Thursday, January 20, 2005
Death for Child Rape
From CrimProf:
If the court system wasn´t such a mess, I would be 100% in favor. Since it isn´t, it´s a much more complicated issue. The law also wants to raise the age limit from 10 to 12 years old.
There is this issue - I wonder how much this is a reality:
In a related note to this, I would prefer to see efforts and energy being spent to put child pornographers and users of child pornography behing bars for a very, very long time, rather than focus so much on the death penalty. It seems to me we have a state of almost complete lack of crackdowns on child pornography. Deliberate disregard. One last article I came across mentioned that many of the people caught using/distributing child porn in one of the last FBI blitzes didn´t have anything happen to them. I think they weren´t even charged. Society does nothing about fueling the culture and socialization of child sexual abuse and it wants to discuss details about an occasional punishment. Punishment is an important issue, but it becomes a problem to focus on it without focusing on prevention. Most of the abusers are not even charged at the moment. That´s what needs more attention and action.
The Georgia legislature is considering making child sodomy a capital offense. Of course, Coker v. Georgia held that rape of an adult woman cannot be made capital, but the Court has never returned to the issue of whether sexual abuse of a minor warrants death. LSU CrimProf Stuart Green is quoted in the article talking about Louisiana's law which also provides for death for some crimes involving children. [Jack Chin]
If the court system wasn´t such a mess, I would be 100% in favor. Since it isn´t, it´s a much more complicated issue. The law also wants to raise the age limit from 10 to 12 years old.
There is this issue - I wonder how much this is a reality:
First, Green said, making child rape or sodomy a capital crime could create an incentive for child rapists to kill their victims, the best witnesses against them.
In a related note to this, I would prefer to see efforts and energy being spent to put child pornographers and users of child pornography behing bars for a very, very long time, rather than focus so much on the death penalty. It seems to me we have a state of almost complete lack of crackdowns on child pornography. Deliberate disregard. One last article I came across mentioned that many of the people caught using/distributing child porn in one of the last FBI blitzes didn´t have anything happen to them. I think they weren´t even charged. Society does nothing about fueling the culture and socialization of child sexual abuse and it wants to discuss details about an occasional punishment. Punishment is an important issue, but it becomes a problem to focus on it without focusing on prevention. Most of the abusers are not even charged at the moment. That´s what needs more attention and action.
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