To suggest a campaign for a referendum on the death penalty for child abusers?

[TheVoiceOfReasonableness]

I’m a professional (I’m not going to reveal my capacity as it could be too outing) but let’s just say it is within the criminal justice system.

I have been involved with many cases of historic child abuse and child abuse images.

Although I could never voice this opinion publicly, because of my job, I really do think that we ought to consider the death penalty for child abusers.

The problem is, they can’t be cured.

The courses and “treatment” programmes that exist both inside and out of prison are geared towards “minimising risk” of committing further offences and are designed to give paedophiles “strategies” for avoiding “risky situations”. These only work if the paedophile is actually motivated not to hurt children.

The problem is paedophiles are extremely manipulative and are often quite intelligent.

They know what the offender manager (the modern term for a Probation Officer) wants to hear and may be saying all the right things while secretly still believing that there is nothing wrong with what they do.

The death penalty for child rape can easily be justified in my opinion. Arguably it is a worse crime than murder as the victim has to
live with the trauma of what has been done to them and it really does ruin lives permanently.

Now that we have left the EU (I voted remain, but every cloud has a silver lining...) bringing back the death penalty would be just as easy as having another referendum then passing legislation if the majority of the public want it.

We need not go down the American route of spending decades on death row- before we abolished it in the UK in the 1960s you got two appeals and that was it.

As for method- we had the quickest method with hanging and it would be all over in less than 15 seconds. There was no ceremony or last words, your cell was next door to the gallows you would be taken straight through- rope round neck, trapdoor opens, instant death from a broken neck.

Zero reoffending rate.

As for it being in humane and the right to life- innocent people including children die horribly from diseases like cancer all the time. 40,000 have died horribly from Coronavirus. I don’t think snapping the neck of a murderer or rapist who has abused a child to kill them instantly is that horrific TBH

You know perfectly well what I mean. Thinking the death penalty’s a good thing is genuinely beyond my comprehension.

@Alsohuman I agree. This discussion misses the point anyway. The real issue is that the vast majority of paedophiles aren't convicted anyway. That's what we need to be concerned about, not whether they should face the death penalty. If they're not convicted it's a completely moot point.

I don’t think snapping the neck of a murderer or rapist who has abused a child to kill them instantly is that horrific TBH

OP, please volunteer to be the first person to be wrongly convicted.

No. Definitely no. The death penalty remains in the past.

I don’t think snapping the neck of a murderer or rapist who has abused a child to kill them instantly is that horrific TBH

Thankfully most of us want to see civilised justice served on criminals. I've served on several juries and would not have served if the death penalty was on the table......many jurors would be reluctant to say 'guilty' - so justice wouldn't get done at all.

I am at the criminal bar and have done abuse cases some involving very young children. I will fight to my dying day against any suggestion of the death penalty here.
Trust that’s a clear enough ‘no’ for you.

I concede that those for the proposition are in the minority here by a factor of about 5:1, and that hearing from survivors and their views has also prompted me to reconsider my own position.

I wonder if the public at large would reject it, however?

If not, who would we be to say they were wrong?

I’m not a conservative voter but there are people who feel so very very strongly against their policies too. I wonder if those people also think that the public should not be “allowed” to vote conservative?

What system would we have in place to decide, and who should do the deciding? Discuss!

I've spent a lot of time in maximum security prisons this last couple of weeks for work (in the US). Not sure how the UK prisons compare. I'm not sure how the death penalty could be worse than spending the remainder of your days in a cell with multiple people, no privacy to do anything, toilet in the middle of the cell, nothing to really do all day other than sit and think. Constant noise, shouting and screaming etc. Honestly I think death would be a blessing. Now the issue is that they shouldn't ever be able to leave prison to commit any more crimes, but death penalty is not the way to go.

I’m not a conservative voter but there are people who feel so very very strongly against their policies too. I wonder if those people also think that the public should not be “allowed” to vote conservative?

You’re really not doing yourself any favours here. I absolutely detest the Tories and their policies. Should people be allowed to vote for them? Of course. Should there be a vote on a grotesque punishment that should never have existed in the first place? Absolutely not. The two aren’t remotely comparable.

I’ve been inside plenty of UK prisons (England and Wales only) and it’s hardly a holiday camp but nothing like US level.

