Should child molesters be killed?

[Richards 0]

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Let's say you buy mainstream porn. Later it turns out that one of the actors was 17, rather than 21 as was implied by the seller. Should you get a loooong prison sentence?

The law allows that if you take the right legal safegaurds (ie buy from a registered distributer who would be required to comply with the law) then you would not be held accountable. I think you know what I meant by what I said so I am not sure why you are deliberately trying to take my comment out of context. Common sense would indicate that the law would have to be demonstrate that the person knew they were buying material with underage girls or ought to have reasonably foreseen that it was likely that the material did not comply with state and federal laws. Judges are capable of distinguishing between an honest mistake and a scumbag who was deliberately seeking that material.

Some judges perhaps. But suppose you draw a very moralistic judge who is almost as much anti-adult-porn as he is anti-child-porn? The law as written doesn't provide too many safeguards. You could end up putting someone who has no interest in child porn into jail for a very loooong time.

The judge can only sentence you after a jury has convicted you which is not likely in the event that I described. Judicial abuse can happen with any law so the only safegaurds are;
A: Have absolutely no laws so people do not get falsely accused of breaking them
B:Make all punishments so weak that even if you are falsely accused of a crime it is of no consequence because the sentence is even a joke to the wrongly convicted.

You cannot refuse to implement tough laws out of fear of abuse, otherwise you would have to apply the same standard to murderers, rapists..etc, since people can also be falsely accused of those crimes. If a judge hands down an unneccessarily harsh sentence, then that will be noted in the appeal. You are picking remote scenarios. Any solution will have drawbacks, so you simply recognize them and have procedures in place for people to redress undue process, or excessive penalty.

Richards

My biggest handicap is that sometimes the hole in the front of my head operates a tad bit faster than the grey matter contained within.

[Jimbo 0]

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Would cutting their dicks off be enough?

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Unless they're female offenders.

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This has come up twice, now. Why the double standard?

um, Jimbo, I think you need to have a little talk with your parents.

OK - So maybe it only came up once in Steel's post. D'oh!

-
Jim

"Like" - The modern day comma
Good bye, my friends. You are missed.

[scaryshari 0]

My initial vote was "yes."

Then I read some of your thoughts....then the subject of little babies, etc..

My vote...still "yes"

Let the government do the deed instead of the family of the victim.

Strap those bastards in and gas 'em.

is

[rehmwa 2]

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I was just jk'n by saying they can't cut off her junk.

you just need really sharpened melon baller and some patience.....

...
Driving is a one dimensional activity - a monkey can do it - being proud of your driving abilities is like being proud of being able to put on pants

[Tenshi 0]

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I think a difference should be made between child molesters and pedo's. The first category can not be healed and should therefor be punished severely and without remorse. The second category falls under sexual orientation and something can be done about this. Therefor they should be punished and treated.

I'm not following you here. If a pedophile acts on his sexual urges towards children, then it is child molestation. He he only fantasizes, then no crime has been committed. It's been a few years since I worked in this field, but unless there's some new intervention that I'm not aware of, then treatment is rarely successful.

To say that "pedophilia" fall under sexual orientation???? I don't think so.

linz

Sure it does. But the difference with -let's say- a homosexual is that a pedophile can't act on his urges because that would make him a criminal and an immoral person. Because sexual orientation or not, it IS immoral to have sex with children.

But now for my second question which hasn't been answered yet: 'm also curious as to why the topicstarter chose the age of 11? If you rape a twelve year old, does that make it less of a crime than raping a 6 year old? And when is having sex with someone no longer considered molestation? 16 years old? 18?

[billvon 3,070]

>Deterence is a purpose.

Agreed - and it is served equally well by life in prison with no parole.

>I gurantee you it would happen less if we started killing child molesters.

The South accounts for 82% of all executions in the US. Yet the murder rate keeps increasing there. The Northeast accounts for less than 1% of all executions, yet murder is down 5% there.

So the data doesn't support that.

[Lindsey 0]

The South accounts for 82% of all executions in the US. Yet the murder rate keeps increasing there. The Northeast accounts for less than 1% of all executions, yet murder is down 5% there.

