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Originally Posted by Jefferson  Sure. Why not? |
We should not execute physical punishment upon criminals, especially criminals who have not caused physical damage to their victims.
The goal of punishing criminals is to discourage people from committing a crime and to prevent criminals from being a threat to society. The goal is not to ruin the criminal's life in order to appease people who are appalled at his actions.
Because of this, the best solution is to imprison criminals until we believe that they are no longer a threat to society, and until others fear the punishment enough to avoid committing that crime themselves.
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The thing is... Sexual Crimes are extremely serious for more many reasons.
First and foremost, they affect the victim differently then, say, basic assault or robbery. There is a reason that, throughout history, invading armies have not only murdered the men but raped the women!
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And what is the reason invading armies have raped the women? To mentally subdue them so that their will to fight back is lost?
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Second, victims of child sexual abuse often become perpetrators themselves. Somehow the cycle needs to be broken!
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The same can be said about most or all crimes against children, and the actual effects are quite controversial. Let me illustrate my point by presenting some studies.
This study states that child victims of sexual abuse are more likely than the average child to commit a crime in the future, however they are no more likely than victims of other sorts of mistreatment, such as child abuse or child neglect:
http://www.ncjrs.gov/txtfiles/abuse.txt
This study states that child victims of sexual abuse are only slightly worse off than children who were not sexually abused, and the problems which do occur are caused by a poor parenting environment. That is, parents who sexually abuse their children are more likely to be poor parents:
An Examination of Assumed Properties of Child Sexual Abuse Based on Nonclinical Samples MetaAna (This is the same study)
This second study became very controversial and was protested against so heavily that many organizations denounced it. No evidence or counter-studies were presented; it's just that people hate child sexual abuse so much that they will shout down any evidence that child sexual abuse isn't the most horrible evil in the world.
Child sexual abuse is definitely a bad thing, but I'm not sure its effects are as horrible as people portray them.
But let's do some more research and see what we come up with: do you have any numbers showing the percentage of sexually abused children who end up committing sexual abuse themselves?
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Third, the rate of recidivism is almost (if not) 100%. It's almost a guarantee that a rapist WILL rape again, a child molester WILL molest again.
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This is innaccurate. Please read this link:
MercuryNews.com | 12/15/2003 | Are sex offenders a danger forever?
As seen in that link, studies show that 6 - 13% of convicted sex offenders are arrested for a second sex offense. Further, 43% of convicted sex offenders are rearrested for a second crime of any kind, compared to 68% of other inmates.
This suggests that not only are rapists are unlikely to rape again: it's more likely that they'll commit a different crime. So castrating them does not seem like a reasonable approach.
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Testicles are NOT necessary to live. Remove them from a sex offender, and the likelihood of his being a repeat offender is diminished greatly - if not altogether. This is both a deterent to people who think sexual crimes are "no big deal" and a preventative measure against the person who has been a sexual predator.
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A hand is not necessary to live. Perhaps we should cut the hand off of theives: that would greatly reduce their chance of repeating the crime, and it would act as a deterent to people who think theivery is no big deal. We could do the same to people guilty of forgery and other crimes which involve the hand. To the person who commits slander, perhaps his tongue could be removed. To the person who flees from the police, his legs could be removed.
Actually, if we really want to deter people from crime and prevent them from committing crime again, we should just torture then execute every criminal. That's the only way to be sure they'll never commit a crime again, and that's the best deterent you could ask for. Sounds like a no-brainer, doesn't it?
Each of these solutions forgets the welfare of the criminal, and that is something we need to consider.