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Pastimes : Discussion Thread -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: one_less who wrote (548)	6/16/2008 4:04:15 PM
From: TimF	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 3816

No I would not be comfortable. Someone who is a "sadistic child raping murderer", is likely to remain a sadistic child raping murderer, or at least remain a danger in some other way. In particular child rape is likely to be associated with a sexual fixation on children, which is always going to represent a danger. Maybe the pedophile will be able to keep it in check, but an increased danger will most likely always be there. Right now your talking about the specific when I was talking about the universal. If someone who would commit a very heinous crime, is 99.99% likely to be a danger or a problem again in some way than no one would feel safe being near the criminal. OTOH if such criminals are "only" 99.99 likely to be a severe danger or problem again, than since there has been more than ten thousand of them throughout history, presumably some of them have not harmed society again (and I'm not counting the simple cases where they died right after the crime, I'm talking about people who for many years later did not commit a heinous or even just serious crime (even an undetected one), and may have even later been beneficial to society (at least if you consider only what happens later). If you make a universal statement about such criminals than its likely to be wrong. Its almost certain that at least one of them some time in history did turn things around. OTOH 1 or even 100 wouldn't mean that the vast majority of them never did, and when your forming judgments about who you want to be around your kids you don't say "well there is a 1 in 10,000 chance he won't be a danger, sure I'll let him babysit three times a week". Also I would note that many of the people who have helped society after committing extremely serious and horrible crimes, did so from prison, by helping turn people away from evil, after they had turned away from evil. You can recognize they positive they do, without ever forgetting the negative, or letting them out of prison. The fact that they may be doing some good, doesn't mean that they are no danger to do evil anymore, or that even if they aren't personally a danger, that you can be certain of it, or that you want to lessen the deterrence against such heinous crimes, by letting them out early (or commuting a life sentence). In fact if they have really turned away from evil, they might themselves feel that justice demands that they serve our their sentence, and also their victims (or the surviving relatives if the victim(s) where killed), might strongly object to early (or any) release.

To: one_less who wrote (548)	6/17/2008 2:32:28 AM
From: average joe	Respond to of 3816

How can a killer be worth more than the crime committed? What is their to reconcile. "G.K. Chesterton once remarked that the children in whose company he saw Maeterlinck's Blue Bird were dissatisfied “because it did not end with a Day of Judgement, and it was not revealed to the hero and the heroine that the Dog had been faithful and the Cat faithless.” “For children,” he says, “are innocent and love justice; while most of us are wicked and naturally prefer mercy.”