Perv who raped tiny baby to get longer sentence....

[1Baby1Bump]

Have just seen on MSN that the perv who raped the 14 week old baby is to have his sentence reviewed and made longer.
I am really pleased, although there should only be one sentence dished out but we are not in the USA unfortunately.

I'm with Custardo, people can become better, and we need to spend more on rehabilitation.

But the core of the problem is how do we tell if they really are better people now ?
This sort of thing is far from a precise science.

I don't know how you "fix" sex offenders, thus you need to keep them locked up. Some are on record as pleading with the authorities to be taken in because they cannot control themselves.

Although many are to some degree mentally ill, they are capable of feeling fear. This requires that they are caught, and that their punishment is sufficiently scary that our government is condemned by human rights organisations. I favour whipping, followed by imprisonment.
Although not a fan of Islam, they have the right idea on this stuff. Hard to rape someone if you don't have hands, or eyes.
I'm against the death penalty. It's simply not cruel enough. Castration has been tried, and it doesn't actually work that well. The details of how it fails are quite gruesome...

In relase of criminals there is a degree of risk managment, but the system is defective. I think of a prison as a bit like a factory, and we sadly note that many people have their criminality upgraded whilst inside.

But everything that comes out of any factory has some chance of going wrong in a very bad way, in the same sense that prisoners reoffend.

But if my company sold fridges where 1% of them had defects that put poeple in hospital. I'd be sued out of business very quickly. If if were shown that I knew of the risks, it would cost me even more.
The government currently sees letting rapists, murdererers, and general thugs out as a cost saving measure. The "cost" of someone getting raped is zero in that form of accountancy. There is "criminal compensation", but it's small, and doesn't take into account government culpability.

If my firm had caused a baby to get raped, knowing that we could have stopped it, would cost an enormous pile of money, and probably my job. I'd try damn hard to stop that.
Has anyone on a parole board, ever once been disciplined in any way whatsoever for letting out a criminal who murdered, raped etc ?

That cost would balance the cost of keeping people in jail long enough for them not to be a threat any more, and yes that means decades.

However, if government were liable for the acts of people it released into the community, there would be an incentive to fix them better, and let out fewer of the worst offenders.
Tagging could be made to work, some of the (admiddedlu rather overkill) security gear in my home PC network is beyond most organised crime to hack. Tags that fall off and aren't monitored, dont work.

As I said earlier, literacy correlates well with criminality, fixing that is not cheap, a few K£, and it doesn't have a "benefit" that the government measures.

am ready to be wrong but i htink pario; baord p[oepel are ordinary folk who do it on an expenses only basis
htinkn so anyway

no they get a per day payment
\link{http://www.paroleboard.gov.uk/recruitment/\look you cna all go and do it }

Exactly, Domini, we don't know if they've gotten better, so do we risk their abusing ANOTHER child in order to see if they've reformed, even though they've already been given a chance to live in society and violated it?

They had their chance! And they used their freedom to abuse a defenseless person in a way that is unconscionable.

We MUST protect our children from predators like this.

thin k you are all gettign this out of porprtion
yes it was HIDEOUS but the actual incidence of "Predators" ois over sensationalised bty the gutter press.

most abuse takes place wihtin the family.

There can be predators w/i one's own family. I mean, Ian Huntly has relatives.

That is totally true, the majority of abuse does take place in the home but that doesn't detract from the argument that people who have committed such acts should spend the rest of their lives in prison. The difference between something like this and other crimes is that I am not sure it is a choice thing - nobody would surely choose to be a paedophile it is their sexual leaning in the same way that being heterosexual is mine - this would haowever mean that they don't have control over those urges. I guess they could be supported to control the urges and not act upon them but if it was suddenly made illegal for men and women to have sex would we be able to suddenly change our preferences and not act upon our sexual urges for the rest of our lives. I guess this is a really long way of saying that I think people like this should be locked up for life, I don't think they should be kept inhorrendous conditions, in fact I think they should be allowed to have a reasonable existence - they shoudl just never ever be allowed out again - well that's what I think

I'm all for people being allowed to reform. Also I think it's important to ensure that offenders can be reintegrated back into society as far as possible - e.g. being able to get decent jobs etc., because if they're not integrated back, how can we possibly expect them not to reoffend as they can't get a job, live a normal life etc, earn wages honestly.

However, in the case of paedophiles & offences as serious as this, I don't believe we've so far found any successfull way to prevent them reoffending, and I don't think it's acceptable to put more children at risk in order to attempt rehabilitation.

I'm really trying not to give a knee jerk reaction here, because whilst in our minds we'd love to see terrible things happen to these people, that can't actually logically be sanctioned as part of a fair legal system. It tends to be societies with poor human rights records who issue punishments such as cutting off hands etc., it just isn't a possible way to go however satifsying the idea of it might be.

But at the same time I don't think that we should just settle for sentencing/minimum recommendations that we find unacceptable.