So the data doesn't support that.

It baffles me how often these statistics are ignored by people who support executions. It's clear to me that the desire to execute some people is based on an emotional need rather than on the idea that execution deters certain crimes. It's been demonstrated repeatedly that it's more expensive to execute a person than to keep him in prison, and it does NOT deter the crimes it punishes.

That being said, I don't have a strong opinion about execution as punishment either way....even if it doesn't make good financial or social sense.

linz

--
A conservative is just a liberal who's been mugged. A liberal is just a conservative who's been to jail

[billvon 3,070]

>Judges are capable of distinguishing between an honest mistake
>and a scumbag who was deliberately seeking that material.

Let's take an example.

You use Eudora, a popular email program, for your email. You wisely set up a junkmail filter that directs all junkmail into a folder. Every once in a while you delete everything in that folder, from "nigerian minister wants to give you 67 billion dollars" to "h0t ch1x and an1malz". There's a lot of it, but you delete it regularly.

Someone takes a disliking to you, and they accuse you of buying child porn. The police raid your house and take your PC. On it, under the Eudora attachement directory, they find cleverly-mislabeled files showing porn, with names like Pic0001, Pic0002 etc. (These were the attachements to those junk emails; they don't get deleted automatically.) There are 126 of them in your computer. Per an expert, 71 of them really, really look like kids.

The police ask you to show proof you bought these from a registered distributor. You cannot, and claim you never bought them. The police check your PayPal account and find a few transactions that cannot be confirmed at the other end as a legitimate business; they are just ebay members. The local paper does a news story that looks like this:

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Child porn found on worker's computer

Bucks County Courier Times

A central New York State man allegedly downloaded 71 images of child pornography onto two computers he used while working for an Upper Southampton marketing company, according to police.

Upper Southampton police charged 51-year-old Gregory Peter Bourlotos of Cobleskill, N.Y., with 71 counts of sexual abuse of children Monday and he was released on his own recognizance.
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Now, let's say you prove your innocence (or more accurately they cannot prove your guilt) and you are exonerated. Are you, an indicted sexual abuser of children, going to be able to get a job in your town ever again?

(The above news clip, BTW, is real.)

There is a very real problem making data illegal to store, because a lot of people are storing a lot of stuff on their hard drives that they have no idea about. And sometimes it's many megabytes of material. Heck, I went through my computer here at work and found some pretty vile pictures (and some audio and video files I didn't want to open) in my attachements directory, and in caches created by popups.

So relying on smart judges who understand computer usage is not always a good idea - because you are relying on everyone involved, from the police to the judge to the jury, to be computer savvy. And it's a hot enough issue that as soon as you start protesting your innocence, someone says "listen to that pedophile trying to weasel his way out of having SEVENTY ONE child porns on his computer! They lie compulsively, you know - they're sick sick sick."

(It's a problem that's much bigger than child porn, but that's the hot button that people love to rail against - look at all the people here who want to talk about it and kill the guy/cut his balls off etc.)

[wmw999 2,534]

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I'm also curious as to why the topicstarter chose the age of 11?

Dunno about the topic starter, but when I worked as a child abuse investigator, 11 was the general cutoff age for neglect being able to be an emergency condition. That was in 1977 and 1978, so I'm sure there's an established precedent there.

Wendy W.

There is nothing more dangerous than breaking a basic safety rule and getting away with it. It removes fear of the consequences and builds false confidence. (tbrown)

[Richards 0]

I guess at this stage I have to ask is, how would you suggest we stop the proliferation pornographic material that involves minors? Do we just accept that there is nothing we can do about it? I am not interested in hearing about what we should not do, nor do I need annecdotes about falsely accused people. Given that there is a large demand by many sick people to download this material thus supporting that industry, how would you suggest we combat the problem? Or should we just ignore it?

Richards

My biggest handicap is that sometimes the hole in the front of my head operates a tad bit faster than the grey matter contained within.

[Steel 0]

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how would you suggest we combat the problem? Or should we just ignore it?

