You could say that about all crime: why bother to try to understand it? Let’s just punish them, and hope that makes 'em quit. Hey, we all know what a roaring sucess that has been.
I’ve always been bemused by the notion that exposing people to ideas leads to acceptance of them. To me, it smacks of those parents who freak out at the idea of their kids reading Harry Potter because it might make them want to be witches, or believe that sex education will make a virgin rush out the door to try it out.
My husband is deputy warden in a prison, and a sociology/criminology teacher. Striving to learn and teach others about human behavior, including pedophilia, has not led him to “accept” it. Quite the opposite, in fact. He hopes that his efforts to understand pedophilia and other sex crimes will lead to prevention and possibly, methods of treatment for offenders.
Yes, but I didn’t say it about all crimes, and not all crimes are similar in nature. I’m not necessarily saying we don’t need to try and understand what motivates criminals. I’m saying that trying to learn from cultures that don’t consider it a crime in the first place is of no value from a law enforcement perspective.
Understanding the motivations behind a particular crime serves a good purpose. It helps solve the crime and adds valuable experience for society in perhaps finding ways to try and stop repeats of said crime.
But honestly this has limits. We probably shouldn’t try to understand why Jim Bob beat his wife based on the similar actions of a greek farmer 3,000 years ago.
And even if the two cases were similar there’s many more relevant cases to look at in the here and now.
Putting aside the boorish Potter book, why does it bamuse you that exposing people to ideas leads to accepting them? Hell, that’s a huge part of the reason most institutions of higher learning try to have their students take courses like political science and sociology and most require some sort of “cultural” class like an African-American studies or Middle Eastern studies class. It’s in part to learn, but also to expose people to new ideas and make them more accepting of the ideas of others.
History bears out that in general, greater exposure of an idea makes it more accepted. This can be a good thing, or it can be a bad thing, but to say it doesn’t happen doesn’t make much sense to me.
When people are first confronted with a new idea, they’re skeptical. It’s new, not mainstream, all ideas have to start this way. After awhile the idea will gain enough supporters that it eventually reaches “critical mass” when it starts to expand and be heard throughout a given society, and the more it is heard the more it is accepted.
Urban legends spread the same way, really. Get enough exposure and people believe it, no matter how good or bad the idea may be.
That’s fine. However I fear that this line of thought leads to the “he couldn’t control himself” sort of conclusion, that pedophiles should be treated not punished. Personally I’m all for the preventive treating of pedophiles who have not committed a serious crime. But I’ve always felt rape is a crime that causes so much damage to the victim, equity and justice demand a life sentence as the only appropriate punishment.
Pedophiles are not criminally insane (well, at least not by virtue of their pedophilia) they know what they do is wrong and illegal and they do it anways. If we catch a guy who fondles his kids, he should be given treatment AND punishment. But if someone rapes or commits a serious sexual assault against another peron I’m in favor of life without parole, and for such persons treatment doesn’t serve society well.
Speculation, but my personal recommendations for prevention:
Dispell of the idea in society of women as being weaker
Bring up children (no lower age limit really) with an awareness of rape, molestation, use*, etc. How to spot it, not to accept it, and to make the biggest racket and fuss should anyone ever do anything that they don’t want to happen to them
Lower the unemployment rate, promote healthy drinking habits, etc.
Essentially, the easier a target you seem the more likely you are to be a target (looks, sluttiness, etc. is really not a factor as people would think.) And generally the more stress and alcohol you are under the influence of, the greater the odds are you will commit a sex crime, so lowering the odds of those will help.
Use being a catchall for things like tormenting, punishing, belittling, etc. without cause, solely for ones own pleasure.
The more power you give to women in a society, the less likely they are to be assaulted. The power has to be about being mistress of her own house, body and destiny, power not reliant on her beauty, attractiveness or fertility.
The more you educate young men about how to act appropriately, the less likely they are to offend.
The less stigma you attach to victims, the more likely they are to come forward.
The more rapists convicted, the more likely victims will come forward.
The less sexualised a society, the less sex crimes occur.
I disagree. Through cultures like this, we can get an idea of how pervasive the attraction to children is, what the roots of it are, and the psychology of the offenders. Some people believe that pedophiles were themselves abused as children and that’s what “causes” it, but we can study other cultures to see if this is true or not.
Scientists still don’t understand exactly why some people are sexually attracted to children. The discovery of the reason could lead to more effective treatments and prevention. People in cultures were sexual activity with children is permissable are more willing to talk about their experiences than those who hide it out of fear of punishment.
The criminal justice system is reactive, not proactive-- meaning that we can only punish someone after they’ve done a crime, not because they want to do it. Sociologists and criminologists try to get at the roots of the problem to do what the justice system cannot, and that is to prevent crime.
