We are the police for the world...

http://www.baltimoresun.com/news/ya...20,0,6185806.story?coll=bal-newsaol-headlines



-Wish

 

Does anyone else think we need to take care of those problems here first?

 

time to scale back my trips to rio.

 

I do see a lot of articles about child sexual predators being arrested locally (amazing to see how many are out there). Law enforcement agencies seem to be very active and taking the problem seriously. The problem seems to be the unwillingness to keep these people in jail. The hard evidence is that the only way to keep them from re-offending is to keep them locked up. Why, then, are they paroled early or put on probation, allowing them access to more victims?

 

I wonder the same thing.... It's amazing how many repeat offenders there are on the street...

 

sexual offenders

when a sexual offender goes to jail, he's kept in semi-protective custody with other sexual offenders. they know, that by putting him or her in general population, something bad might happen.


i say: put them in general population and tell everyone what they did............

hey, it may not stop anything, but it might make one of those perverts think twice before having to go back and do "hard time" again.............

 

Re: sexual offenders

And it might just cure their problem permanently.

 

Re: sexual offenders

You mean like this guy?.

There was a lot of public crying about how this poor old man had not been protected from the younger man who killed him. I thought it was incredibly poetic justice after a long history of being the monster who preyed on the unprotected children. He gets as much pity from me as he had for his victims. Zero.

 

Re: Re: sexual offenders

I totally disagree with your attitude. The government of a civilized society is required to treat everyone fairly, even its worst citizens. To do otherwise is to throw away any trappings of civility. If we torture and kill our prisoners, or by inaction allow our prisoners to be tortured or killed, we are no better than the prisoners. In fact, we are worse. If we condone lawlessness in our prisons, why should we have any right to expect law and order outside of them?

 

S&S,
our prisons are little more then training grounds for a more hardened criminal. They go in as petty criminals and they come our cold blooded killers.
How do we stop this from happening? Eliminate the worst of the worst. Translation: A bullet to the head.
Harsh? Yes. But to save a future society it must be an option.

Now who gets prison time and who gets the bullet? You don' want to hear my opinion on this.

 

The People of Massachusetts do not want the death penalty even for capital crimes - they have made this exceedingly clear. The last execution under death penalty laws in MA was in 1947.

So, it is NOT a legal option in Massachusetts. To make in an option, the Will of the People must be changed.

The fact is that Geoghan's crimes would not have merited the death penalty anywhere in the US. I read and hear a lot of blah blah blah chest thumping talk about "so-and-so criminal should have got the death penalty" for a whole range of crimes, but I don't ever see you chest-thumpers down at the Legislature trying to get the laws changed to allow execution for hawking a lunger onto the sidewalk or whatever non-capital crime offends your sensibilities this week.

So put up or shut up.

Anyway, the murder of Geoghan, as repulsive and abhorrent as his crimes were, was wrong, plain and simple. Anyone who condones it on moral grounds is the equivalent of a lynch mob supporter.

And I agree - our prisons ARE not much more than training grounds for recidivism and escalation of criminal careers. Doesn't that tell you something about the state of our criminal justice system? It does me.

 

Actually, during the 80s the people by popular vote passed a constitutional amendment allowing capital punishment. It was ruled unconstitutional by the Mass Supreme Court.

Reinstatement of capital punishment has since been narrowly defeated in the legislature 3 times, once by a tie vote. Not exactly an overwhelming defeat.

And I didn't condone his murder on moral or any other grounds, I called it poetic justice and said I felt no pity for him. The prison system didn't owe him any special protection not afforded other prisoners. As it was, he was in a section separate from the general population.

He wasn't executed by the state, he was the victim of a crime committed by another inmate. The state didn't owe him a private room. Too bad for him he was no more able to defend himself from his attacker than his victims were able to defend themselves from him when he was the attacker.
Prison is full of a lot of nasty people and shit happens sometimes.
This time it happened to someone who deserved it. The state can't guarantee absolute safety and security for it's law-abiding citizens outside of prison, what makes you think it can inside?
The state did not mean for him to be killed and took what they thought were reasonable precautions. They were wrong, the incident was closely examined and they will do better in the future. That doesn't guarantee something similar will never happen again.

