Is life in prison/the death penalty too harsh for rape?

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NineTailedFox
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04 Dec 2011, 2:59 am

Well there's no doubt that rape causes a lot a trauma. It certainly can be bad enough to make you suicidal. But most people who are raped do not commit suicide. If they all did, the suicide rate would be vastly higher. Like a thousand times higher.



Last edited by NineTailedFox on 04 Dec 2011, 3:02 am, edited 1 time in total.

Beauty_pact
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04 Dec 2011, 2:59 am

NineTailedFox wrote:
I take it you are not a humanist. :?


Actually, I'm a socialist by heart. But evil of this sort must be stopped in the most effective manner possible, and death is not good enough - they must learn a lesson before they stop polluting the air with their breathing.



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04 Dec 2011, 3:05 am

Be that as it may, I don't believe in revenge. More importantly, I highly doubt that would be effective.



Beauty_pact
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04 Dec 2011, 3:12 am

dr01dguy wrote:
There's a huge problem with making the penalty for rape the same as the penalty for murder -- it gives the rapist every incentive to kill the victim afterward. The penalty is no worse, and the likelihood of getting caught & convicted is a lot less because the star witness won't be around to testify.


That's why you'd make the offender silently disappear from society, to the torture camps I mentioned.

I'm talking about real rape, by the way - not if someone changes their mind, mid-sex, as was mentioned. Calling that actual "rape" is, generally, not very fair at all - neither to the accused, nor to victims of real rape.



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04 Dec 2011, 3:31 am

I think that a long time of smarmy, gut-wrenching, embarassing counseling sessions would be a great alternative. Yes, some jail time, but I think it should be - in the case of a guy raping a girl on a date, should be on par with the legal consequences of her punching her lights out. In a sense its domestic violence, or when non-date its violence in general.

I would add though, I do agree that the psychology matters a lot. A guy who was beligerently drunk, blacked out, etc. who'd never do a thing like that otherwise needs to be scolded when sober - badly - on it but then again on the grounds that the people scolding him let him know its because they know he's a better person than what he did, that he needs to get the f off of the alcohol. Obviously there are guys who are just twisted enough that they like the feeling of control - that's where the problem really comes in and that's where such people, society's hidden gems (hidden to other men at least and most women who they wouldn't take as good targets) need to be dealt with for what they are. If its a mode of operation it obviously should get a different set of treatment.

That said I had a situation close to me. My friend had a house, we used to have parties over there often, and there was a guy we knew who - when drunk - would mount any girl, even guys sometimes. People just pushed him off, felt like he was harmless, he should have learned his lesson that that was f'ing dangerous - he didn't. It came to pass that one night, at four or five in the morning, one of our friend's nieces came knocking on the door. She was thirteen, apparently he'd pushed himself on her, and the guy went over to beat his ass, then called the cops, the guy who perped that is now a registered sex offender. To bring up the other side of it this girl, at twelve, was dating a 25 year old Jamaican, she was into older guys and doing a lot of very risque things (which I don't even want to know how she was raised or what happened to her previous - probably some quite dark stories there). We really came to the conclusion that she probably did lead him on but freaked out when he kept going past what she wanted. Yes, its an odd and disturbing story but, I think its a good example where nuance does need to apply. Yes, we cut that guy off from our group and he was not forgiven for that, however him as registered sex offender.... registered problem alcoholic sure, registered sex offender... its quite iffy.


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NineTailedFox
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04 Dec 2011, 3:32 am

So we "unperson" offenders and send them to concentration camps where they are continually tortured. Hmm. Is this mythical world you imagine free and democratic?



techstepgenr8tion
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04 Dec 2011, 3:42 am

NineTailedFox wrote:
So we "unperson" offenders and send them to concentration camps where they are continually tortured. Hmm. Is this mythical world you imagine free and democratic?