Sure we should, because they probably have the same motivations. Times may change, but people never do. Now, just because we want to understand what made Joe Bob do what he did doesn’t mean we excuse it.
It doesn’t always work that way. Learning is what you make of it, after all. A lot of people come out of universities just as ignorant as they went in, just cramming for the tests and dismissing anything that doesn’t fit with their notion of the world. A strongly Christian conservative will likely not come out of a university an athiest liberal, in other words, and vice-versa. You can lead a horse to water . . . .
This is true, but very, very few people are advocating for allowing pedophilia or not punishing the offenders. NAMBLA hopes that what you’re saying is true, but they haven’t had much success with mainstream culture, and unless there’s a massive cultural upheaval, it won’t happen any time soon. Societal prohibitions may loosen, but taboos are something more deeply ingrained.
Well, remember that there’s a difference between the stupid people out there and those who are intelligent enough to check out what they’re told before they repeat it. Secondly, I know a woman whom I’ve told again and again that a certain tale is untrue, but she continues to repeat it because “it’s such a great story.”
Unless a person is actually insane, they have no valid excuse of that they “couldn’t control themselves.” I’ve, personally, never met a criminologist/sociologist who thinks otherwise. Sure, there are some on the fringe, but most understand the need of social controls.
Maybe justice calls for it, but practicality doesn’t. The way our system works precludes it.
Most cases are plea-bargained. Our justice system is clogged as is it is. If every case went to trial, it would collapse under the weight of all the cases. Secondly, very, very few people will plead if the sentence will be life. Thirdly, sex crimes cases are very difficult to prosecute, especially if the victim is a child, and even more especially if there’s no DNA evidence. A clever lawyer can easily confuse a child on the stand and make it appear as if they’re unthruthful. Prosecutors are often handed a weak case and have to settle for whatever time they can get out of the offender.
As I said in my first post, treatment only works if the offender wants to change his ways. The criminal justice system is aware of this, of course, but they sort of go off the supposition that it’s better to at least try to get through to them. Unfortunately, what treatment programs there are are usually under-funded and under-staffed. Programs are typically run in a group setting by an employee who is using a “teacher’s manual”-- they’re not psychologists, and they have a shit-load of other duties.
For treatment to be truly effective, it would have to be run by trained psychologists who work the the offenders one-on-one. It will never happen, though, because it would astronomically expensive, and the public loves politicians who say they’re tough on crime, but deeply resents paying higher taxes to fund programs for inmates.
Personally I wouldn’t count Saudi Arabia as a de-sexualised country. Everything there is based on the premise that men can’t control their urges and women are temptresses who will bring dishonour on the family if left alone for a minute.
A country where female customs officials pat-down female airline passengers behind a curtain, lest some man be aroused by the sight of a woman putting her hands on the body of another woman, is entirely too preoccupied with sex.
Please do not assume that I am in any way condoning pedophilia, because child abuse of any kind is one of the things I loathe most, but I would like to toss out a very strange thought I had some time ago. If there was some way to offer people with this disorder an outlet that did not involve children, would it be moral to do so? Specifically I was thinking of something along the lines of robotics, virtual reality, etc. I mean, it might be disgusting to most people, but so is a lot of adult pornography. No one would actually be harmed by it. I suppose you could argue that it might lead to more child abuse instead of less, in the same way that some studies have claimed that adult heterosexual porn leads to violence against women, but I have never been convinced that there was necessarily a correlation. Even though a large number of rapists like porn, the majority of people who like porn aren’t rapists. I don’t think I’ve ever seen anyone argue gay pornography leads to violence or abuse. Child pornography is henious when it has children involved, but what if it didn’t? What if it were all created on a sophisticated graphics program? Would it still be immoral? What if it were part of a registration and treatment program? Register with the state and get free porn with every psych session?
I thought virtual child porn was legal, I remember something about that during Clinton’s presidency.
Even if you offer child pornography the vast majority of pedophiles will not willingly sign up to get it with the government. You might as well ask the FBI to offer the Al-Qaeda weekly newsletter.
I’m more wondering if there are legitimate sociological and criminal justice studies on interventions that work for this kind of thing on a personal, statewide, national or city level? The problem is though that you’d probably have to run an intervention for an entire city to find out if it works, and even then you’d never know. Since most sexual abuse crimes are never reported how could you find out if there is a decrease? Maybe anonymous surveys or something like that. Our current intervention of not knowing about 90% of sex crimes and isolating convicted sex offenders (who supposedly have low relapse rates) doesn’t seem very effective.