Are governments getting soft on sex crimes or what?!?

I know this argument gets brought up with each and every horror case, but honestly, is action against sex crimes getting soft or what?

Paedophiles. Rapists. Terrorists.
Generally, public dissaproval seems to go in that order.
So how come there are so many paedophiles and rapists out there who have offended before, will offend again and will never be rehabilitated since they're never in prison long enough for it to happen?

I'll just take two cases from today's news.
There will be more tommorow. Why? Because not enough is being done.
Case one:
In the UK today, convicted paedophile Craig Sweeney's five year sentence was approved by generally nutty attorney general Lord Goldsmith after the victim's family pressed for an extension of this minimum sentence, given the severity of the crime and the fact that the guilty was a re-offender.
The crime? Those with a nervous disposition may wish to skip this paragraph:
Sweeney was already a convicted paedophile, but was released early from his existing sentence.
He then snatched a three year old girl from her home, took her to his bail hostel (?!?) where he sexually assauted her, then bundled her into a car where he took her on a 100mph joyride before sexually assaulting her twice more to the extent that he was found covered with the victim's blood.

Although the judge recommended life imprisonment, Sweeney (who pleaded guilty) was told he could apply for immediate release after serving five years.
It's the nick for you, son- you're going down for a very, very short time...
Now, as we all know with recent cases such as this in the UK, once the public furore of such cases dies down and loses its current tabloid buzz, prison chiefs cut their spending and let people out.
They've done it before with this guy's last conviction and they'll do it again.

Does this man look rehibilitated to you?
Bumbling Home Secretary John Reid (possibily still microscopically less bumbling than the last one) spoke up to argue against how lenient this sentence was.
He clearly did not click that he's home secretary and can therefore do something about it, like, perhaps, changing a few of New Labour's own laws and a system which has heavies banging down the door of one time petty crooks who have become model citizens like Sakchai Makao and meanwhile allowing previously convicted paedolphiles to re-offend.
Get it together man, its your fucking department.
(You can remind him of this here: reidj@parliament.uk)

Case two:
A pregnant 16 year old girl was found dumped in the street in Sheffield yesterday.
It emerged that she had been lured from the streets of her native Kenya by men who had promised her a job as a housekeeper in the UK.
The girl had been caring for her 7 year old sister alone after her mother died of AIDS, so took the job, but found once she arrived in Britain that the men actually wanted to sell her as a sex slave.
She was forced into sex with ten men per day for three months and beaten when she attempted to escape the room she was locked in with three other girls whilst not on the job.
After becomming pregnant, she was forced to carry on working until heavily expecting, at which point she was beaten and raped by her captors and thrown out of a car in the city centre.
As has been mentioned before on this site, the UK refused to sign a recent EU charter against sex slavery.
A lot of these pimps are caught, but not enough.
I have sent letters to my local MP about this issue and to be fair to him, he has replied explaining that the charter was not signed as the UK was preparing its own, more robust strategy.
If we can get MPs to feed back this info, we can also get them to hurry the fuck up about getting legislation together, and at making sentences more of a deterent while they're at it.

Its expensive to keep prisoners inside. I know that.
To be honest, this is one of the main reasons I don't have anything against taxation.
However, I would rather my tax be spent on keeping clearly dangerous paedophiles, rapists and sex slave gangsters inside for as long as possible than on detaining random Muslims who may or may not have something against 'The West', funding kid's parties at Buckingham Palace, fighting endless wars, ID cards, buying Pressa another jag and so on and so forth.
If you're in the UK and you agree, write to your MP- they do take people's concerns seriously, because lets face it, they might get the boot if they don't, and the best way to get people to stop barracking them is to deal with them.
But wherever you are, are you as pissed off with me at how this system works, and how 'life sentences' are often over in a few years if anybody is caught at all?

No. Clearly not. That sketchy mugshot is absolutely enough evidence for me to support keeping him in jail indefinitely. Because if there's one thing I trust, it's my eyes. And my eyes tell me: "Not rehabilitatable"

And no, I don't know if "rehabilatateable" is a word. But I'm leaving it there.

