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Well I know this is going to upset everybody, but I got to say it.
Every population, every species, every organism since creation has to have good and bad people. Just have to have it, or else AHK and readers would not exist. Fundamental. You need Albert Einstein's, Neil Armstrong, along with Hitler, sex offenders. We would not be here, alive without this fundamental combination.
If they are in jail, then you are not in jail. Somebody has to pay to have our species.
Those chosen ones are chosen by the deck of cards they are given to play with at birth. They have some limited lifestyle choices. Some are mentally or intelligently challenged. I do not think they want to be in jail, or want to be what they are. But they are what they are.
Somebody has to be bad, and jailed, better them than you right?

If your view of society upsets you, I would suggest that you either make peace with what you believe or to change your beliefs to something more palatable.

If you're confused by my comment, you should understand that when you say 'everybody', I have to assume that you include yourself (as per the definition of 'everybody').

What may offend some people is my assertion that everyone can choose what to believe, and, by extension, may change their beliefs at their own discretion.

OT: does necroposting require an incantation? animal sacrifice? a ritual?

Anyways... AVADA KEDAVRA!

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Wise men.

It probably would not help. But the point is the law allowing a defendant access to evidence must be applied to everyone, or else the moment you start picking and choosing what rights apply to whom the very concept of justice flies out the window.

Dude, you may want to do some research before speaking, lest you reveal your ignorance.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sex_offend ... vism_rates
In the US sex offender laws are becoming more draconian by the year. Prosecutors have always wanted more authority to do whatever they want with little or no oversight, and they have discovered that by putting people on these sex offender lists they can do pretty much whatever they want to them and no one cares. Every year the number and type of offenses which can get you added to these lists gets more ridiculous, but the worst part is every one on the list no matter their crime is treated the same, as a monster with no rights. This is not justice.

IMHO: if anyone has PROVEN by their actions that they cannot be trusted not to maliciously harm other members of society then they should not be released form prison, ever. This is not about punishment. When a dog mauls someone and it is put down are you doing it to punish the dog, or to prevent it from hurting someone else?

A majority of the offenders on these lists are not an ongoing threat to society, and should not be treated as though they are. For the few (possibly like the man in this case) who have proven they are dangerous, they should never be put back on the streets. Simply put, these lists as they are now are unjust, ineffective, wasteful of police resources and should not exist.

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Recent studies of separated at birth, identical studies seem to indicate that what a person is and developers to be, may have been decided at inception, when DNA is swapped and any mutants thereof.
Perhaps a person just does have as much control over his life as we think, or would like to think. Certainly any reasonably successful person would not agree to that. A reasonably normal person believes he alone is the reason for his success, and therefore should take the credit. His success was not an accident.
If we have limited control over our own lives, then perhaps normal people should be indebted to sex offenders and other criminals for taking the prison spot that would have been up for grabs for us.

I remember a case where a man having commited act(s) of (grim) violence was actually given a lower punishment, because it could be proven that he carried a gene making him more violent. I was baffled, but there was a point to it. However, I firmly believe that even if your genes cause the crime, you should be punished as if the genes and you are one - because you are. By punishing criminal genes we also, in some way, punish those genes away on an evolutionary timescale.

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I'm not sure we are punishing those genes away as you put it Sumon, I think criminal types often have far more children than the rest of us as they are irresponsible types that dont really care to think about whether they have the money to look after children etc. they only care about themselves and what they want above all others,

From the link on the story alone, we don't know if the man has been convicted or not, only that he's accused and incarcerated. If he has been convicted, he must be appealing. Whatever the case I think it's important to remember a few things about the U.S. justice system.

First, it was established under the ideal that it's better that a guilty man go free than an innocent man be punished. Because of this the burden of proof is on the prosecution, and the accused are innocent until proven guilty and are afforded more rights than in many other parts of the world.

While many may assume this man is guilty - and he may be - one should keep in mind that the laws and rights are meant to protect the innocent and wrongly accused. You might be one of these one day.

Second, the accused have a right to defend themselves. Most may not chose to do this but it's an important right and one that you might appreciate some day. However, in most cases it's a disadvantage if you do since you aren't likely to have the training to provide a full and adequate defense, and in that way perhaps it's a good thing that the true criminal sometimes decides to do this. He's much more likely to end up in jail that way.

Third, the accused have a right to all the materials that are being used as evidence against them, and thank goodness for this. It's ensured many an innocent person their freedom, and if the prosecution is presenting the truth and has a strong case - again required to protect the innocent - access to the material isn't going to help a guilty person.