Geoghan's murder was wrong, I will agree, and his murderer will be brought to justice in a civilized manner and according to the law. He will no doubt spend the rest of his life in prison (the fact that he was already in prison for life really has no bearing). Judging by your attitude, that legal and just punishment should be satisfactory to you.

In case you haven't noticed from previous posts, I have absolutely ZERO tolerance for those who prey on children. If one of my kids had been a victim of this monster and I were able to get my hands on him he would have been lucky if he made it to prison alive.

Comparing his crimes to "hawking a lunger onto the sidewalk " is a slap in the face to his victims and their parents. As a civilized chest-thumper, why don't you try using that analogy to the father of one of his victims and see what response you get? Since you have the courage of your convictions to stand behind, why don't YOU put up or shut up?

Civilization has to have logical limits. If it doesn't, it ceases to exist. Recognizing evil and danger and dealing with them effectively sometimes requires uncivilized actions.

 

Yeap. Our system of punishment has swung too far towards trying to rehabilite prisoners (which in most cases is like trying to train a cat to write program for XP) and away from punishment.

This next statement is going to get me some heat:

I almost admire the soviet and later Russian prison system. They took their criminals and shoot them. They didn't warehouse them for decades. Yeah, the soviets also did the same to innocents.

Why is it that the left screw so loudly about prisoners rights and say little about victims rights? (this is not aimed at you, just a question that bugs me).

 

Because the left are mainly pompous whiners.

 

funny how people believe all life should be protected at all cost. regardless of how stupid, or shitty they live their life.

 

It's interesting to compare the methods and results used in different countries. The Japanese prison system relies heavily on military-like behavior inside, as well as the social shame associated with imprisonment outside. The crime rate is unbelievably low relative to other developed countries. Finland (or maybe Sweden, but definitely a Scandinavia country) uses a soft approach with prisons that are much closer to gated communities than they are to Alcatraz. They put the emphasis on rehabilitation. I can't remember what the actual numbers are, but I remember thinking that they are not doing that much better than the US in preventing repeat offenses.

But all that is besides the point. Killing a sexual offender is definitely not the way to get me to cry. It's not even so much about punishment. It's more about elimination and prevention. Kind of like weapons of mass destruction, except with proof.

 

And defeat three times is what supports my statement that the People of MA have made this "exceedingly clear."

No doubt. You seem to be confusing what I wrote with comments from other posters. I never said or even implied that the State had any direct involvement with his death; however, when someone is incarcerated one of the things he or she loses is some or all of the ability to exercise the natural right to self-defense.

And that's it in a nutshell. As a free citizen, I don't expect the State to guarantee me absolute safety and security; the bulk of that is my responsibility. As a free citizen I can choose to exercise that right through a variety of methods, or I can choose not to exercise it at all. As a prisoner, the exercise of that right is essentially taken away from me. As a ward of the State I must then rely on the State to provide that protection. If the State fails to do so, the State is negligent.

If the State fails to protect its weaker wards, whether they are prisoners or children in foster homes, those wards then fall under the laws of savagery, where the strong prey on the weak. You see it as poetic justice that Geoghan, who used his position of power to prey on children, himself became the victim of someone who used his position of power to prey upon someone weaker. I'm not unsympathetic to that feeling, but I see the act of murder and the feeling that it is in some way just as simply an extension of the jungle law that allowed Geoghan to feel comfortable preying upon the weak.

You judge wrongly. I would not willingly live in a State or jurisdiction that opposes capital punishment for capital crimes. Here in NC Geoghan's killer, along with anyone else who commits a capital crime, would be subject to the death penalty. That is how it should be IMO.

It probably wouldn't make any difference whether MA even had the death penalty as an option in this particular instance. I seriously doubt that Geoghan's killer would get a death sentence in MA or anywhere else for that matter. The veneer of civilization is thin enough that even with a death penalty available I expect he'd merely get another life sentence instead of the chair - a "reward" for removing from this earth a monster who had already been removed from society and was likely never to be seen in it again anyway.

