summary execution of known child molesters is morally justifiable

discuss

do i have to?

what does summary mean

i don't think execution is morally justifiable so i don't even have to get to the object of the execution

It would depend on your line of reasoning and system of moral principles, wouldn't it? An eye for an eye can be given a certain amount of moral justification, too, but it seems fairly crude.

capital punishment is not even justifiable on practical grounds so no need to get into the ethical dimensions.

Which practical grounds

We've had death penalty discussion lots of times nakh whats up

giving the state the power to execute people is more dangerous than jailing awful people for life.

i am in favor of molesting people who execute others

i stand with harbl

is that summary molestation

Which practical grounds

it's too expensive, isn't an effective deterrent, and can't repair the damage done by the crime.

i would allow them a speedy and public trial of a jury of their peers at which they could confront the witnesses against them

You can make anything too expensive if you wish i spose

When used as nilmar has used it, "summary" would mean that once it has been clearly established that a person has molested a child, that person's execution would follow that fact as swiftly as possible. "Summary justice" has some broad connotations of vigilantism. I note that "known" leaves open the type of proof required to induce that degree of certainty.

then you give them a brief summary of what will happen

then you pull their briefs summarily off

a summery execution otoh would be great

the death penalty is disgusting

hi Treeship

I prefer 'Greetings, Your Treeship'.

no summary "discuss" threads

plus you could just have them not do that anymore duh

the summery elocution of molested children, a film by wes anderson and todd solondz

everyone who attends is executed

summarily

execution is at most autamnal

No results found for "morally justifiable discus".

Col. da Silva: Prisoner, molest this child!

Prisoner #1: Um, no way, that's fucked up.

Col. da Silva: Do it now! That's an order!

Prisoner #1: I said no. What the fuck is going on?

Col. da Silva: Okay, you're good. Get the next one.

Guard exits, returns a moment later with Prisoner #2, bleary-eyed

Col. da Silva: Prisoner, molest this child!

Prisoner #2: What?

Col. da Silva: You heard me! The child, molest him!

Prisoner #2: Are you sure? I mean, I...

Col. da Silva: NOW!

Col. da Silva stands quietly for a time

Col. da Silva: Guard, execute this prisoner.

I know two adults who were victims of child molestation. Both of them semi-regularly openly fantasize about killing their molestors and/or other known pedophiles.

i believe the death penalty to be inexcusable but it's difficult to attribute much humanity to child murderers

I know two adults who were victims of child molestation. Both of them semi-regularly openly fantasize about killing their molestors and/or other known pedophiles.

I know victims who do no such thing.

couple of xposts: that's kinda besides the point, anyway, isn't it? That victims more or less justifiably may wish death upon their molestors is not related to the issue of the moral justification of death penalty, that is, state-sanctioned death.

Like, I can well understand the urge to kill someone that has done such a horrible thing to you. Vengeance is as old as time, and that urge is a part of being human, I think. I can not, however, understand how someone can defend the right of the state to decide that a citizen deserves to die. no matter what that person has done.

summary closing of known nilmar threads is morally justifiable

better trollthread catalysis options than this, gotta say

thread would have been much better if it had been 'summary castration'

Nah, life incarceration might spark a one and a half sided shitfight tho

that's just ILX, mind

I've never accepted the argument that The State has no right to decide whether I live or die. The State does it already! It decides whether I get adequate health care, how much of my salary goes towards a pension, if I can get conscripted, whether I can get married to another man, if it wants to aim an armed drone at me. My objections are moral and financial.

My objections are aesthetic

It decides whether I get adequate health care, how much of my salary goes towards a pension, if I can get conscripted, whether I can get married to another man, if it wants to aim an armed drone at me.

Only in the last of those cases is the state actually assuming the right to take your life (and 1, 2, and 4 are really not examples of the state deciding whether you live or die in any but very indirect ways imo). I am unquestionably opposed to the state aiming armed drones at its own citizens as well.

The ostensible point of capital punishment is part deterrent to others and part punishment to the perp, though obviously it succeeds much more as the latter than the former. However, given that child molestation is a compulsion that preys on the most vulnerable in the most vile way, it's hard to muster any sympathy at all. There's a reason why so many of them are killed in prison; even the lowest of the low recognize an even lower low. Which is another way of saying that the death penalty seems pretty unnecessary in this case. A better question is whether a convicted child molester should ever be let out of prison. That seems to me the only place they should have in society. There are any number of reasons one person kills another. But child molesters have no excuse except that they can't stop themselves, which is pretty self-defeating as defenses go.

Last fall, we got a community alert that a convicted child molester, someone who had been convicted of molesting three boys some 15 years ago or so, had been hanging around on the porch of his family's house on Halloween - wearing a costume, no less. Apparently a judge had given him permission for some stupid reason. Fortunately, whatever that stupid reason was was soon rescinded, and he went back to where he came from. But if dude is going to be so brazen, just lock him up and throw away the key.

For the sake of argument, if someone hasn't offended again in 15 years and has given every indication that he has genuinely been reformed or rehabilitated, should they never be let out again in their life?

I can not, however, understand how someone can defend the right of the state to decide that a citizen deserves to die. no matter what that person has done.

― Mule, Thursday, May 2, 2013 3:41 AM (3 hours ago)

it depends, afaic, on whether the threat is perceived as active or passive. when i differentiate between acceptable and unacceptable killing (and i do), it almost always corresponds to this distinction. i find the execution of captive, powerless criminals morally abhorrent because they no longer pose any active threat. this is true no matter what their crime. i find the obama administration’s drone strike program morally abhorrent because so many of the people we kill don’t seem to be doing anything immediately and directly threatening. whether or not they’re u.s. citizens is immaterial to me. framing the issue this way attempts to resolve the tension between my belief that the state has no moral right to kill and my recognition of the inalienable right of individuals and groups to defend themselves.

Can I nail this one?

Imagine someone molests a child, possibly diminished responsibility, possibly not.

If it is a mandatory death penalty, he has no option but to kill the child, as this removes the main witness to the crime.

So, the death penalty would actually kill more children than perpetrators.

Louis CK did part of his stand up on how the severe penalties against child molesters probably cause them to kill children, but I don't know of a good solution to that. Pedophiles have a very high recidivism rate.

