve ever been.
I don’t have too big a problem with harsher sentences and crappy prisons - you guys seem to be forgetting that the threat of going to prison is supposed to be a deterrent as well. It’s not supposed to be a getaway at a country club - it’s supposed to be something you avoid.
Hypnagogic Jerk, I don’t actually live in fear, and I am aware that many types of crime have gone down, but I don’t think the favourite crimes of young criminals (theft, vandalism, break-ins) have gone down, because they keep happening to me. Doing a bit of research, I see that I might be having a different experience than other people because living in Alberta does make us more of a target. I’m sick to death of kids wrecking everything they can get their hands on here; I can’t leave anything in my front yard because it will get stolen or broken; I’m thinking about putting a lock on the gate to my back yard to protect the stuff in there. We don’t live in a bad neighbourhood.
There was an article in my newspaper this morning saying that two of the girls’ friends have come forward, denouncing the claims of rape. They say she likely came up with the story after the pictures of the incident became public, trying to save face. The father called this possibility “stupid”.
Sounds like another case where we don’t get to find out who is actually the victim until after the trial.
There’s two things that could have happened here; either the friends are telling the truth, or they aren’t friends, but rather girls who want to get their names in the news. At any rate, someone is telling an extremely nasty lie here.
The people who watched, took pictures, and posted them are all still pretty scummy, in my opinion.
Why would we find out who she is even after the trial? Rape victims are (usually) protected.
ETA: Just read Snifit’s post–are you saying that if the guys are found not guilty, we can find out who she is? Because even if they are, it doesn’t automatically mean the victim is lying. Just that there wasn’t enough evidence to convict.
If the victim is the accuser or the accused.