Anyone want to discuss whether there is any justification to viewing a scene of graphic violence

[Twiglett]

I was just responding to Leati regarding the viewing of the prisoner beating video when the thread was pulled.

I do think that the discussion was probably worthwhile .. and I heartily applaud the thread being pulled.

My question is this

What is the moral justification for clicking on a link you have been pre-warned is a realtime video of graphic violence against a prisoner convicted of viewing paedophiliac images

How is it any different from clicking on a link that is real video of graphic violence against anyone else?

"But I speak to youths, many who have been 'in the system' and I have actually asked them if the 'system' stops them from committing yet another crime. The resounding answer is no. For some it's 3 meals a day and the gas & electric not being cut off."

very true. this is my experiance as well in many cases.

but that doesn't mean we should make the punishment worse, it means we should make their frredom worth wanting to keep.

But as you have just said Mamazon, you can't unless you put all children in homes from birth and monitor the time they spend with parents totally supervised... you can't.

'the system' may give them food and heating but it is inherently violent isn't it? prisons are not pleasant places. the ones that offer any kind of real rehabilitation are very very very few and far between.

No one is moving in that direction except for those nations adopting fundamentalist Islam. The trend is rightly the other way so anyone suggesting otherwise has no chance of getting barbaric punishments re-introduced here and should also watch their back because if they smack their own children and leave a mark they may be committing a criminal offence and rightly so.

The countries that use corporal punishment Soph . Some of the people who are corporally punished as such, maybe the only breadwinner for their entire family so it's worth the risk. Die or commit crime.

Here in the UK. It isn't. I know it's not perfect but no one in this country has to starve or be homeless. Which, to me is even more of a bloody incentive to get mad with people who are committing crimes. This started off with peadophilia, which, in this day, if you haven't worked out that it's wrong, then you should be rocketed into space or whatever. Everyone here is educated to whatever standards. Well I know what I am trying to say.

I may be off at a tangent here. But maybe not? I agree that many troubled and violent young offenders come from homes where they are wholeheartedly 'not loved.'

I do think that there needs to be a review of social services criteria for placing children in care and a massive review of the (often) seemingly nonsensical hoops that prospective adopters need to jump through before a child can be placed with them.

In the wake of the Cleveland cases in the 1980's? I think that government agencies have erred too far towards 'keeping the family together at (virtually) all costs.'

Unfortunately, those paying that cost are often sad and troubled children. Up until only a few years ago, a possibly abusive birth parent had the 'right' to maintain contact with a child of theirs who had been adopted. I am pleased that this right has now been revoked.

I see and hear young children not necessarily being physically abused but emotionally tortured and damaged with a constant drip drip of 'you little shit' 'I'll f*n kill you' etc etc.

I wish that emotional abuse was viewed with the same horror as physical abuse.

These are the children that, I suspect, go on to commit such awful crimes.

Actually you are right, Bubble, there is this 'keep the family together at all costs, even though the children will be adopted at some point going on. That is plain wrong. If you are going to take children from their parents because they are not treating them properly, then that's it. You are right about this in so many ways. I live hear short term foster carers who play a big part in our family life and some of the stuff that goes on with these children makes me sick to the stomach. Too many beaurocrats, not enough communication between any of them.

Also, the rumour that each social service has a 'quota' to keep up with having children adopted and are taking babies away (everyone wants babies apparently) when they shouldn't.

I tell you, if a political party made the family courts public, they would have my vote. It's wrong wrong wrong.

near.

The punishment meted out in the video is known as "caning". Caning is also used in Singapore, in a similar way, for drug offences, crimes of violence and rather nonsensically, employers of illegal immigrants and vandalism. My understanding is that hardened criminals don't fear imprisonment, fines etc. but they fear the "rotan" aka cane.

More than a decade ago, Michael Fay, the son of an American expat in Singapore was caught vandalising a number of cars and sentenced to a number of strokes of the rotan. I believe the then American president Bill Clinton at the time tried to get the Singapore government to lift the sentence but was unsuccessful. Bearing in mind the close relationship between Singapore and the US, that is significant. The caning was meted out, the boy went back to the States. Many americans wrote to support the caning! For all his problems, I don't think Michael Fay ever vandalised again.

Good god I remember that, I am getting old.

F&Z, don't want to pick a fight but I don't understand your point.
Surely UCM's OP was not an actual call for us to find some paedophiles
and give them a spanking?
It was an incitement to debate with a view to changing the law.

On this occasion I disagreed with UCM on the grounds that afaIk
corporal/capital punishment is not an effective crime prevention tool
and has a negative influence on society as a whole.
(blueshoes latest post has given me food for thought on that front)

UCM/custardo, I think you replied to my post and I am sorry
I didn't get a chance to respond.

What we really need here is some hard data, some proper, detailed
background information to come to any kind of conclusion.

One thing is fairly certain to me:
there is no free, enlightened nation that has successfully integrated
corporal/capital punishment into its legal framework and
seen a significant reduction in crime levels.