More than 300 innocent people released from death row since The Innocence Project started up in 1992, and that's just the ones lucky enough to have their cases taken up by a high-profile, well-funded charitable organization. GTFO with any capital punishment for anything, ever.

Contenderizer, I was primarily thinking in criminal justice terms. I pretty much agreee with your post.

ctrl-F "wintry execution" ---> no results

Not a bad speech imo: http://uranowski.wordpress.com/2012/05/01/pierre-elliott-trudeaus-speech-in-support-of-the-abolition-of-capital-punishment-house-of-commons-june-15th-1976/

Ppl say castration like its a universal answer but it doesnt solve the prob of female abusers

For the sake of argument, if someone hasn't offended again in 15 years and has given every indication that he has genuinely been reformed or rehabilitated, should they never be let out again in their life?

Well of course they won't have offended again if they've been locked away for 15 years.

not if they keep locking kids in with him/her as a test

"OK, here's a kid, but watch out, because WE'RE KEEPING AN EYE ON YOU!"

15 years pass.

"Good job, you can leave now. Don't molest any kids."

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AKE9W0O8bX8

i really hate discussing this issue, because pedophiles are a huge aporia in my strong belief in the "rehabilitative" model of justice, which can work even for murderers. the death penalty is never the answer though. we should have a prison system that allows certain inmates to have a relative degree of freedom... like they are under a lot of supervision, but can hold jobs and save money and things. that seems less cruel and would keep children safe, maybe. i visited a prison in denmark and this is what they did.

I had to google aporia. Good word!

Death penalty is a boss answer imo, think about it

Well of course they won't have offended again if they've been locked away for 15 years.

OK, I didn't get that 15 years was the length of the prison term and he'd just been let out.

One of the main indicators of whether someone becomes a child abuser is whether they themselves were abused as children, so....

summary execution of all molested children might be a better way forward, then

http://www.patriotledger.com/blogs/frontpage/x493267949/MATT-CONNOLLY-What-if-Jerry-Sandusky-is-innocent

Not a bad start, but i think we should develop it a little

assuming we could know beyond a shadow of a doubt that someone is a psychopath, is summary execution of known psychopaths morally justifiable?

No. No-one should ever be executed, duh.

Psychopath would probably manipulate the testing procedure tbf and get a whole bunch of innocent people executed

Everyone convicted of anything is convicted "beyond all reasonable doubt"

OK, I didn't get that 15 years was the length of the prison term and he'd just been let out.

It wasn't! But how else are you supposed to monitor a convicted child molester's recidivism? You can either arrest him and keep him locked up, which of course (per my post) doesn't prove anything about his rehabilitation. Or you can arrest him and let him out on close watch parole, which seems to be tempting fate and probably costs as much money and takes as much trouble as prison, but with more room for error. Or you can just do nothing, which is stupid.

So no death penalty for molesters, or anyone, but given the nature of the crime I have no problem with a one-strike-you're-out policy. Not a whole lot of credible yeah, I molested a kid but I'll be good from now on defenses.

assuming we could know beyond a shadow of a doubt that someone is a psychopath, is summary execution of known psychopaths morally justifiable?

― Mordy, Thursday, May 2, 2013 8:42 AM (18 minutes ago)

not big on summary execution of anybody, for any reason.

people who by their actions prove themselves a threat to others ought to be kept at a safe distance from the general public, either in prisons or mental hospitals. they should not be mistreated or aggressively "punished". instead, they should be housed humanely with reasonable access to education, exercise, self-expression and entertainment. during the period of their incarceration, sincere efforts should be made to rehabilitate them and/or treat their disorders. these basic guarantees should apply to all prisoners, regardless of the nature of their crimes.

and as mark g points out, "beyond a shadow of a doubt" is a comforting fiction. we like to believe that life is a cop movie, that the bad guys are clearly identifiable, but we can rarely escape some trace of doubt. "reasonable" is a very slippery measure. i don't see any reason to speculate about what we might do in some impossible ideal world. our choices should reflect the world we actually live in.

You could dodge ethics by reselling it as imperfect self-defense or mercy killing,
but are there states with both capital punishment and right-to-die laws?

i don't know how to reconcile the fact that i believe humans make moral choices and also that psychology/health determines behavior

Are morals universal? How do you reconcile that?

Yes, some morals are universal.

Is it a hurdle if not all morals are universal?

A hurdle to what?

i don't know how to reconcile the fact that i believe humans make moral choices and also that psychology/health determines behavior

― Mordy, Thursday, May 2, 2013 10:14 AM (37 minutes ago)

eh, i think it's a teeter-totter. we make moral choices, but we're also constrained by various factors, among them psychological health. sometimes it makes sense to place full (or nearly full) emphasis on behavior as the product of moral choice. sometimes other factors are more relevant.

fwiw, i don't believe in absolute or universal morality, but i know what i personally think is right. that's good enough for me.

sort of like the tension between utopian moral idealism and respect for difference that we were talking about the other day in the antisemitism thread. it doesn't have to be one or the other. the most sensible position, imo, is flexible and adaptive, taking account of both concerns.

i'm not willing to throw all my weight behind some platonic moral forms that definitely exist in reality, however i think it is of utilitarian value to assume that certain things are of universal moral substance and not to negotiate on these things. if they are not in fact universal then the assumption that they are can bring actions into line w/ behavior that is important to moderate (for example, let us never tolerate genocide, even if another culture can claim that the crime against humanity is only in our eyes). in moments of honesty we can admit that we can never truly know what is right, but save that for drinks w/ friends imho.

I think child molestation is pretty much a universal moral no-no.

But even if you could find places/cultures/people who think it's a moral yes-yes, I don't think we need to implement radical multiculturalism in those cases.

What if the kids there are really hot?

I assume that there are even varying degrees amongst cultures about what a child is i.e. based on age or some other tangible thing

Of the eight words of substance in the thread title, the only one which is not ambiguous to some degree is "execution".

oops, seven words of substance.

If it must be a summery execution, what looks best against blood red? Simple chromatographic aesthetics call for white linen I think. Perhaps a light pink pocket square?

I assume that there are even varying degrees amongst cultures about what a child is i.e. based on age or some other tangible thing

I mean, even different US states have different ages of consent, right?

well, yes, of consent

age of consent is obviously a factor in statutory rape. but is there an age span attached to child molestation or pedophilia?