Richards

You can start by directing you energy towards those who we know are guilty of helping Pedophiles, such as the ACLU for defending NAMBLA.
,

If I could make a wish, I think I'd pass.
Can't think of anything I need
No cigarettes, no sleep, no light, no sound.
Nothing to eat, no books to read.

[wmw999 2,534]

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You can start by directing you energy towards those who we know are guilty of helping Pedophiles, such as the UCLA for defending MANBLA.

OK, that's just funny. I know it's a typo, but it's still funny .

Wendy W.

There is nothing more dangerous than breaking a basic safety rule and getting away with it. It removes fear of the consequences and builds false confidence. (tbrown)

[Richards 0]

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how would you suggest we combat the problem? Or should we just ignore it?

Richards

You can start by directing you energy towards those who we know are guilty of helping Pedophiles, such as the UCLA for defending MANBLA.
,

I agree with you, but if I suggested that, then every devils advocate on speakers corner would acuse me of being a totalitarian, who was trying to shred the constitution. People are paranoid that any effective crime fighting measure will lead to totalitarianism, and therefore would rather just ignore the problem. Is there is a solution that would be effective without people accusing me of being a nazi

Richards

My biggest handicap is that sometimes the hole in the front of my head operates a tad bit faster than the grey matter contained within.

[billvon 3,070]

>Do we just accept that there is nothing we can do about it?

Not at all! Spend our efforts on tracking down the people who create it. They are the criminals, and they are the ones who exploit and abuse children for their own gain. Trying to stop it _after_ it's been made is like trying to prevent anyone from making a photocopy of a copyrighted document. It's a lot of effort for very little return, when you consider how many spammers there are out there right now.

[Richards 0]

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>Do we just accept that there is nothing we can do about it?

Not at all! Spend our efforts on tracking down the people who create it. They are the criminals, and they are the ones who exploit and abuse children for their own gain. Trying to stop it _after_ it's been made is like trying to prevent anyone from making a photocopy of a copyrighted document. It's a lot of effort for very little return, when you consider how many spammers there are out there right now.

So long as there is a demand there will always be a supply.

Richards

My biggest handicap is that sometimes the hole in the front of my head operates a tad bit faster than the grey matter contained within.

[billvon 3,070]

>So long as there is a demand there will always be a supply.

So you're just going to accept that there's nothing we can do to stop the supply? I don't buy that. We can stop the supply if we want. It will be expensive, take a lot of manpower etc. If it's really important to us, we will pay that price. If it's not that important - then we will have to learn to live with it.

[warpedskydiver 0]

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Exactly!!!

The first thing the prosecuters and police do to make the entire public turn their backs, is to claim that someone was a child pornagrapher, or drug dealer.

I am in favor of killing true pedophiles, I am also in favor of killing people for some other haneous crimes.
I am not in favor of our current legal system to be the ones who decide which is which.

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[Richards 0]

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So you're just going to accept that there's nothing we can do to stop the supply? I don't buy that.

Putting words in my mouth again. If you attack only the supply you merely drive the price up and entice others into the market. As with any war (drugs is a good example, so is prostitution) you have to address both supply and demand. America has had their DEA, and military working in columbia to address the supply of drugs. Due to the demand for drugs, suppliers simply became better at avoiding the authorities. Furthermore, drug cartels in Mexico filled the void as things got tougher in Columbia.

Again, while I never suggested that we should ignore the supply I simply felt that investigating and prosecuting the end users would have to be part of the overall plan in combatting the problem. Most of the people who have been arrested for downloading that stuff, in the media have appeared to be "normal and respectable" family men. Therefore it is probably safe to presume that this might be representative of the polulation as a whole. So long as "respectable" men with families and careers feel that they can safely download this stuff, they will continue to do so.

If you merely take out the distributors then the unsatisfied demand on the part of net pervs will entice others to profit by filling the void and suppling the product. This argument has been demonstrated in the war on street prostitution. Arresting the girls was pointless because they had no choice but to go back as soon as they made bail. The pimps were not detered as the penalties were the cost of doing business. When they started targetting the "Johns" and guys had to call their wives to bail them out at the station while trying awkwardly to explain to their wives why they were arrested with a hooker, there was a sharp decline in prostitution. How do you address the problem of sickos who like downloading this stuff? No straw man arguments please....argue the words I have written, not the ones you put in my mouth simply because they are easier to argue.