My Texas is showing, but I think violent sexual offenses, and any offenses against children should be handled with extreme, painful death. Barring that, a lifetime of getting ass raped by Bubba here in Huntsville is another viable option.

It's not actually a 5 year sentence, but an actual life sentence IIRC. He is just eligible for parole after 5 years and so many days, which he may not get.

And Dancehall, whilst generally not an advocate of the death penalty, in cases like this, I wouldn't object.

That or neutering.

For once in my life, I'm taking sides with the Texans. Sexual violence against children should be punishable by death. It's sad that they've been afflicted with this particular disorder, but I don't see it as cureable, and the havoc it wreaks on society is just too great to take a more liberal and "enlightened" approach. Put them to sleep. Get them out of the gene pool.

Wish it was that simple. It's easy to blame the people who do these things and responsibility is undoubtedly a part of it, but the majority of paedophiles have themselves been abused. By advocating this kind of approach you're punishing the child for the sins of the father. Is that fair?

It seems to me more like paedophilia is less a violent, destructive single event than the continuation of a tragic circle of abuse that destroys or damages everyone who comes into contact with it. Resolving it requires more than just an iron fist. Personally, I think something like this is a far more constructive way of dealing with it.

Besides which, when has public opinion ever been a useful arbiter of what is just?

I don't agree with the death penalty at all, its just wrong although if that was my daughter I would personally want to hack off his head with a blunt knife and that of the person responsible for letting him out of prison in the first place but I just don't get why life can't mean life..why is that so difficult?
What fucking point is a life sentence when it doesn't mean life..
There are too many tragic cases where sickos get released and do it all over again, Belgium again, last week in the same town where that sick fuck locked up those two girls and let them starve to death has had another two girls murdered, the last I heard the guy they'd arrested had served a previous sentence and had been declared totally cured of his 'illness'..the mind boggles at the worlds total incapability of dealing with these people..
Personally I don't think these peoople can be 'cured', its part of human nature to want to have sex and these people want to do it with children, many of them don't even see it as wrong and believe that children want it just as much, that documentary on the BBC some years ago was horrific, one guy who was President of The Shirley Temple Appreciation Society, whilst being carted off by the police was screaming out of the window that "they all want it and they're not as innocent as we all believe" seriouly how do you take away that urge?.. so lock the sick fucks up and throw away the key..
That said I respect the opinion that some of these people end up like this because of their own past abuse them but the cycle has to end, like now.

True. I'm not saying that it is, only that people don't develop in a vacuum. If I was raped by my own parents or if I was tortured by people who are supposed to care about me while I'm still in the process of constructing my formative model of the world, I doubt my moral and ethical values would be quite the same. I guess it relates to where you want to draw the line between culpability and determinism.

Exactly. To call paedophiles, or any other criminal, monsters is to miss the point somewhat. They're not. Calling them monsters just makes the problem easier to solve. I think it's some kind of defence mechanism. Paedophiles are 99.99% identical to you and me. I guess some people object to that.

Yep. And I thought justice was supposed to be blind? I'm so naive sometimes...

I never quite understand the distinction between life imprisonment without the possibility of parole and the death penalty. Is there really a difference or is it just a way of mitigating liberal guilt?

Yes. For several reasons, among them
1) It does not put the state on the same ethical plane as the one they are punishing, and
2) If, somewhere down the road it turns out the state made a mistake in convicting this person, they can set them free. It's pretty hard to unkill somone.

That's such a cool statement. Can I steal that as a sig so I can appear more intelligent than I really am?

I need all the help I can get.

Sorry. I still don't buy it. Waiting for time to be the executioner is not so far removed from taking a more interventionist approach, while the second seems more like a practical than a moral or ethical objection

Personally, I think penalties should ALWAYS be given with the possibility of parole. The role of justice is not just to punish but to rehabilitate too. I cringe to quote Dostoevsky, but I'm gonna do it anyway. "A society should not be judged on how it treats its outstanding citizens but by how it treats its criminals".

