Lousiana OK's Rapist CastrationFollow

"So then you concede that this action is being proposed as a punitive measure, not as a public safety/anti-recidivism issue." --Amb

Yes. Although technically, I wouldn't have to concede anything since it wasn't my contention that it is anything but primarily punitive in the first place. That it may c0ckblock a molester/rapist to some degree is just gravy.

What do you guys have against punitive measures anyway? What, were you all Dr. Spock babies or something?

Totem

"But it is not irreversable. Chemical castration deals with injections over time, not all at once." --DSD

Again, losing time out of one's life is precisely that: Irreverible. You can't give back time spent in prison to watch a child grow up, enjoy the great outdoors, or anything. The notion of "irreverible" is just an artificial construct to make those who made an error in determining guilt feel better about themselves.

You cannot make a blanket statement and say prison is more acceptable than castration because of some nebulous idea that it is preferable to you. Personally, I'd gladly take castration over prison time 10 out of 10 times. Time is more valuable to me than a sex drive that will eventually wane anyways. And I suspect there are plenty of people who would take the same stance as me on this issue.

Totem

All the more reason not to add to the harm if the judgement was wrong.

Pffft. Jo, that kind of thinking is just a mental washing of our hands of the purpose of our penal system. Making ourselves feel better about ourselves doesn't change the reality of crime and its effects.

Prison, halfway houses, therapy, ankle bracklets-- none of that has made an impact on the rehabilitation of sexual offenders of children, Naughty. Prison is simply the most expeditious method for keeping them from interacting with society. There are certainly more effective ways of dealing with them, but we as a society don't have the spine to use them.

Totem

The operative word in your post is "focused." The primary purpose of prison is still punishment, regardless the embellishments we gee-gaw it up with. A crime get committed, the criminal gets caught and convicted, he gets punished by losing his freedom. We can't pretend that the collective experience of hanging out with other criminals is positive or uplifting in any way.

The real question is, how much punishment fits the crime? On that we can agree to disagree at great length.

Totem

I have nothing against punitive sentencing per se (as evidenced by last week's thread about the baby launching incident) because I do believe in "do the crime, do the time" with minimal wriggle room.

However, I don't believe in irrevocable punitive sentencing, such as would be the case of physical castration and the death penalty, unless guilt is established not merely beyond reasonable doubt, but beyond any shadow of a doubt, and then only for offenders most likely to re-offend if they ever get loose again.

In this case, however, I have two concerns. The first is that this law would actually do more harm than good, by creating a situation where parolees are able to re-offend because they didn't have adequate supervision due to the fact that they were deemed "safe". The castrating effects of Depo Provera can be offset by testosterone injections, which would probably be acquired by someone motivated enough. In fact, I even worry it might cause offenders to escalate the violence of their attacks due to frustration at not being able to perform.

My second issue is merely this: if this is, in fact, a purely punitive measure, those supporting it need to admit that and not blow sunshine up our asses about it being a public safety issue. Cut the bullsh'it and just call it what it is.

Hmmm, and here I always thought the purpose of prison is to isolate the criminal element from the general population for the purpose of protecting the general population.

Edited, Jul 11th 2008 2:14pm by Ambrya

The purpose of penal law is to punish people who commits crimes thereby deterring other from committing the same acts.

There's no probably to it. If they are convicted they are guilty-- at least in the eyes of the law. To my way of thinking, if the conviction stands through the appeals process then the verdict stands. And if it stands, then various additional measures may be undertaken depending on the nature of the crime and the criminal. If that includes castration, then so be it. It's not like we are lopping off twigs and berries here, although considering how precious most males consider their sexual organs, that might be a greater deterrent than chemical castration. Who knows? We won't know until we try it and it's not like these people should be out there using their junk for recreational purposes anyways.

Look, the penal system is a joke anyways-- at least here in Kalifornia it is. The inmates are running the prisons as defacto guard staff and truly useful techniques are verbotten due to limp wristed ACLU lawyers protecting people who care not one wit for the rights and concerns of others. Chemical castration is the least of things we should be doing. Frankly, herding the cons out into the yard and calling in an napalm airstike would solve a huge amount of problems. I guaran-fricking-tee you crime rates would dramatically plummet if we had semi-annual aerial prison cleanouts.

Totem

If we don't have the right to judge what is right or wrong, Pensive, then we have no business of convicting criminals and locking them up. What you propose is called anarchy. This laughable idea that you can rehabilitate people by imprisoning them for lengthy periods of time; collecting the dregs of society together in one place and giving them each other as company and expecting them to somehow emerge better is ludicrious in the extreme.

Face the facts. Prison is to separate offenders from the rest of society and punish them for whatever they did. If it weren't this way, we'd just empty Hawaii of everyone, quarantine the place and let them live there, ala Lord of the Flies in an idyllic savage paradise. You know, kinda like Devil's Island, just without guards.

I find it frightening so many of you have apparently no concept of a person with no desire to be rehabilitated. You'd be amazed to discover that the prison system is quite full of them.

Totem

Certainly we can, we just can't do it justifiably. It's not because locking someone up fails to qualify as justified. It's that the very concept of justified anything is a red herring to begin with.



Yes, separation. Punishment? That's just sadism. There is a difference between actively attempting to punish a criminal and unfortunately, with regret it one's heart, sending him.her to an institution which will probably result in pain. If people had this formulation in mind of what prisons were for then perhaps we could focus on improving conditions for our prisoners.



You are imagining things that I've not said and pretending that I have said them. Stop please.



Point to me where I mention rehabilitation, ever. Think for a moment: if I don't believe that we can justifiably judge criminal acts as right or wrong in any capacity more absolute than "he hurt me" then why in god's name would I want to institutionalize re-education programs for individuals who are doing nothing wrong? Criminals are just people who happen to not fit in with the average bloke. These justifications that we have to incarcerate people are specious. Justifications are just ad hoc applications of convenient moral theories to various situations. There is nothing about the moral theories which makes them better or worse than any other save that some create more pleasure and less pain for individuals.

Don't assume I'm saying that utility principles are justified either; they don't provide imagined justifications for our actions, rather, they merely isolate what our actions are.

It's just stupid to believe that "criminals" "deserve" anything at all. The entire notion of dessert is just an imagined and baseless expression of your personal desire that you fit into place with those aforementioned justifications. Even then though, you don't have to expunge values and ethics from society; you just need to recognize what they are.

The question that I'm answering here is: "given this no judging principle, what can we do when people cause pain to our society?" If you can recognize the peculiar status of the criminal it allows you to form an intellectually honest system of judging people: you do it as little as possible and with regret when you must, and only when you must.

What do you gain by accepting this?

-Better conditions for prisoners.
-More impartial mentality of judges (more impartial judging)

What do you lose?

-Sadism
-Sadism in the guise of "closure"

Actually I could have just said something like "trying an individual for a crime is like a supreme emergency in war" but noooo that would have been easy.

In response to the debate on whether punishment is the purpose of the penal law, here are just a few select quotes from the father of the modern penal law and a link to the complete text:




Edited, Jul 12th 2008 8:20pm by fhrugby