12 and under in the US

Isn't this determined State by State?

i think it is of utilitarian value to assume that certain things are of universal moral substance and not to negotiate on these things. if they are not in fact universal then the assumption that they are can bring actions into line w/ behavior that is important to moderate (for example, let us never tolerate genocide, even if another culture can claim that the crime against humanity is only in our eyes).

yeah, but you're going absolute again. the fact that certain things stand out as completely intolerable should not incline us to search for moral absolutes in every situation. flexible and adaptive, that's the key. most human action (even a lot of human crime) lies somewhere in the fuzzy middle, not at the extreme and clear ends of the moral scale.

conty, if i may ask, were you a philosophy major?

this thread is surprisingly sober given that it was started purely because i wanted the disquieting, inane phrase on SNA

Many years later, as he faced the firing squad, Colonel Aureliano Buendia was to remember that distant summery afternoon when his father took him to discover ice.

haven't we discussed this 20 times in the last couple years alone?

A+

x-post

But there really is no fuzzy middle on child molestation, is there? I mean, you can argue that the legal definition may shift from place to place, but there can't possibly be a place where child molestation, however specifically it is defined, is either not a crime or is not frowned upon. For sure there are places where murder, rape and the horrible like are treated with shall we call a disconcerting leniency. But I bet even in some of those places molesting a child falls beneath even the standard of killing a child. It's just a matter of whether there is a system in place to prosecute it. Obviously many victims of child molestation remain silent or not prosecuted not due to lack of case or evidence or whatever but because of a real or perceived power disparity.

conty, if i may ask, were you a philosophy major?

no, high school dropout.

i do enjoy what i think of as "philosophical discussion", though i'm self-conscious about my lack of formal education. i suspect that the thoughts i feel compelled to elaborate are quite familiar to students of the subject and could be far more efficiently communicated by simple reference to this text or that name.

josh your posts in this thread are astoundingly ignorant and devoid of any semblance of empathy

i know this is a troll thread on a tired topic but it's still kinda weird how many ppl in here are taking for granted the conventional wisdom that child molesters almost universally reoffend? afaik while there are some problems w/ the currently available research it mostly shows that recidivism rates for sex offenders (including child molesters) are much lower than the CW would have it

here have a blog post from 2008: http://blogs.wsj.com/numbersguy/how-likely-are-sex-offenders-to-repeat-their-crimes-258/

josh your posts in this thread are astoundingly ignorant and devoid of any semblance of empathy

What do you mean? Empathy for whom, child molesters?

There's a reason why so many of them are killed in prison; even the lowest of the low recognize an even lower low. Which is another way of saying that the death penalty seems pretty unnecessary in this case. A better question is whether a convicted child molester should ever be let out of prison. That seems to me the only place they should have in society. There are any number of reasons one person kills another. But child molesters have no excuse except that they can't stop themselves, which is pretty self-defeating as defenses go.

how about the ones with mental illness or abusers who were abused themselves as children, which is most of them. these are by and large not people making rational decisions who are fully culpable for their crimes

But there really is no fuzzy middle on child molestation, is there? I mean, you can argue that the legal definition may shift from place to place, but there can't possibly be a place where child molestation, however specifically it is defined, is either not a crime or is not frowned upon.

well sure, "molestation" is a term we reserve for criminal activity. therefore, to molest, legally speaking, is to do something wrong. and the most extreme forms of child molestation are, yes, universally condemned. no disagreement there.

but we were talking about judgment, the tension between moral and psychological evaluation of the situation. the moral revulsion we feel in response to certain crimes shouldn't prevent us from considering the idea that they might arise from psychological aberration. i think it's important to temper justified outrage with both compassion and dispassion, with the understanding that mental illness doesn't really have a moral component.

i do enjoy what i think of as "philosophical discussion", though i'm self-conscious about my lack of formal education. i suspect that the thoughts i feel compelled to elaborate are quite familiar to students of the subject and could be far more efficiently communicated by simple reference to this text or that name.

― controversial vegan pregnancy (contenderizer), Thursday, 2 May 2013 22:17 (5 minutes ago)

no, i would have got that impression you had studied at least introductory moral philosophy or suchlike, i wish i had more appetite for it but alas as soon as i see these sorts of terms my eyes glaze over

i would hand all the known (and probably suspected) child molesters over to the baying mob rather than have to coherently argue that is was perhaps, not morally justifiable

nb i don't think a lack of an undergrad education is anything irreplaceable, most autodidacts are beyond that level

i know this is a troll thread on a tired topic but it's still kinda weird how many ppl in here are taking for granted the conventional wisdom that child molesters almost universally reoffend? afaik while there are some problems w/ the currently available research it mostly shows that recidivism rates for sex offenders (including child molesters) are much lower than the CW would have it

― 1staethyr, Thursday, May 2, 2013 2:24 PM (9 minutes ago)

i think the CW is more that recidivism rates are high. they are, especially for those with an established history of such behavior (self-evident observation is self-evident).

like i read that crudely schematic analytic ethics 101 cr1ms9shmnwedzac thread and find it infinitely tiresome, idk, kill them all please just don't ask me about it, maybe they are child molesters anyway

i would hand all the known (and probably suspected) child molesters over to the baying mob rather than have to coherently argue that is was perhaps, not morally justifiable

― treeship journey to aja (Nilmar Honorato da Silva), Thursday, May 2, 2013 2:35 PM (3 minutes ago)

oh yeah, it's hard to reason with a pitchfork

this is assuming that the baying mob are all associate professors of moral philosophy, but for whatever reason are just really upset about child molesters

we could do a "lady or the tiger" thing, except it would be an angry mob and a tub full of babies

Also, having sex with little boys was a-okay in ancient Greece, right? Or is that a myth?

the sacred love between a scholar and his teacher. all very well for these autodidacts

xp greek pederasty was between adult men and teenage boys, so idk it depends on your definition of "little boy"

athens had a v formal system wherein you'd be mentored by an older man for part of your adolescence; the mentorship had a sexual component (which is not necessarily the same thing as involving actual sex) and much was made of the ephemeral beauty of youth. but it wasn't just, everyone was just fucking all the little boys they wanted all the time. (at least not, yknow, in the agora. as always, some money could probably get you whatever kind of time you felt like having.)