Christ, do I have to credit necromancers for everything good in my life?

Dammit, you're a harsh bunch...

The sad and ugly truth is that habitual sexual offenders really can't be rehabilitated.

To suggest that they can is kind of like suggesting that gay people can be "cured" of homosexuality*. The fact is, by the time a person is an adult, it's really too late to change their sexuality. If a person's sexual preference is sex with children, or forcible rape, the only way they won't pose a threat is if they're locked up. Only if they genuinely believe that their paedophelia/rape fetish/whatever is a serious problem and that they absolutely must overcome it is there any chance for rehabilitation, and unfortunately, that's extremely rare.

(* P.S. please don't assume that I'm trying to equate homosexuality with paedophelia or any other sexual pathology, because I certainly don't mean to. I'm just pointing out that sexuality cements itself early in life, and therefore can't be "changed" during adulthood.)

You don't see the difference between actively killing someone and not actively killing someone?

That's because it is. Did I say it was a moral or ethical objection?

And that's fine. I am not intensely bothered one way or the other as to the possiblity of parole. I am intensely bothered that the state engages in a practice that has revenge as its sole purpose.

I don't think there's a huge difference between actively and passively killing someone, no. There's a whole grey area between 'not killing someone' and 'killing someone' and I'd argue that locking someone away until they die is closer to the latter than the former.

No, but the morality of giving and taking life is subject to more than practical objections, yes?

Cool. Then we agree. From your post it sounded like you were advocating locking people up without redemption, which is as clear demonstration of revenge as you're likely to find.

I disagree that life without the possibility of parole would "clearly" be a simple revenge action. I think there are arguments that can be made both ways. I just do not think those arguments can be imputed to the death penalty.

The reason why (to me) life without the possibility of parole does not equate to "passively killing someone" is because they are not being put in prison without the possibilty of parole for the purpose of passively killing that person. There is no intent to passively kill in that situation, rather there is an intent to incarcerate indefinitely. There might also be an intent to punish (and punish indefinitely), but I don't necessarily see that as a negative. Retribution on its own is (I believe) an improper basis for sentencing. But that's not to say that it has no place whatsoever in our correctional system.

I'm not saying they are. Only that the difference isn't as significant as a lot of people make out. Many people use the idea of life incarceration as an entirely different punitive concept to execution. In principle, to me, it doesn't seem so.

So how does this differ from retribution? I'd suggest that a wish to incarcerate indefinitely allied with a wish to punish indefinitely equates almost exactly with retribution.

While that's currently true I suspect that retribution would have no place in a truly civilised justice system which is why I resent the growing influence of victims and their families in sentencing. As I said earlier, justice should be blind.

Generally the death penalty is given as punishment for killing another human being, how can it be right to punish someone by doing to them, the one thing that we're punishing them for?
An eye for an eye makes the whole world go blind..

Well, that's fine. I don't quite get how someone could equate the active killing of another human being to the indefinite incarceration of that human being. In principle, to me, they seem light years apart. For both ethical AND practical reasons (both of which, by the way, are totally valid ways of looking at this issue.)

Because it's also coupled with the intent to separate a dangerous criminal from the general populace and an acknowledgement that the justice system is fallable and that safegaurds should be put in place to ensure that no innocent person is unnecessarily put to death.

I'm not sure I agree that punishment in general is not a valid goal in a "truly civilized society", but I certainly don't think anyone has any idea what a truly civilized society is. I don't agree with victim's families being able to influence the jury either, but that really has little bearing on the above conversation.

It may seem cold of me to say but I believe the burden of staying safe lies squarely on the persons being prayed upon.
The system is broken and in all probability it is not going to get any better. There are to many parts to the machine that need repair. Everything from the media and public reaction to the function of prisons as corporate entities and the very nature of the justice system itself has created a mess of unbalanced justice.
The only viable solution that I see is to take personal responsibility for our own safety. If we educate ourselves and our children then there will be less prey for the predators.