A statement worthy of Hitler, Pol Pot, Idi Amin, and Saddam Hussein.

 

An interesting dilemma.

Japan is an anomaly; they have taken the herd instinct for conformity and made it a requirement of the culture. In the West it is difficult to live too far outside cultural norms. In Japan it seems to be nearly impossible. People who transgress against the social norms in Japan are viewed with horror and disdain. In the West the transgressors often become pop icons and are viewed with fascination, albeit horrified fascination.

It's a simplistic view on my part, to be sure. There are many other factors, but that seems to me to be a core piece when looking at the differences between crime and punishment in Japan vs. Western nations.

There have been various methods of dealing with criminals in Western civilization since its beginning, and every one of those methods has been an abject failure. Capital punishment for petty crimes was a failure - when someone has nothing to lose, the penalty isn't scary. Somewhere around here I have a copy of a woodcut from medieval England showing a hanging of a pickpocket, while the police try to chase pickpockets who worked the crowd of spectators during the hanging.

To this day the death penalty is not a deterrent for someone bent on committing a capital crime. It is fitting punishment perhaps, but it's not a deterrent.

Long incarceration as punishment has failed to halt recidivism. "Rehabilitation" has failed to halt recidivism. IMO recidivism is not going to get better, it's going to get worse. Why?

Despite all that the West has tried to do to fix things, we make it nearly impossible for criminals not to recidivate. We have created the concept of perpetual punishment, and under this concept there is virtually no incentive for a convicted criminal to repudiate his criminal life.

What I mean is this - we like to talk about a criminal "paying his debt to society," but it's a debt that we don't allow to be repaid. Under our Western systems, even with "rehabilitation," the mantra is, "Once a felon, always a felon." This goes for us, and for most European countries.

If you are a convicted felon many of your rights are permanently stripped from you. Yes, on paper it's theoretically possible to petition to get some of them back, but it never actually happens. So, you lose rights for the rest of your life. As a convicted felon you are ostracized - it is nearly impossible to get anything but the most menial, low-paying work. No matter what you do to try to overcome your past, you are always reminded of it and treated as a second-class citizen. Convicted felons are harassed by the police, treated like slaves by their employers, and are unable to participate in many things we take for granted. In this regard we treat someone who engaged in illicit street racing (for example) no differently than a rapist.

So let's say you are a young person, who through various failures of judgement and stupidity end up convicted of a felony. You serve your time in prison, acting as a model prisoner. While in prison you go to school, becoming educated or learning a trade. Perhaps you find faith or some other moral guide, and resolve to turn your life around. When you get out you find that the only job you can get is mopping floors or cleaning toilets or washing cars. You can't afford to improve your living situation, so you end up living in the same slum you came from, next to the same criminals you grew up with and were in prison with. You find that We The People never forget you once did something wrong. No matter how determined you are to prove that you've changed, you find that We don't believe you. We don't want you living next to us, We don't want you working next to us.

So why would someone in this position have any incentive to better themselves or stay out of trouble? The rewards for a convicted felon who wants to redeem himself are few and far between, so why shouldn't he return to crime?

Here in the US we are making this situation worse instead of better. Not content with supporting an underclass of felons who have little hope of redemption, we have decided that people who committed certain misdemeanors should also be subject to perpetual punishment.

Once we've made everyone a criminal, Quis Custodiet Ipsos Custodes?

 

the death penalty (in america) is not a deterrent because it does not happen early and often enough, in front of the public.

in countries where dead bodies stay on display for a day.... there is LESS capitol crime.

here in the states it is like packaged meat. rarely do people invision an animal being whacked in the head with a sledgehammer, and gutted. they only see "oscar meyer" in a pretty package and make a sandwich.

big difference.

 

No. In countries where the death penalty is administered in public, it's merely another form of entertainment. It's not a deterrent - never has been.

We used to have public hangings in this country. It was never a deterrent.