Believe it or not, I am sympathetic to the plight of the mentally ill and otherwise damaged. But I imagine a huge bulk of those who commit capital offenses (rape, murder, molesters) are the product of some unfortunate combination of nature and nature, and while I feel bad they can't control their compulsions/emotions, I feel less bad knowing that fewer small children are at risk with them locked up. If there were a cure or treatment that worked, by all means, but I'm not sure such things exist for such a severe physical/psychological inclination. That's not ignorance on my part, I don't think. That's me being a responsible citizen and, foremost, a parent.

rape and molestation are not 'capital offesnses'

Most child molesters likely to abuse a relative or other person already known/close to them. Very few strangers-in-vans-with-candy out there.

The Krull brothers were convicted for the kidnapping and raping of a 53-year old woman from Chattanooga, Tennessee.[2] They were charged for kidnapping by federal authorities[3] on the grounds that kidnapping was a federal capital crime. If they were charged by the state of Georgia for rape they would still have faced execution, because rape was a capital crime in Georgia at the time.

After President Dwight D. Eisenhower declined to commute their death sentences, the Krull brothers were executed in Georgia's electric chair. George was 34 years old at the time of his death and Michael was 32.[4]

Michael Krull commented on the death sentence, "It was all prejudice. When your local people commit rape they get just 10 or 20 years sometime."[2]

the useless self pity is a joy to comprehend

I was just thinking of a general set of serious punishable for a very long time crimes involving hurting others.

I should stress, by the way, that I am a thousand times more worried about my kids being hit by a bad driver than beset by a molester - the former outnumber the latter by an incalculable amount.

Very few strangers-in-vans-with-candy out there.

^ among the disappointments of youth

sorry, just being a pedant: 'capital' means punishable by death

xxp

word. people never fucking think about the cars!

if only ilx had a poster to argue summary execution of cars was morally justifiable

state by state i don't know, but federally it looks like the only non-murder capital crimes are espionage and treason, and, oddly "Mailing of injurious articles with intent to kill or resulting in death"

http://deathpenalty.procon.org/view.resource.php?resourceID=004927

so if that mail bomb or ricin packet duds out, well...

the supreme court as whittled away crimes punishable by death in the last 40-50 years or so

yeah i think no state is allowed to execute someone for rape/sex offenses since that case that came out a few years ago

kennedy v. louisiana

conty, if i may ask, were you a philosophy major?

no, high school dropout.

― controversial vegan pregnancy (contenderizer), Thursday, May 2, 2013 5:17 PM (3 hours ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

another thing you and I have in common.

it's reassuring to know that the ILX consensus is that child molesters should be cuddled and wrapped up in a comfy bed

otm

once again i'm outside ilx consensus bc i think we can cuddle them but wrapping them in comfy bed is really a bridge too far

What if they are witty and charming like Humbert Humbert?

their moral improvement would be expedited by having them sleep in procrustean scandinavian pine beds with straw mattresses

in all fairness HH was a hebephile, not a pedophile

no packet of sweets nor cheeky smile sufficing

if i walked in on someone molesting a child, and i had a loaded gun, i would not feel guilty about summary execution.

that's a weird thing to think about

molesty blaise

chick ka-pow!

in all fairness HH was a hebephile, not a pedophile
--(The Other) J.D. (J.D.)

Kinda hair-splitty. Lolita is 12 when he meets her.

kennedy v. louisiana

― veryupsetmom (harbl),

more like Kennedy v. Scalia amirite

in all fairness HH was a hebephile, not a pedophile
--(The Other) J.D. (J.D.)
Kinda hair-splitty. Lolita is 12 when he meets her.

― Huston we got chicken lol (Phil D.), Thursday, May 2, 2013 9:29 PM (3 minutes ago)

he makes it pretty clear in the text that his attraction is to pubescent girls, though

this is a weird thread for me to think about. the word 'known' is very complicated; does it mean 'known' to an individual or 'provable' to the world at large? it's a tough distinction. i was on a jury a few years back that was about a child molestation case. i firmly believe that the defendant was doing something to at least one of two girls (his cousins even) on at least one occasion. but there was so much conflicting testimony and a lack of physical evidence that made it a really brutal thing to think about for a week and a half. ultimate we voted him guilty on counts of endangering the welfare of a child, but there was not enough agreement within the jury to find him guilty on the other charges. i do not know what is justice in this case, really.

wow, that sounds rough. glad never to have served jury duty, especially not on something like that.

in all fairness HH was a hebephile, not a pedophile

― (The Other) J.D. (J.D.), Thursday, May 2, 2013 6:04 PM (55 minutes ago)

ilx is educational!

oh you've read Lolita, c?

I had to serve jury duty on a pedophile case! dude had already been convicted in court, served a couple of years in jail, transfered to atascadero. The case was a civil case because he wanted to get out early to go live with his mother in Idaho who was very elderly. The mother and her equally elderly boyfriend had driven down from Idaho for the trial. The peed had fucked up a bunch in prison and atascadero and hadn't fully served the terms of his sentence or rehabilitation program or whatever.

However, the question that we as a jury were officially asked was so illogical. I wish I could remember what it was. Like, everybody else on the jury was just like "fuck this shit, he's a peed", but me and one other dude were like "wait. the legal question that we are being asked in relation to this trial doesn't make any sense. we want to find against the peed, but what the fuck does the question that we're supposed to answer even mean?" It took like 20 minutes for us to just give up trying to understand the question and decide that we didn't want to unleash this less-than-fully reformed pedophile on Idaho or wherever.

part of the point of jury duty is that decisions are hard!

i'm sad the one time i had jury duty i wasn't picked. i'm a good judger.

Yeah decisions are hard, but the legal question we were asked literally didn't make any sense and in the end, our judgement had to come down to "do you want a pedophile to go free or not". I'm a little tipsy right now, but maybe I'll be able to reconstitute the question in the morning once I'm sober. IT WAS SO STUPID.

It was a two-week long civil trial too! Just sitting there listening to "experts". Blech. So glad I haven't been called up again. It's been almost a decade.

jury duty is really hard, but the hardest part is not figuring out what you believe to be true, but articulating it convincingly to 11 other people. there was one dude on our jury who barely spoke english and did not participate at all during any discussions; he was an old hispanic man and his general stance was "kids lie." so infuriating.

it just blew my mind that he ended up on the jury tbh. given that he had multiple reasons for excusing himself from the case (bad english, bias against youth.)

this reminded me that i think i have jury duty soon. i had it back in the fall but it was deferred... to may i think. shit. maybe this is a post for the "absentminded" thread.

oh you've read Lolita, c?