What really sucks about the world we live in - as a democratic society its inhumane to take the stance that they're so broken that we should simply 'put them down' like a sick animal, but at the same time there's literally no way to fix them either. Keeping them from harming people again seems to be the paramount idea, whether we can come up with a better way of doing that than jail is questionable. I do agree though that the degree of rape we have in prisons and the allowance of that kind of thing is quite disgusting, a person goes in does time and, after holding up mirrors around corners for years or having to watch not to get raped, beat up by a rival gang, or get stabbed to death with an improvised shank, that they're supposed to come out saner and more productive - its absurd.


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04 Dec 2011, 8:17 pm

donnie_darko wrote:
I think life in prison is suitable for serial rapists and very violent rapists, I'm against the death penalty period, but do you think it's too harsh for say, date rape? Like if the rape was not physically violent but they just kept going? It seems a little bit harsh to put someone in jail FOREVER for that, especially if they were on drugs or something and not in their right mind. I don't think being raped is as bad as being killed or being put in jail forever. I think life in prison for rape is disproportionate to the crime. Rape is obviously a really sad thing to go through, but humans are designed to withstand trauma. It's not like people who are raped simply wallow in misery until the day they die. I don't think it's nearly as bad as being murdered.

I dunno, it does seem incredibly vengeful to put someone in jail forever or kill them because they committed date rape. I think 5-10 years in prison would suffice as punishment. I mean even a month in jail would be horrible.


5 to 10 years in prison sounds about right. Plus they should be forced to share a cell with a very large angry inmate who butt rapes them every night. Let the punishment fit the crime.



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04 Dec 2011, 8:19 pm

Violent rape or statutory rape?

ruveyn



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04 Dec 2011, 9:18 pm

ruveyn wrote:
Violent rape or statutory rape?

ruveyn


Personally, I'm only talking about "violent"/violent rape. We don't even use the term "statutory rape" in Sweden (not that I care what the general populace in Sweden thinks about this - my guess is that most here, by far, unfortunately don't agree with me that rapists should be sent to concentration camps that administer deadly torture).



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04 Dec 2011, 9:50 pm

Beauty_pact wrote:
Personally, I'm only talking about "violent"/violent rape. We don't even use the term "statutory rape" in Sweden (not that I care what the general populace in Sweden thinks about this - my guess is that most here, by far, unfortunately don't agree with me that rapists should be sent to concentration camps that administer deadly torture).

If you intend to conceal from the populace the fact that you're torturing convicted rapists then there is, from the government's point of view, nothing to be gained. The function of the law is to prevent rapes from occurring, not to visit vengeance upon rapists.

In any case, I'm completely unconvinced that even public torture of convicted rapists would prevent rapes.



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04 Dec 2011, 9:54 pm

ruveyn wrote:
Violent rape or statutory rape?

ruveyn


Rape is always rape, whether or not "violence" takes place. So people don't use the term "violent rape," because it promotes the idea that you have to be physically overwhelmed or extremely injured to have been raped.

Statutory rape is a weird one, though. I guess a thorough case-by-case evaluation would be needed.



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04 Dec 2011, 9:57 pm

Beauty_pact wrote:
dr01dguy wrote:
There's a huge problem with making the penalty for rape the same as the penalty for murder -- it gives the rapist every incentive to kill the victim afterward. The penalty is no worse, and the likelihood of getting caught & convicted is a lot less because the star witness won't be around to testify.


That's why you'd make the offender silently disappear from society, to the torture camps I mentioned.
It seems you are completely ignoring what dr01guy just said.

If the punishment for rape is as bad as the punishment for murder (or even worse). Then the rapist has all the reasons in the world to kill the victim.

So, imagine that, you will increase the number of dead women. All while actually increasing the number of rapists that get away with it, because of how difficult it would be to make rape cases when the whole body is missing. Meanwhile, there are a couple of innocent men who are being tortured in government torture camps because they didn't have good lawyers.


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04 Dec 2011, 10:34 pm

Vexcalibur wrote:
Beauty_pact wrote:
dr01dguy wrote:
There's a huge problem with making the penalty for rape the same as the penalty for murder -- it gives the rapist every incentive to kill the victim afterward. The penalty is no worse, and the likelihood of getting caught & convicted is a lot less because the star witness won't be around to testify.


