Breaking news, Spitzer makes deal on civil confinement. Man, this is a tough one. As a parent, not to mention erstwhile human being, there is little that I find more repugnant than sex offenders. My visceral response, like so many others, is to think that few crimes are more worthy of the death penalty than child molestation. No, I am not in favor of the death penalty for child molestors, but that is certainly the emotional response which is immediately overcome by the intellectual response, thankfully.
But we now have a deal worked out in Albany to confine civilly those individuals determined by an executive branch agency to be high risk sex offenders after the conclusion of their prison sentence. There is no one who doubts that public safety is a worthy goal. It is a primary obligation of government. There is similarly no one who doubts that some of these offenders are sick people and society needs to be protected from them. But…
One of the basic premises of our legal system is that people are only imprisoned for crimes that they have committed, not for fear that they will commit future crimes. Second, people are only imprisoned after being found guilty by a jury via guilt beyond a reasonable doubt, and sentenced by a judge. Third, once a person has served the sentence imposed by a judge, he has paid his debt to society and is released, not reimprisoned.
To say that this undermines the basic premise of the independence of the judicial branch of government is an understatement. We just don’t do this in America. We don’t lock people up forever, no matter how much they disgust us. There is a real problem with sex offenders, but this is not the answer. A thorough discussion of why this is horribly wrong institutionally would be worthy of a doctoral thesis. America just doesn’t lock people up because we fear them. Except maybe in Gitmo, but that’s another story.
Having said that, there is a bigger reason not to do this. Child molestor rapes a child. Thinks to himself, if I let the child live, there’s a witness to my crime. But if I kill the child, I go to prison for life. But if I’m convicted, I go to prison for life anyway, because once I’ve served my sentence, they are going to lock me away forever under this “civil confinement” system. Result is a dead child. Don’t do something that will encourage the murder of a child. Just don’t do it.
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I agree with you that can make someone muder a child but not only that they said it is mostly family members and you dont want the people to not want to come to court for help for that family member when they thank they are giving that person a life time sentance.
Another fine point, from the opposite perspective. We want to encourage people to put a stop to child molestation, but by making sentences, under whatever name you want to call it, increasingly harsh, we provide a disincentive for family members to come forward against another family member. We would also cause people who think, but are not certain, that a crime has been committed to be more reluctant to step forward for fear that they might put an innocent person in prison for life.
Another thought is that police, who exercise substantial discretion whether they want to admit it or not, might be less inclined to arrest a pedophile when there are some doubts about whether they (the cops) think life in prison is appropriate.
All of these things provide negatives to accomplishing the most important thing, the protection of children from molestation. In government’s zeal to “fix” the problem, they are generating new and different problems by way of the omnipresent law of unintended consequences.
Thanks for your thoughts, Bernice.