― 'scuse me while i make the sky cum (k3vin k.), Thursday, May 2, 2013 7:08 PM (35 minutes ago)

i meant that i learned the word "hebephile" today. dunno how useful it's gonna be, and yeah, i've read lo-lee-tah. great book, but pale fire is my go-to nab woot.

the defendant in the case i was called for recently but not picked was clearly stark raving mad and i felt bad for his attorney

i don't disagree with you, how's life! i'm confused by yours. maybe it's like how in maryland if you're civilly committed due to being mentally ill sometimes you are entitled to a jury trial. i think. so maybe he was civilly committed and not actually in prison.

i think civil trials are notoriously nonsensical. my coworker was the foreperson on one and all these people were telling stories in the jury room about how they faked injuries after minor car accidents, and then while they were supposed to be deliberating everyone was getting up to leave and she was like, "wait, we're supposed to decide how much money this guy gets!" so they arbitrarily settled on $7000. he asked for like $100k but it was clearly bullshit.

oh, i had to google atascadero to understand i probably did understand your issue well

the luzhin defense imho

I served for three months on a grand jury. Had to decide whether to indict everything from minor drug possession to rape to vehicular homicide to multiple murders.

oh, i had to google atascadero to understand i probably did understand your issue well

veryupsetmom (harbl) wrote this at 2013-05-03 02:50:04.000

Sorry, maybe it's less well-known than I thought.

harbl, I think the legal question that we were being asked to resolve was something along the lines of "is this person significantly more likely than not to sexually reoffend; however, this likelihood could be less than 50%" or something. From a layman's perspective, it seemed a convoluted.

jury duty is really hard, but the hardest part is not figuring out what you believe to be true, but articulating it convincingly to 11 other people. there was one dude on our jury who barely spoke english and did not participate at all during any discussions; he was an old hispanic man and his general stance was "kids lie." so infuriating.

― i guess i'd just rather listen to canned heat? (ian), Thursday, May 2, 2013 10:36 PM (Yesterday) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

There was totally a guy like this on my jury too! I mean, he wasn't hispanic, but his worldview was really reductive and judgemental like that.

Actually, tying to this thread, we had a case presented where a woman was accusing her ex-husband of sexually fondling their 4-year-old daughter in the bathtub. The detective who presented the case to us was very skeptical, said it appeared to be nothing more than him giving her a bath and washing her, but several of the panel wanted to indict. Their reasoning was that "Kids don't lie, especially about things like that." In response I brought up the McMartin cases, which amazingly none of them had ever heard of. Ultimately we did not indict. I hope we were right!

jury duty is really hard, but the hardest part is not figuring out what you believe to be true, but articulating it convincingly to 11 other people. there was one dude on our jury who barely spoke english and did not participate at all during any discussions; he was an old hispanic man and his general stance was "kids lie." so infuriating.
― i guess i'd just rather listen to canned heat? (ian), Thursday, May 2, 2013 10:36 PM (Yesterday) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

There was totally a guy like this on my jury too! I mean, he wasn't hispanic, but his worldview was really reductive and judgemental like that.

― how's life, Friday, May 3, 2013 8:15 AM (1 hour ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

was he the guy saying "he's a convicted peed so let's vote to keep him in jail rather than understand the legal question we're tasked to solve"?

Yeah, he was the only dude who didn't want to have any discussion about it at all.

maybe this thread would be more on his level

http://imgur.com/gallery/Askri6t

Prisoners are not generally known for their grasp of the true meaning of justice.

Molested children don't generally become molesters so much as caught molesters claim victimhood.

what? there is absolutely a trend that molested children are more likely to become molesters

I withdraw the statement.

lol

Ha

http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,216342,00.html

Mark Bridger, the former abattoir worker jailed for the sexually motivated murder of five-year-old April Jones, has been attacked in prison.

Bridger is serving a full-life term at Wakefield prison in West Yorkshire. He is understood to have been slashed across the face with a makeshift blade and is likely to be left permanently scarred.

The Ministry of Justice refuses to talk about specific prisoners but in a statement it confirmed: "A prisoner from HMP Wakefield was taken to hospital on 7 July. The incident is being investigated by the police.

Hi 5

u think a lil scar is an adequate punishment for the sexually motivated murder of a five-year-old?

Oh im not sure theyll stop there

just more paedo apologism should of known

i'm amazed this dude was let anywhere near other prisoners tbh. and whilst i'm not gonna shed any tears for this bastard i'm always a little o_O about the ethical code of a bunch of other lags who've probly done plenty of their own contributing to the sum of human misery

slow slicing

what in the living fuck is even a "sexually-motivated murder" of a five year old. please do not answer that.

death penalty wrong in all cases iirc

doesn't make the murder/sexual assault of a 5-year old any less horrifying. also Noodle Vague otm.

if u think the death penalty is wrong in all cases then idk why you'd need to click on thread tbh, you're clearly not even going to consider this nuanced & important question, you probably have an iced tea to drink somewhere

Arnold Palmer but w/e

summery

i thought this was going to be about the other news story

nah its abt pro-death penalty idiocy

nah i mean the revive, i thought would be about the eu / human rights / uk life sentence law decision

i am actually not sure how i feel about that one

jonathan freedland wrote a shitty craven morally triangulated op-ed about it

http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2013/jul/09/whole-life-sentences-death-penalty/print

just read that earlier. i guess the test of any civilized legal system is that thoroughly nice guys like the 3 complainants get to be listened to too. i'm not really sure that a full life tariff is a breach of human rights tho.

which inspired me to look up this comparative poll

http://www.ipsos-mori.com/Assets/Docs/Archive/Polls/attitudes-to-death-penalty.pdf

sorry, not read the Freedland bit, a BBC report on the story

jonathan freedland wrote a shitty craven morally triangulated op-ed about it

yeah why did i read this

i don't know i mean, i was stereotypical grauniad reader enough to think it was a shame they wouldn't let poor ian brady just kill himself, but trying to think of these guys as victims of the system is breaking the liberal muscle a bit too much

British liberals should be mindful of public support for the death penalty

why? is the essence of liberalism "if enough people are into something then it should be legal?"

i could maybe get behind some kind of less brutal incarceration for the elderly crims but i have very strong doubts that somebody like Bridger will ever be safe to be left at large

the whole life tariff was one of blunkett's innovations from the former governments's august phase of third way socially naziism, it was of no juridical consequence because these people would always have died in gaol but apparently it was important to just make extra extra sure

ok that context makes it a lot clearer to me why this is A Thing

Yes, this doesn't really change much. Under the original law it was the Home Secretary who decided on whole life tariffs but that was overturned not long afterwards. All this really means is that they can appear before a board every now and then, ask to be released, told they can't and be sent back to prison.