There is a catalogue from which prisoners can buy or hire luxuries with cash sent in to their “canteen account” by relatives or friends on the outside or money earned doing jobs in the prison. The catalogue includes X-Boxes... I doubt US prisoners can get those!

@Alsohuman

It is a punishment that existed from the dawn of time well into living memory (1964 in the UK), and whether it is “grotesque” is a matter of opinion, surely?

I seem to remember that there was plenty of support on here for the Irish referendum on abortion. Surely that was a moral issue too involving what some perceived to be a right to life?

Perhaps I’m playing Devil’s Advocate here as this very discussion has made me think I might end up voting against if there was a referendum, primarily due to the views of the victims rather than a belief that a child abuser has a right to life, but a wider question is who decides what is a “right” and what is not?

It’s not religion any more, that’s for sure.

Democracy? Plenty of people think that there shouldn’t have been an EU referendum but it was a democratically elected Parliament that ordered one, and the people voted. I didn’t like the result but respect it.

Where do these rights come from if not either religion or the will of the people?

I'm very interested in who these people are, what your source is for the fact of their existence

I suppose I was thinking about people like Pierrepoint. From what I've seen/read, while he said he didn't think the death penalty worked as a deterrent, he didn't appear to feel affected (detrimentally) by his work.

and why we are happy about people who are able to murder others with no compunction walking around among the rest of us.

They don't see it as murder (nor would I, thought there's always the risk of miscarriage of justice, which is the only factor that rules it out for me).

*though

As to the dirt if people who can kill if it's within the bounds of our laws .. do you feel the same about members of the armed forces, special forces etc. "walking around among the rest of us".

*as to the point about

Absolutely not. What if somebody was wrongly executed?

Slavery existed “from the dawn of time” too. Perhaps you’d like to reintroduce that to this country too? And, yes, state sponsored killing is as grotesque as any other kind. If the death penalty was reintroduced here, I’d leave. It wouldn’t be somewhere I’d want to live.

I suspect that the time energy and effort put into grooming and brainwashing children and vulnerable adults suggests that perpetrators are actually very concerned about getting "done for this" and go to extraordinary lengths to try to keep their victims quiet.

You have a point, however I still think that they see children as less likely to report and be believed at the time (or even later). Children mix up reality and fantasy in what they say quite a lot. They believe anything they're told .. it makes people question whether what they're saying is factual. Abusers know that.

The grooming etc may definitely also be about avoiding being csught, bit is also related to them making things acceptable to themselves, they don't think (of thru don't like to think) they're evil, abnormal etc.

(What I meant was - they need to believe their narrative as much as they want their victims too, if it wasn't clear).

I would not want to live in a country who had the death penalty for anything.

I understand what you are saying and why, there are things that happen that are horrific, but still, no.

Death seems the "easy way out". The lead up to it will be terrifying, I can imagine. But once it's done, that's it. The perpetrator does not feel anything, he/she's dead, gone.

A life time in prison, watching the years go by appears to be worse than the death penalty

Slavery existed “from the dawn of time” too. Perhaps you’d like to reintroduce that to this country too?

Slavery is a bad thing.

Knocking off a few child rapists, psychopaths etc who are likely to continue to hurt people if they ever get out (which with our ridiculous sentencing is not impossible, esp the child rapists) is not a bad thing.

If you think all life including these dysfunctional disgusting dangerous degenerates is so precious and we should never end it, are you anti abortion too - why havent you left the country over abortion laws - that's killing of potential people who've done nothing.

It is a punishment that existed from the dawn of time well into living memory

It was a punishment used for very petty offences. If the "dawn of time" argument had any relevance, any reinstated death penalty should also be available for shoplifters. Likewise punishments such as torture and crushing people to death should also be used. I assume that you are not proposing that, so your argument falls at the first hurdle

Although as I've said - the risk of miscarriage of justice is my biggest reservation (and the point posters made about it making the murder of the children more likely to a kid a death penalty).

*which with our ridiculous sentencing is not impossible, esp the child rapists) ..

I've realised they do the same with murderers sometimes too .. the man that raped, tortured and murdered that Thai immigrant lady for the under 2k she'd saved up was a convicted and released murderer of an elderly man.