Maybe the people who came up with the whole idea of jails overestimated how awful we would consider having to live in a cell about 20 hours a day for 20 years.
What would be a just sentence though? If we’re going for “an eye for an eye”, you’ll quickly find that you run out of punishments for the most heinous crimes. And even if you can keep coming up with ways to punish people, it stops seeming like a good idea real fast when you accidentally end up punishing the wrong person.
It’s easy to say “this person deserves more” when you’re talking about an individual case, but when you’re trying to build a system that balances punishment, justice, rehabilitation, deterrence and protecting the public you’re never going to come up with a perfect solution that feels fair all of the time. But the alternative is making arbitrary decisions on a case by case basis, influenced by bias and personal feelings.
That’s not so say the justice system, especially in the US, doesn’t have big problems. But I don’t think the solution is to double down on harsher punishment.
Most sex offenders reoffend. So they either need locked up forever or be required to take drugs to reduce libido or something.
I was interested and looked it up, but turns out this doesn’t really ring true. In fact, only a minority of sex offenders actually reoffend, and when they do it’s most likely for a different, nonsexual crime rather than a sexual one.
It’s hard to get exact numbers though, as sex crimes remain underreported. It does seem however that psychological treatment for these offenders actually helps reduce recidivism rates.
It gets different when you get to repeat offenders; they are much more likely to keep offending after release.
Well it’s not majority but it’s high and it is related to the age of the offender. With those at younger ages re offending at almost 40 percent.
That’s an insanely high risk to the public.
-The highest rates of sexual recidivism were observed for individuals under 34 years at release from incarceration, for whom recidivism steadily increased over time before peaking at 42% at 25 years. The mean age at reoffense was 42.51. Age was significantly associated with sexual recidivism at 5 years, but not at subsequent follow-up periods. These findings suggest that long-term patterns of sexual recidivism may be related to age at release.
I will say that numbers on this topic do vary grately in research papers depending on how long they follow up and who the sample was. And how they divide people up.
This paper I reference followed people for 25 years.
It divided people up by age. And measured time from release to re offence of another sex crime.
(Your link doesn’t work for me, not sure where it’s supposed to go? I get a proxy verification page but nothing else).
My initial link addresses the age bit as well, it’s mostly lower for higher ages because those people have less long to live. When corrected for that, higher age = higher risk to reoffend.
One issue with the current 25y studies is that a lot changes regarding correctional facilities in 25 years. Most of those studies are a fair bit older; modern studies find lower rates, likely due to improved prisons and therapies.
Regardless, it seems wrong to start imprisoning or chemically castrating people on the chance that they might reoffend, especially now that modern studies confirm that the recidivism rates aren’t that high. I mean, for other types of crimes the recidivism rates are considerably higher, yet we don’t take severe preventative measures there either. We also know that shorter sentences lower recidivism rates and that therapy is much more effective than prison as an empirical fact. And then there’s the somewhat horrifying implications for the minority of falsely convicted folks. So I’m not so sure if extreme punishments for these people is a wise idea.
If only the justice system properly punished pedos. But they don’t.
So until then. …
The pedos he’s killing are being punished by the justice system though.
Not really. The sentences are weak for the crimes.
You can rape and kill a child and only get 20 years. And serve half and get out.
Maybe the people who came up with the whole idea of jails overestimated how awful we would consider having to live in a cell about 20 hours a day for 20 years.
What would be a just sentence though? If we’re going for “an eye for an eye”, you’ll quickly find that you run out of punishments for the most heinous crimes. And even if you can keep coming up with ways to punish people, it stops seeming like a good idea real fast when you accidentally end up punishing the wrong person.
It’s easy to say “this person deserves more” when you’re talking about an individual case, but when you’re trying to build a system that balances punishment, justice, rehabilitation, deterrence and protecting the public you’re never going to come up with a perfect solution that feels fair all of the time. But the alternative is making arbitrary decisions on a case by case basis, influenced by bias and personal feelings.
That’s not so say the justice system, especially in the US, doesn’t have big problems. But I don’t think the solution is to double down on harsher punishment.
Most sex offenders reoffend. So they either need locked up forever or be required to take drugs to reduce libido or something.
The U.S doesn’t invest in rehabilitation of criminals.
And our culture promotes sex crimes.
So at present. We have limited options to protect children and others who are targeted.
I was interested and looked it up, but turns out this doesn’t really ring true. In fact, only a minority of sex offenders actually reoffend, and when they do it’s most likely for a different, nonsexual crime rather than a sexual one.
There’s a lot of interesting summarizing being done here: https://smart.ojp.gov/somapi/chapter-5-adult-sex-offender-recidivism
It’s hard to get exact numbers though, as sex crimes remain underreported. It does seem however that psychological treatment for these offenders actually helps reduce recidivism rates.
It gets different when you get to repeat offenders; they are much more likely to keep offending after release.
Well it’s not majority but it’s high and it is related to the age of the offender. With those at younger ages re offending at almost 40 percent.
That’s an insanely high risk to the public.
-The highest rates of sexual recidivism were observed for individuals under 34 years at release from incarceration, for whom recidivism steadily increased over time before peaking at 42% at 25 years. The mean age at reoffense was 42.51. Age was significantly associated with sexual recidivism at 5 years, but not at subsequent follow-up periods. These findings suggest that long-term patterns of sexual recidivism may be related to age at release.
https://pifa.blog/#google_vignette
I will say that numbers on this topic do vary grately in research papers depending on how long they follow up and who the sample was. And how they divide people up.
This paper I reference followed people for 25 years. It divided people up by age. And measured time from release to re offence of another sex crime.
(Your link doesn’t work for me, not sure where it’s supposed to go? I get a proxy verification page but nothing else).
My initial link addresses the age bit as well, it’s mostly lower for higher ages because those people have less long to live. When corrected for that, higher age = higher risk to reoffend.
One issue with the current 25y studies is that a lot changes regarding correctional facilities in 25 years. Most of those studies are a fair bit older; modern studies find lower rates, likely due to improved prisons and therapies.
Regardless, it seems wrong to start imprisoning or chemically castrating people on the chance that they might reoffend, especially now that modern studies confirm that the recidivism rates aren’t that high. I mean, for other types of crimes the recidivism rates are considerably higher, yet we don’t take severe preventative measures there either. We also know that shorter sentences lower recidivism rates and that therapy is much more effective than prison as an empirical fact. And then there’s the somewhat horrifying implications for the minority of falsely convicted folks. So I’m not so sure if extreme punishments for these people is a wise idea.