Indefinite detention for minor crimes is probably more interesting.

It's an interesting question because the severity of the crime makes you realise that opposition to the death penalty has to come from somewhere other than 'Ah, people are alright really, it's a shame to kill them'.

It brings home to you how you basically do consider a child abuser - and to be honest, cold-blood murderers too - as in a different category to everyone else. Everyone else might be awful in their own way but there might also be something quite nice about them. I have to say, once someone has abused a child, I don't feel bad about them dying.

I don't necessarily celebrate it either, I just don't feel like their death is a moment at which someone special is lost. That moment presumably came earlier, when they were on their way to becoming what they are.

That leaves me with 'death penalty doesn't work as a deterrent' and 'don't let the state start killing people, because of precedent'.

Yeah, it'd obv be more efficient privatised for a start

which inspired me to look up this comparative poll

http://www.ipsos-mori.com/Assets/Docs/Archive/Polls/attitudes-to-death-penalty.pdf

― the most promising US ilxor has thrown the TOWEL IN (Nilmar Honorato da Silva), Tuesday, July 9, 2013 5:44 PM (Yesterday)

kind of weird that a lower % of ppl would want the death penalty for OBL than are cool with it overall!

Yes, this doesn't really change much. Under the original law it was the Home Secretary who decided on whole life tariffs but that was overturned not long afterwards. All this really means is that they can appear before a board every now and then, ask to be released, told they can't and be sent back to prison.

Indefinite detention for minor crimes is probably more interesting.

― Inte Regina Lund eller nån, mitt namn är (ShariVari), Tuesday, July 9, 2013 6:08 PM (Yesterday)

right, my understanding is that this doesn't outlaw life sentences so much as it outlaws withholding the possibility of parole -- if in 40 years the person is really ready to be let back in, why not? there was a similar US supreme court case recently regarding minors, though it was a bit more conservative in that it allowed for their sentencing to life without parole but invalidated "automatic" life sentences passed by legislatures

The decision specifically says that whole-life sentences don't breach the prisoner's human rights but that there should be a mechanism for reviewing the decision further down the line. This can already happen - the Home Secretary can let people out, but it's surely better that it's left to a board of experts.

right, and the contrast with the US case is that the supreme court allowed for life without the possibility of parole and this judge didn't

having cared for a lot of abused children & being a dad I totally get that child molestation is a unique wrong but it's weird to me that people don't think of, y'know, fucking MURDER as also being "way the fuck beyond the pale." murdering a person who was walking around on the earth enjoying all the nice things about being alive is actually as fucked up as molesting a child. there are uniquely awful things about molesting a child that aren't in murder - when you abuse a child, you change the course of his/her life forever; it's wretched. but it's....I don't even know how to put this philosophically. when you murder a person, you bypass all that to deprive a person of untold possibilities. the privileging of this crime in people's minds is weird to me, even though instinctively & viscerally I know the revulsion, the rage at people who molest children: I had to absent myself from some family therapy sessions with the parents of a kid who I related to too strongly, I couldn't even pretend I wanted these people to be on the same planet as their wonderful daughter who they'd failed to protect. but the idea that this is "worse than murder"...like, reasonably speaking, no, right? murder is the endgame. I was abused as a child; I love my life now. if somebody murdered me now, and took me away from my family, they'd be doing me a considerably worse harm than my abuser did. I crawled up from where my abused knocked me down to. my family would struggle to recover from my murder now, even though I'm a non-innocent middle-aged dude instead of a child.

*from where my abusedr

i think partly people recognize there are various forms of murder and without excusing the act some of them might feel less morally culpable than others - that kind of nuance rarely enters into child abuse.

but also we're not seriously arguing jurisprudence in here.

Nobody seriously discusses jurisprudence as soon as pedophilia is mentioned, and it's resulted in some godawful criminal law jurisprudence in the US and the UK, which is a more universal problem than most would think.

That leaves me with 'death penalty doesn't work as a deterrent' and 'don't let the state start killing people, because of precedent'.

― cardamon, Wednesday, July 10, 2013 2:54 AM (3 hours ago)

well, there's also simple moral opposition. personally, i think it's wrong. that's p much the alpha and omega of my opposition.

also: underrated aero otm about the extraordinary opprobrium we reserve for child molestation. as a sin, it's not alone in receiving the halo of holy dread. we do the same thing, though to a lesser extent, with racism, freighting it with an extra helping of visceral moral revulsion & outrage. mel gibson's ugly words have arguably done more damage to his career than chris brown did to his with physical violence.

there's nothing wrong with any of that. it's easy to see why child molestation and racism arouse such strong responses, and i'm glad they're so aggressively shunned. at the same time, we shouldn't allow revulsion & outrage, however well justified, to override compassion and common sense.

what in the living fuck is even a "sexually-motivated murder" of a five year old. please do not answer that.

― i don't even have an internet (Hurting 2), Tuesday, July 9, 2013 11:00 AM (Yesterday) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

Sorry, I'm going there. Sexual abuse of a child is, as aero outlined, seen as somehow worse than murder or on par with it. There are many factors in play, but due to the fact people applaud when an abuser is assaulted in prison and our court system treats it as severe as murder anyway, some abusers become murderers in an attempt to cover up what they've done.

You can always count on a murderer for a fancy prose style.

xp to myself: i guess i say that because so many seem hungry to throw out the rule book and just ~destroy the fucker~ where transgressions of certain taboos are concerned. i mean, sure, summary execution does tend to curb recidivism, everybody cheers when evil is punished, but i'd like to think we rely on more than passionate disgust and anger when deciding who needs to be excised.

^ has murdered in his heart

Unique harm /= uniquely incorrigible harmdoer, but that's not an idea anyone will seriously consider these days, as criminal justice in the Anglo-American system continues to fall to shit.

idk aero

Thing about being murdered is that you miss out surely on all the good things you were due, and all the bad things too. It's an indiscriminate thievery.