As detestable as this mans alleged crimes are, how much more horrible would it be to be wrongfully accused and convicted of such a thing. An innocent man would suffer terribly and the real perpetrator would still be free to victimize others. Since we don't know the actual content of the videos, we don't know if there is evidence on the videos that might free the person. I know several years ago I read of a case where expert witnesses for the prosecution claimed the unknown young girl on videos found in possession of the accused couldn't be an adult due to her proportions and other physical details apparent in the video, and it wasn't until the adult porn star herself showed up in the courtroom that the prosecution was forced to drop the case. While I can't imagine why someone finds a video with girls intentionally meant to look young appealing, it's not criminal and you can see at least in this case how it was important for the defendant to have access to the material that brought the charges.

As others have said, if this guy is guilty he's at least in jail and not victimizing someone else. His access to the material won't be forever, and I imagine he doesn't get private access either. He's probably not allowed to view it while alone and I imagine the guards will make sure he doesn't enjoy it as he'd like. On the other hand, if this guy is innocent there might be details on the video that can free him, and if not, he's at least given the opportunity to make sure that's the case.

Our system is far from perfect. Too many guilty go free or abuse the system, and too many innocent still end up in jail. I'd still rather we error on the side of the wrongly accused even if it means some times the guilty aren't convicted.

This is why we need Batman.

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I'm under the impression that convicted violent criminals should get the bad end of a rope - and swiftly, and non violent persons should have every chance at rehabilitation, with criminal records that only remain part of the criminal system and cannot follow them to private employment.

I also think many sexual offenses would dissipate (not for the most perverse and disturbed individuals though) if prostitution were legalized

We have a system that tries to appease everyone by offering neither proper rehabilitation, nor proper retribution. So in effect, we have neither, which to me seems like the worst possible outcome.

haccduder wrote:

Well said.
I have often wondered why people automatically think punishing, hurting people to conform or change their values is an effective deterrent process. Granted it does work on some people, some of the time, but not most people.
I am strongly suspicious that their real motive is just to punish, hurt people for their own personal satisfaction. I hope my suspicious are wrong.
In WW2, both England and the US burned alive, hundreds of thousands of people, their homes, to get them to change their values. It had the opposite effect. Hitler tried it on the Russians.
Instead it made them stronger.
Only ethnic cleansing works under the mindset that punishment is effective.

You could argue that the people on whom punishment is effective - those who have learned early in life to adjust their behavior to meet social norms - are the ones making the laws to punish. They're convinced it will be effective because they believe it would be effective on them.

Also, one can't overlook that punishments for the most severe crimes do in fact protect the public. When someone is locked up in jail they cannot victimize anyone else (outside of jail, anyway). Whether the punishments are just or effective as a deterrent is a different argument.


That's a grossly inaccurate. The bombings of Germany and Japan were conducted to end the war and to save additional Allied lives - civilian and military - not change anyone's values. Additionally, those countries were only bombed after both started the violence. Had Germany and Japan both surrendered earlier many lives would have been spared, but of course they still held out hope that they could win the war themselves. In the end the Allied bombings were quite successful in achieving their end - Germany and Japan both surrendered, and in fact are allies with England and the US to this day. Even if you mischaracterize the bombings to be an effort to change values, you can only argue that they were successful.

Again, Hitler wasn't trying to change anyone's values. Hitler wanted their country - and oil fields if I remember correctly. Even a dog fights harder in his own yard, and the Russians had no choice but to fight.

Sexual crimes have a lot more to do with power and subjugation than sex. If you look at parts of the world that have legalized prostitution or where it's mostly ignored anyway, say Thailand and other parts of southeast Asia, sex crimes involving children are rampant. In fact the permitted prostitution becomes a cover for victimizing children.

On can argue whether prostitution should be legal on a number of grounds, but I don't think we should expect it to reduce non-prostitution related crimes.

We have been executing, imprisoning, humiliating criminals for tens of thousands of years.
If it is an effective process, as some say, then by tomorrow, there should no more criminals left, they learned their lesson, and therefore no more crime.
(But then what happens to lawyers, policemen, lawmakers, judges?)

It depends on what you mean by effective and what you expect as the outcome. Certainly there are places in the world were there is essentially no government or central authority that enforces law or administers punishment, and those places aren't exactly known for tranquility either.

wtg wrote:

You could be right, that seems to be the impression I have gleamed from reading different accounts and reports. The goal of the bombing was to demoralize civilians to change their value (support) of their governments, Hitler and Tito, etc, to lessen the length of the war, but instead increased their support of their governments, which lengthened the war. My point being, humans, (whether criminals or otherwise), as a result of evolution, naturally tend to fight back, when faced with confrontation, instead of accepting other peoples values. If some of these people could get jobs, have a normal life, have children, some will be saved, some will have to stay incarcerated for their lives.
You are quite right about the Russians.