No problem, no fight DaddyJ

Obviously we can't refer to the original thread now, but IMO the title and the OP seemed to be inciting people to violence against paedophiles, yes. That's how I read it.

I didn't click on the link but it was clear from other posts what it was.

Ok, that makes sense, Franny.
I must stop going on about a thread that is gone anyway

Just annoyed that I missed out on the debate
but hey! I shouldn't have gone to bed!

I have just re read this thread and Xenia. You are right, I should watch my back. Do you know why? Because my DS could be the thug who decides that he wants your phone and knocks you down, killing you in the process as you fought, so he got his blade out.......

Of course DS is only 3 and I am trying to teach him right from wrong (however I do it).

I won't be able to control him once he is a teenager because as you say 'if I leave a mark on him, I should watch my back'.

So I will, but my responsibility then ends as a parent if I play by all of the rules if I follow yours.

If I ever found out that my son had mugged someone or hit someone in that sort of situation, I would take a belt to him. I would and I would let him know how awful it is to be completely powerless over what happens to his arse. But I will not really because I can't. So that's it then, my parenting responsibility ended when he was born more or less. Oh, I can love him of course, but I cannot discipline him in any way that I deem acceptable. But he can hit you & yours over the head and assault you.

I am trying very very hard to get my head around what I am writing here.

So, corporal punishment is made 'standard' punishment in the UK.

So, who metes this punishment out?

Will there be loads of children going to careers advice at school and saying "I'd like to be chief whip at the local prison", or "I want a job beating low-lifes please"?

What kind of person is capable of doing this? Surely, to inflict such physical punishment in a cool collected manner on a person, they've got to have issues?

What kind of person is that going to breed?

There is something utterly unhinged about someone who does this for a living. Or as a volunteer. Crikey - neither way is better....

Personally, I would not want to live in Singapore. it is an extremely repressive state.
I honestly don't think that the fact you can't attack your own children with a weapon means that you have no influence on them.
Children who are hurt and hit do not become less violent than those who are loved and nurtured, guided and shown good role models. Empathy is the real reason most of us don't hurt others. The best way to destroy empathy is to hit, ignore or scare your children. Love builds empathy.

oh..it was deleted then?

I'm with vvvqv...who is the lucky lucky gently insane person who gets to inflict the punishment?

UCM, you talk sense, your point re discipling your child
is valid but let me add a different perspective:

You don't need physical violence nor the threat of physical violence
to project authority.

That's what you are really after: Authority.
You want your child to listen, to try and understand,
to respect your knowledge and your experience.

I am completely with you on the subject of discipline,
teaching your child right from wrong.

But you don't need violence to achieve that.

Tone of voice, body language, firm and clear words.
These are powerful tools in themselves.

Gosh! Morning all!! Still going then??

Well done!

I haven't read the entire thread..but..VVVQV is right, of course...

Am far too tired to argue now, need sleep. Somebody on another thread tired me out. will be back tomorrow to argue

Oh God, I must go to bed.

But I would do it. I would gladly pull the string to hang a murderer and I would sleep at night. Oh and give me the transcription again of the victim of child abuse, I would pull the string whilst praying that they suffered the worst time in hell.

I would also let the headmaster/mistress cane my children in my presence. If they deserved it. I wouldn't like it, but if my kids are out of control, then tough shit.

DaddyJ, you obviously talk a lot of sense.

Sometimes it's not possible to remain sane in my house.

"I know it's not perfect but no one in this country has to starve or be homeless."

This is not true, I have been homeless on the streets with a baby as I fell through the system - I had a very wealty husband who had turfed me out on the streets and due to his wealth could get no financial help. My metal instabilty at the time meant I could not get work and got by thanks to the goodwill of a few people.

As for no one starving - I have said before on here people do starve in this country, I ive in a town where every year a child dies of startvation.

Am probably too late to contrinbute now, but in direct answer to Twiglett's OP, there is no difference in viewing graphic violence against a criminal and that against a child, or anyone else. This is because we are all a part of the same humanity, like it or not - the drug dealers,the paedophiles, the kids who kill for kicks - all part of the same humanity and you, me, our children. The problems arise when we divide society into Them and Us. As soon as you start to see people as separate from the rest of humanity, you can do what you like to them. You make them sub-human.

The Government tells us 'terrorists' are Them, and starts softening us up to accept torture as a means of stopping them. Whole natons band together and get weapons that can destroy the world in seconds, then we go to war so that They can't get the same thing. The Sun has pictures of naked 16 yr olds on Page Three but that's okay because on the front page they say We Hate Paedos. By concentrating on Them we become blind to the fact we are capable of doing teh same kinds of things.

This is what is happening when violence is allowed into the criiminal justice system, and indeed into our media. The Daily Mail has graphic violent images on its website. Papers print accounts of brutal murders. And somehow violence becomes an acceptable way of dealing with violence. We become like Them, in our desire to hurt and to kill.

People who commit crimes where others are hurt do so not just because of a lack of love from outside themselves, but because they have no self-worth. Brutalising them, making them sub-human, is not going to mke them better people. If you have self-worth then you do not want to hurt another, because you know that in doing so you are hurting yourself.