Abuse victims live on with, in many cases, the wreckage of a life where the ordinary lows are much magmified and the ordinary joys, if the opportunity to experience them comes along, may forever be tainted.

difficult not to look at the ruins of hiroshima without thinking of all the case of food poisoning and disappointing consumer purchases avoided

mh i've heard the argument and i see the logic, but it's tough to give credence to it as a negotiating tactic to buckle to, were one inclined towards the death penalty. "Ease up on the punishment or i swear the kid gets it" from someone who has already gone so far and would already be facing years in prison and the remainder of their lives a social outcast if caught? Not really feeling the further threat of harsher punishment as a barrier to killing the victim.

nilmar otm w that last one. i'm almost offended by the argument that murder is a relative kindness, sparing its victims the agony of memory & recovery. there's almost nothing in life to which i'd prefer death. to take a life is the ultimate violation and crime (if not the ultimate "sin").

Yeahhhhhhh

It wasnt a stirring defence of murder, nahmsayin?

Not really feeling the further threat of harsher punishment as a barrier to killing the victim.

so what you're saying is that the death penalty is not a deterrent, right?

It wasnt a stirring defence of murder, nahmsayin?

no, but you did offer it as a rebuttal to aero's argument that murder is the worse crime. i agree with him.

Lol i saw that coming and i'd agree with that, yeah. In the case, as laid out in mh's scenario, i don't think that the death penalty is a huge factor in somebody going from a child abuser to a child killer.

Fine, disagree, it's a subject rife with shitty thoughts and an argument riddled with shitty analogies and angles. But idk if im hugely taken with your 'offence' if i disagree that it's necessarily clearcut i guess.

xpto contends

...transgressions of certain taboos are concerned.

Yeah, because taboos tell a society what it is and isn't. We sexualize youth/youthfulness 94/7 so we have to whiplash react EXTRA HARD to the flouting of this taboo, to keep us from looking more closely at the stuff that's already normalized. That's a dumb thing to even remotely anchor any reasoned response in.

I mean, that's a big "DUH", right?

I was very impressed that the local public radio station, in the wake of a case where a convicted offender had been released and ended up abducting two girls and killing one (and then himself), ended up going to the facility where he'd been incarcerated.

They interviewed a number of people who were in a counseling group, including offenders who were in that group. They've had very good results with people who have made it through that program, but the main problem was funding and the fact they had room for only a very small percentage of the inmates who were eligible. Most of the work was based in teaching empathy and analyzing why these people were there -- much of it due to abuse in their own pasts, or an inability to relate to others, or in some cases, really obvious mental illness.

That's a viewpoint. Another pov might hold that the main problem was that a guy was out and killed two kids, that's another pov right there.

I also find it really problematic to assume that someone who has been abused is in some way permanently damaged. It's a hell of a thing to deal with, but even worse is that stigma -- something that makes people feel devalued because they were abused. I know adults who have been abused or raped and have enough of a hard time facing that self-perception or stigma, if anything we should be helping to enforce the idea that nothing is wrong with being a victim, only that it was wrong that you had been victimized.

That viewpoint isn't at odds with what I said. The guy was out, he shouldn't have been, the system failed. End of story.

Im not saying that anyone/everyone who has been abused has been permanently damaged.

I'd trust you won't disagree, however, that many are?

I do think it's a very interesting/problematic area btwn the damaged caused by abuse and the damage caused by the stigma of having been abused. It's something I've considered bringing up for discussion on ilx before but it's hard to find anything like the rights words tbh. I'm certain that the stigma was a v significant part of the damage done in Irish institutional cases (and even in other isolated cases, just given our catholic society and fucked historical relationship with sexual issues i suppose)

I feel like the word "damage" is where it gets wobbly? Not to say that a person who has been abused can't feel damaged or describe themselves that way obv but it gets used a lot, along with "ruined" and other words with connotations of permanence--on some level, words like that contribute to stigma in a small way too.

I don't know, man, "damaged" when referring to a human being comes dangerously close to the "damaged goods" idea that people can lose some sort of worth. I get where you're coming from, but I'm not sure that this is the terminology we should be using.

x-post to io, who summed it up better than I could

My post not really in opposition to anyone's point here, I was thinking also of the news reports of the Steubenville rape victim that kept saying, like, "Her life has been ruined" which, I don't want to rule out any rhetorical strategy for communicating the vileness of what was done to her but a woman is not "ruined" by rape, you can see where this is going.

I v much think you are adding that in tbh.

Pick another term that suits i guess, hurt, wounded, w/e.

I will specifically not rule out permanence tho io, for many it is permanent. Not necessarily so, not that it is foisted upon them by society permanently, but that it isn't ever wholly recovered from as an experience that person carries.

We're veering off here, is there a thread more suited.

Its a fuckin nice day out there tbh, i'm done on this today.

this was a troll thread originally iirc

it's permanent in the way that many types of trauma are permanent

Yeah, because taboos tell a society what it is and isn't. We sexualize youth/youthfulness 94/7 so we have to whiplash react EXTRA HARD to the flouting of this taboo, to keep us from looking more closely at the stuff that's already normalized. That's a dumb thing to even remotely anchor any reasoned response in.

― Tottenham Heelspur (in orbit)

truthbomb. applies to other taboo areas, too, like the racism i mentioned above. we express the greatest outrage at that which we hate and/or fear in ourselves.

as far as taboos go, i think a lot of ppl are uncomfortable w/ the explicit sexualization of pre-pubescent humans in advertising.

Not uncomfortable enough for us as a society to stop doing it, though. Or to stop implicitly valuing youth and youthful looks above other qualities.

yeah, people will always vary, but as a society, america seems obsessed with the intersection of youth and sexuality. vein-popping outrage and terrified hand-wringing are part of that, not the opposition.

While denying our real, actual children any practical sex ed, much less any advice or perspective for understanding their personal sexuality.

societies are complex; all kinds of things occur on a societal level that many ppl are uncomfortable with on a personal or communal level. I want to push back on the notion that just bc Abercrombie pushes a particular image/pov that means we as members of the society are somehow allowing it.

I dunno, man, we're not disallowing it either. But in any case, our conflicted issues w/r/t youth and sexuality are what make this thread possible.

at the same time, we shouldn't allow revulsion & outrage, however well justified, to override compassion and common sense.

