I don't know, Claw. I really don't know what we should be doing with the most disturbed criminals. I don't pretend it's an easy question. Possibly they cannot be rehabilitated and should be kept locked up for life. But usually that kind of person does stay in for a long time anyway and their chances of coming out and starting again are quite slim. Remember the HO report also said reconviction rates are quite low for murder.
The Myra Hindleys and Peter Sutcliffs of this world aren't actually the ones getting time off for good behaviour, are they?
But I am opposed to any irreversible punishment, such as castration, because mistakes have been made over guilt in the past and it is unlikely that we will ever achive a justice system that does not make mistakes in the future.
I think partly, calls for harsher punishment tend to lump all serious criminals together- from child abusers to drug gang members to bank robbers to murderers of rich aunts, where the approach needed may actually differ from case to case.
Child abuse is the one we probably feel is the worst crime and deserves the hardest punishment. It also seems likely that somebody who has done it once is quite likely to reoffend.
On the other hand, it is arguably the one where mistakes are most easily made in conviction. Many parents have gone to jail for shaken baby syndrome, the assumption by doctors that if a baby is shaken it will develop certain symptoms. Now, it is pretty obvious that you can never test this theory. You can't take 50 babies and shake them and see if they do indeed develop these symptoms, or if something different happens. And as baby-shaking tends to be one of the most hidden crimes there is, it is difficult to know if any one baby used as comparative material has been shaken or not. We also do not know whether there are any other causes which can produce these symptoms.
Another danger is that we know that there is a historical tendency to witch hunts, when health or social professionals suddenly take it into their heads that there is massive abuse going on and develop a hysterical disregard for actual proof, because the crime seems so heinous. Experience shows that it is incredibly difficult for juries and judges to stay level-headed during such a surge of hysteria. Think about those two Sheffield nursery workers who lost their livelihoods and everything for child abuse when it was subsequently proved that they had not been working in the nursery at the time when the child making the allegations attended it.
I certainly do not think we should treat child abusers lightly. But I do think, given these objections, that the solution is to only stick to punishments that are not irreversible. Because experience shows that some of these people will eventually turn out to be innocent, and will eventually have to be released with an apology.
Gang violence/bank robberies/professional criminal violence probably carries the highest risk of re-offending and is often fairly straightforward to prove. We know what happens when you shoot somebody through the heart, all the prosecution needs to do is to show that it was the accused who did it. The only reason these people may get off with slightly lower sentences is because of public feeling that it's not the worst crime you can commit and that you need to keep something in reserve for the really heinous murders. Understandably.
Someone who murders their rich aunt or unfaithful wife may be convicted on perfectly sound grounds and richly deserve their punishment. But then again, they are probably the people who are least likely to reoffend, so giving them a long sentence may not actually improve the crime rate at all. Not to say that you shouldn't punish them, of course.