I see your point DC but I don't know about holding parole board members accountable for reoffending as a) as Cod points out they're just citizens like you and I and are only human and not psychic and b) we're dealing with people who don't always act in a predictable manner. The system is what has to be changed. And if parole board members could be held accountable, noone would do it and then where would we be?

it's also true that most abuse takes place within the family, and always has done. (or within familiy type environments, e.g. the church, local clubs etc.).

as far as I'm aware, incidents of abuse haven't actually increased as much as we perceive over the years BUT more are coming to light and more cases are being brought to justice, which in turn encourages more victims to prosecute, which is obviously a Good Thing. The other thing is the internet, which has allowed more distribution of images and organisation/linking up of people than was ever possible before.

I don't think there are predators around every corner waiting to leap on my child. but I'm still not at all prepared to see the perpetrators of crimes such as the one under discussion back on the streets if at all possible as he WILL reoffend.

I am very longwinded this morning. I apologise!

custardo.

I agree, I want to believe this idea to. I do however feel that with this sort of depravity, this person should never be let out. It may be that he can be made good, however, he has committed to bad a crime to be let into the community again. He can spend his days doing good works from behind bars.

I do not however believe in the death penalty.

On the issue of giving offenders skills to reintegrate into society as part of their rehabilitation, I can see the sense in that, but am struggling to understand how that applies to sex offenders.

So poverty, alienation, lack of education leads one to develop sick and sadistic sexual perversions - I think NOT. Sex offenders are a class of their own and should be locked away forever, ideally in a prison system whose inmates will mete out their own rough justice.

Also, he is a repeat offender.

sex offenders, like any other offender really, offend for a variety of reasons of course but many are the product of circumstances - like we all are.
It is not to excuse their behaviour to say that many paedophiles were abused as children themselves

To do that to a baby is just SICK. I don't think he should be let out ever again. He took pictures... it is the sickest act I've read about in a long time. My dd is only five months and when she was born I realised that I would be very capable of hurting anyone who hurt her. I couldn't imagine how that baby's parents are feeling. If it was my baby and he was realeased back into society I know I'd be looking for him.

expatinScotland is right, majorotiy of abuse is within families. This is why we need what bomber Harris referred to as a "healthy terror". If these people fear really bad things, they will be less likely to do it.

I think we can do more to catch abusers within the family, but I don't think that is easy, nor is there any obvious silver bullet or amount of increased resources that will really do much to reduce the numbers. Rehabilitation is typically too late.
We can train social workers a bit better, we certainly can get better people as social workers, but they can't work miracles, and if a family has no external signs of problems, they are simply not in the picture.

Since we can't greatly increase the chances of being caught, we can cheaply and easily increase the consequences.
Whipping, loss of limbs etc is very cheap. One can chemically remove the eyesight of a rapist for about the cost of a speeding fine. Personally I'd prefer the very cheap method of suplhuric acid, but there are less painful ways.

The inevitable media outcry would be very useful.
Pictures of blind rapists on TV, should have a very powerful impact upon those who might chose to do this.
Of course I may be wrong and that rapists and seriously violent criminals aren't deterred often. They will at least be cheap to manage and harmless.

It doesn't work.

Removing the sight of people, cutting off hands etc. - it is medieval punishment and I, for one, have no wish to return to medieval times.
The only places, as I've said, where there are still punishments like this tend not to have great human rights records, and often not great attitudes towards women and children and I wouldn't care to live there. It's a symptom of a brutal environment.

And before I am accused of being some sort of namby-pamby liberal, can I point out again that I started the original thread encouraging people to write to the Attorney General and protest against the minimum recommendations in this case.

anyhow, think I'm a bit on my own here and noone can be arsed to read my long winded posts (can't blame you though), so I'm off to post on shoes and other frivolities I think as I will get TOO CROSS here.

I think that sexual abuse is an entirely different crime to any other.

It affects the victim for the rest of their lives, they often know that it's wrong but are too scared to report it, then when they do, it's often seen as a dirty, shameful stain in their lives by themselves, no matter how many people tell them it's not their fault, they grow up into adults who think they could have fought it, told someone etc. Full of guilt. Thus their innocence is gone, their lives are riddled with pain because someone wanted to use them for sexual pleasure, an adult, who knew right from wrong.

Any crime committed against another human being is appalling and but such an intimate thing.....

It should be life I think.

Again, I agree, it should be life. The punishment should fit the crime. Wasn't there a woman involved in all this? What happened to her?

Look at this:

\link{http://edinburghnews.scotsman.com/edinburgh.cfm?id=678152006\anotherdayanotherpaedo}

This fella will be released back into society in 6 years to offend again. He's been caught offending no less than 3 times in the past 5 years.

I'm not saying hang, draw and quarter these people, and I do NOT support the death penalty, but is it too much to ask that people like this be removed from society to prevent them from offending again?

B/c that seems to be the only way to deal with them.

I don't think it's too much to ask at all
That amount of reoffending - there's just no point in release IMO.

The baby is ok, tho. can't have kids.

Aw, how incredibly sad, SparklyGoth! That can happen.

All so some bastard could get a kick out of it.

horrible

I heard that he had a 'wish list' of things he wanted to do sexual.. sick f*ck.

and according to my BIL who know someone whose friend is inside, the lags got to him..