The legislature of the state of Oklahoma just passed a law making certain sex crimes, including child molestation, a capital crime.
I think this is an excellent move. I don't know what it is about molesting children, as opposed to other types of crimes, but these highly disturbed people just cannot stop. Once upon a time, you didn't have to rise to the level of murdering someone in order to get the death penalty. Rapists used to be executed as well. In 1960, California sent Caryl Chessman to the gas chamber for rape; he never murdered anyone. But what exactly is murder? What if, instead of someone's life, you take away her dignity, her innocence, her very soul, instead?
Many people think it is overkill (pardon the pun) to execute people for crimes that don't include murder. I think one of the reasons you see so many rapes and molestations nowadays is because those perpetrators know that they won't be killed. The improper thoughts that lie deep in the hearts of men are always there, it is just a matter of whether or not those thoughts are turned into action. Once upon a time, the fear of justice, either from God or from frontier vigilantes, kept those urges in check, but no more; not in this time or society. As the old quote goes, we have become so civilized, we are now uncivilized. This move by Oklahoma, and other states as well, such as South Carolina, is a call to return to more "savage", yet ultimately, more civilized ways.
Good Day to You, Sir
"If a nation expects to be ignorant and free... it expects what never was, and never will be." --Thomas Jefferson
2 comments:
Nut jobs. A metastudy (study of many other studies, compiling the total of the data) at U of Wisconsin found that sex offenders have a recividism rate of a bit over 13% while the general population of all other offenders has a recidivision rate of about 67%.
I guess actual facts don't matter, just scream that 'they can't stop' and reality doesn't matter.
Hmmm, don't you think "all other offenders" is a sample that is a bit too big in scope? If someone is going to have a bigger chance of backsliding, I would rather it be a shoplifter than a child molester.
And way to cherry pick your statistics. It took me about 10 seconds to find studies that showed a recidivism rate of anywhere between 20 and 77 percent.
There are lies, damn lies, and statistics.
The bottom line is, I don't care what the recidivism rate for child molestation is. It is a despicable crime, and it should be considered a capital crime.
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