We should also talk openly about the fact that extra heaps of revulsion for things that are "way the fuck beyond the pale" is not expiation for the things we're not totally comfortable with acknowledging we do, all the time, and they go almost uncommented on.

societies are complex; all kinds of things occur on a societal level that many ppl are uncomfortable with on a personal or communal level. I want to push back on the notion that just bc Abercrombie pushes a particular image/pov that means we as members of the society are somehow allowing it.

well, social responsibility != personal culpability, at least not as "it's ALL YOUR FAULT, mordy!" but it shouldn't come as any surprise when a society that celebrates the undie-flashing "maturation" of miley cyrus also happens to be crazy paranoid about real and imagined threats to children. i mean

http://assets.rollingstone.com/assets/images/music/2007/galleries/lindsay-lohan-photos/rs-955-lindsay-lohan-cover-61812/500x595/RS_955_-_Lindsay_Lohan_Cover_-_lg.6387119.jpg

who is the society that is celebrating tho? at least acc to Adorno culture is formed by capitalism which in turn forms our identities- but we don't allow it so much as suffer under it (eg we watch Donald Duck get beaten in order to become accustomed to our own beatings). I don't want to completely reject the idea that culture can sometimes reflect the ppl in the society but add some nuance that the relationship goes two ways.

in america's special case, i'd argue that our strong religiosity and history of puritanism are at least as big a factor as the ever-shifting theoretical mechanics of capitalism. our puritan inheritance contributes an extremely fearful and conservative streak to our national character, one that condemns sexual display while sanctifying innocence. we often seem to loathe sex, yet we hunger for it so intensely that we've become one of the world's chief exporters and consumers of pornography. the pornography we produce is a perfect expression of this conflict: mechanical, debased and often intensely misogynist.

at the same time, we must create a separate, sacred, entirely nonsexual space for childhood innocence. childhood must be entirely isolated from the terrible adult "sins" in which we can't help indulging. unfortunately, this fence is necessarily arbitrary, artificial. young people explore sexuality as they develop. sex an ordinary part of life, while "holy innocence" is a simplistic fantasy. worse, the taboo structures we must build in order to enforce the false separation of youth from sexuality ultimately seem to increase the sexual allure of youth, at least for some people. we are, at this point, both more fanatically protective of children AND more commercially exploitative of youthful sexuality than ever before.

The Libertarian Party, including myself on the platform committee, has tended to shy away from the capital punishment question until a broad consensus on punishment theory is attained within the libertarian movement. Opinion within the movement ranges far and wide, from the ultrapacifist view that all punishment must be abandoned, to the "hanging judge" position that any infraction of someone's private property, however minor, shows that the criminal has no respect for property rights and therefore that this minor aggressor deserves to be executed.

http://mises.org/daily/4468

closing paragraph is spectacular

mises.org always brings the lols

"And I would have executed him too, if not for you liberal busybodies!"

your meddling kids

http://www.nytimes.com/2013/07/27/us/2-targeted-sex-offender-to-be-killed-officials-say.html?partner=rss&emc=rss&smid=tw-nytimes&_r=0

Robin Frieze, defending, said Ferreira did not attack Bridger to enhance his own status in prison, for reward or because he was incited to do it.

"He does not suggest he was put up to it, but he listened to talk within the prison and he was under the impression that if he put the complainant in a state of fear then it was more likely it would achieve closure for the family of his victim," Frieze said. "He appreciates that was a wholly misguided and wrong thing to do."

In April 2008 Ferreira raped and murdered 47-year-old Elaine Walpole in Dereham, Norfolk, after befriending her. He stabbed her through the neck and there were bite marks on her face.

A 30-year-old man charged with the rape of two young girls who were attending a children’s birthday party in Athlone at the weekend was remanded in custody when he appeared before Longford District Court yesterday.

The accused, who was wearing a black jacket, faded blue jeans and white runners when he appeared in court also had a wound to the left side of his face.

Judge Seamus Hughes remanded the man in custody until Friday. He said he had noticed some marks on the man’s face and ordered that he be put on suicide watch and “afforded all possible protection”.

The children had been attending a birthday party at a housing estate on the edge of the town when they went missing.

Some of the children’s parents later found the children and held the alleged attacker, before he was detained by gardaí.

kinda can't believe the gardaí had much left to take away tbh

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2478285/Innocent-man-burned-death-vigilante-neighbours-mistook-paedophile.html

well obv nobody is gonna condone that nakh wtf

Mr Beach, Surrey, 10 hours ago

This is what happens when a child gets raped and the offender gets twelve months! If they got a appropriate sentence people would feel less frustrated!! Rob a postoffice 12 years, rape a baby 2years!!!

freeychromosome, london, United Kingdom, 10 hours ago

Feminist inspired misandry and those like ACPO who profit from it are responsible for his death.

<3 this one

Rob a postoffice 12 years, thomas a becket death

Bishop Rape a Baby

do you think that some of the community's homicidal behaviour here could be condoned if the victim was proven to be a child molester?

The sad misconception of thicko mobs on council estates is that socially ineptness/eccentricity/outsiderness = extra paedo points. They lose track that the really dangerous majority of child abusers just seamlessly slot into society without drawing undue attention to themselves.

well obv nobody is gonna condone that nakh wtf

― drugs/lies: poll (darraghmac), Monday, October 28, 2013 8:21 PM (17 minutes ago) Bookmark

i do

The sad misconception of thicko mobs on council estates is that socially ineptness/eccentricity/outsiderness = extra paedo points. They lose track that the really dangerous majority of child abusers just seamlessly slot into society without drawing undue attention to themselves.

And it wouldn't surprise me if they'd been targeting this guy for years, just looking for a reason

Have we had a thread about letz go hunting and other homebrew To Catch A Predator efforts?

this thread is probably fine

Okay. I suppose damo's point there is making me think of those web vigilantes and the semi-official vigilantism of TCAP – although they're different phenomena they seem connected somehow?

I don't feel at all comfortable watching that show because, for one, it's structured to provide entertainment (one 'hit' of entertainment per capture) and I don't want to get any kind of entertainment from anything to do with child abuse. But further, I feel like it's helping to fuel this myth that the dangerous people are outsiders, when they're so often not; and maybe the online vigilantes are doing something similar.

I dunno though. I'm suspicious of my suspicions about these things.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5hJUGi-ODIU