Richards

My biggest handicap is that sometimes the hole in the front of my head operates a tad bit faster than the grey matter contained within.

[billvon 3,070]

>Putting words in my mouth again.

Odd; you do precisely the same thing. If it bothers you I will stop asking such questions.

>How do you address the problem of sickos who like downloading this stuff?

Make it unavailable and prosecute people who knowingly buy it. People who buy it are part of the problem; people who simply posess it for whatever reason (came via spam, a friend sent it to them, it was on the hard drive when they got the machine) do not contribute to the problem. And it's a lot easier to base a prosecution on a provable transaction to a specfic person; we do this all the time in drug busts.

[rehmwa 2]

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...argue the words I have written, not the ones you put in my mouth simply because they are easier to argue.

that's no fun and eliminates 75% of the content of Speaker's Corner

...
Driving is a one dimensional activity - a monkey can do it - being proud of your driving abilities is like being proud of being able to put on pants

[pirana 0]

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>I think the only way to be sure that the crime does not get
>committed again by the convicted child molester is by death.

Or life in prison without parole. Both work equally well.

That would be a waste of money. Predators should be exterminated. They are human only in physical form. All evidence points to there not being a cure, not to mention that the rate of recitivism is thru the ceiling. These people are more like rabid dogs than people with a "problem" and need to be put down as such. It is unjust, unsafe, and ineffective to keep them alive.

" . . . the lust for power can be just as completely satisfied by suggesting people into loving their servitude as by flogging them and kicking them into obedience." -- Aldous Huxley

[billvon 3,070]

>That would be a waste of money.

Executions are more expensive than life in prison. Want to stop wasting money? Stop capital punishment. (Or if you are willing to pay for it, then keep it.)

>Predators should be exterminated. They are human only in
>physical form.

Oh, nonsense. Humans are good and bad. For every Mother Theresa there's a disgusting criminal. They are both still every bit as human as you are. Claiming "they're not human" is the path to take if you want to turn into the people you despise.

[rehmwa 2]

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>Executions are more expensive than life in prison..

nonsense, executions are cheap. all the litigation and interim time is expensive

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Driving is a one dimensional activity - a monkey can do it - being proud of your driving abilities is like being proud of being able to put on pants

[Richards 0]

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Odd; you do precisely the same thing. If it bothers you I will stop asking such questions.

Howdy,

I don't recall ever putting words in anyones mouth but I will watch for it.

It does not bother me at all really. I come to speakers corner for interesting debate and am more than willing to lose an argument if doing so enlightens me (and I have lost a lot of debates). I just find that when I am constantly trying to restate my position to someone who is just trying to take my words out of context because they view this as a contest, we lose the constructive nature that is supposed to be fostered in these debates. It often degrades into a game of one upmanship which is a shame because if someone has a strong view they would serve the forum better by offering a constructive counterargument. I do not mind to be told I am wrong. As a matter of fact I do not mind people telling me my point is stupid (I have some extreme views admittedly). I just wish people could explain why they think that, while addressing the issue I have put forward. Anyway I am open to debate, but if my position is wrong, explain why.

Richards

My biggest handicap is that sometimes the hole in the front of my head operates a tad bit faster than the grey matter contained within.

[kelpdiver 2]

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The South accounts for 82% of all executions in the US. Yet the murder rate keeps increasing there. The Northeast accounts for less than 1% of all executions, yet murder is down 5% there.

So the data doesn't support that.

It baffles me how often these statistics are ignored by people who support executions. It's clear to me that the desire to execute some people is based on an emotional need rather than on the idea that execution deters certain crimes. It's been demonstrated repeatedly that it's more expensive to execute a person than to keep him in prison, and it does NOT deter the crimes it punishes.

What baffles me is how the statistics surrounding capital punishment can challenge gun control for most distorted or misrepresented versions of reality.