That's why you'd make the offender silently disappear from society, to the torture camps I mentioned.
It seems you are completely ignoring what dr01guy just said.

If the punishment for rape is as bad as the punishment for murder (or even worse). Then the rapist has all the reasons in the world to kill the victim.

So, imagine that, you will increase the number of dead women. All while actually increasing the number of rapists that get away with it, because of how difficult it would be to make rape cases when the whole body is missing. Meanwhile, there are a couple of innocent men who are being tortured in government torture camps because they didn't have good lawyers.


I didn't ignore anything he said. He actually was making a very good (and obvious) point. I addressed it by *meaning* that after there is a certain case of rape being established in court, the rapist would stealthily be shipped off to a torture camp, without the public's knowledge. I acknowledge the horrifying problems that a system like this could lead to, though. I suppose I am just saying what *should* be the punishment, if it was safe to do, without any innocents getting in the way of the system. However, I suppose there just is no hope for humanity, really. Instead, maybe we should just all wish for a meteorite to wipe out the whole human species. Either that, or good-hearted people that see the value of true justice should take matters into their own hands, instead of that the so-called "authorities" do - authorities that, with time, doubtlessly would rot from the inside and become purely corrupt, or at least mostly so. After all, such a system to handle rapists would require a form of dictatorship, and I doubt that there has been a single good-hearted dictatorship throughout history. If there has been, it must have been for a rather small group of people.



Last edited by Beauty_pact on 05 Dec 2011, 12:58 am, edited 1 time in total.

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04 Dec 2011, 10:45 pm

godoftruemercy wrote:
ruveyn wrote:
Violent rape or statutory rape?

ruveyn


Rape is always rape, whether or not "violence" takes place. So people don't use the term "violent rape," because it promotes the idea that you have to be physically overwhelmed or extremely injured to have been raped.


I agree. It shouldn't be said in that way. Actually, though, just a few years back, you couldn't "rape" someone, in Sweden, if the person didn't fight back. As such, you didn't rape if the person you raped either was sleeping, was drugged, in a coma or paralyzed, as a few examples, or simply in deep shock over what was about to happen. Seriously sickening. Instead, you only had "sexually abused", which came with a much milder sentence (as if rape already doesn't come with ridiculously mild sentences, here (however, at the same time, being put in jail over rape, here, sickeningly enough doesn't even need evidence, currently)). I guess that view may have originated in that the word "rape", in Swedish, is "våldtäkt", which basically means "covering/mounting by violence". Clearly, the Swedish word should be changed. "Rapist" also translates to "cover/mount by violence man", here - unbelievably stupid.



Last edited by Beauty_pact on 04 Dec 2011, 11:09 pm, edited 2 times in total.

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04 Dec 2011, 10:56 pm

godoftruemercy wrote:
ruveyn wrote:
Violent rape or statutory rape?

ruveyn


Rape is always rape, whether or not "violence" takes place. So people don't use the term "violent rape," because it promotes the idea that you have to be physically overwhelmed or extremely injured to have been raped.

Statutory rape is a weird one, though. I guess a thorough case-by-case evaluation would be needed.


I think it's unrealistic to consider all forms of unwanted sex to weigh the same on the balance of justice.

We had a guy out here who would wait for unaccompanied female joggers on a mountain trail and jump them, violently raping them. He admitted as much in court. I say kill him. He's just an unruly dog that needs to be put down.

A wealthy man who is married to a woman who no longer loves him but is dependent on him financially, who insists on (but does not force) sex is an as*hole who deserves to be shunned by polite society but it's unclear whether you could really say a crime had been committed in the legal sense.

There are many shades of gray between these two characters. I think it's right for the law to recognize and clarify differences between individual crimes in sentencing guidelines.

But some people should just never be on the streets again. Unfortunately execution in the USA is a fairly expensive proposition, with life in prison generally the cheaper option for the state. I'm sure the endless appeals play a part in that, but the real costs of the execution itself - and insuring the execution - are expensive as well. Warehousing people who can't behave in society is relatively cheap. Especially if we stop locking up nonviolent drug offenders.