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Off-Topic Discussion => General Discussion => Topic started by: Flipside on November 05, 2012, 07:20:58 pm

Title: If you are going to kidnap children....
Post by: Flipside on November 05, 2012, 07:20:58 pm
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-birmingham-20202734

DON'T have the name of 'Michael Jackson'....
Title: Re: If you are going to kidnap children....
Post by: SypheDMar on November 05, 2012, 09:30:38 pm
It'd be something for me to joke about if the child wasn't tied and abused. Hope he'll be alright. I'm glad they found him.

EDIT:
Spoiler:
From Albert English to Michael Jackson? What a dumbass.
Title: Re: If you are going to kidnap children....
Post by: watsisname on November 05, 2012, 09:35:22 pm
Seriously, how the hell do people get that sick?  Hopefully strong measures are in place to make sure he won't be doing that again in the future.  7 years in prison is a good start.

Hope the victims and their families are able pull through okay, too.  Very sad story. :(
Title: Re: If you are going to kidnap children....
Post by: Flipside on November 05, 2012, 10:31:23 pm
The guy himself is pretty sick and needs dealing with, but yeah, changing his name to Micheal Jackson just pushes this into the realm of the mildly disturbing.
Title: Re: If you are going to kidnap children....
Post by: Dragon on November 06, 2012, 03:10:33 pm
Mildly? That guy's nuts. I'd rather have him imprisoned for a lifetime, either in prison or mental institution.
Title: Re: If you are going to kidnap children....
Post by: headdie on November 06, 2012, 03:37:55 pm
my understanding is that it is 7 years before he can apply for parole and one of the conditions is that he is "safe" to be released, so probably won't happen soon and will probably be released via a period in a secure hospital.
Title: Re: If you are going to kidnap children....
Post by: Phantom Hoover on November 06, 2012, 06:50:13 pm
There's a definite inclination whenever this sort of thing is discussed to completely ignore the actual course of justice and propose steadily more overbearing punishments because clearly he's just going to get dropped off next to the nearest school in a few years after getting out early for good behaviour if we allow any possibility for release.
Title: Re: If you are going to kidnap children....
Post by: redsniper on November 06, 2012, 07:19:23 pm
Yeah except that wasn't actually happening this time so...
Title: Re: If you are going to kidnap children....
Post by: Phantom Hoover on November 06, 2012, 07:51:40 pm
Well, Dragon was heading that way.
Title: Re: If you are going to kidnap children....
Post by: Whitelight on November 06, 2012, 09:31:04 pm
 :( My heart goes out to the children who suffered from this madman, to have to deal with such trauma is life altering.
I hope and pray they can live as children and grow up not corrupted.  Me and my wife raised three children of our own and never had to deal with something as disturbing as this is.

(edit) My two cents. If I had any say in it, this guy would have his balls cut off..
Title: Re: If you are going to kidnap children....
Post by: Flipside on November 06, 2012, 10:08:33 pm
When I was about 7 I went through an attempted abduction in a car, oddly enough, rather than splash it all over the papers with 'find this wierdo' etc, the only reaction from the Police was to tell me I was right not to get into a car with a stranger. No real attempt was made to find the guy who did it. Different days back then ;)
Title: Re: If you are going to kidnap children....
Post by: Nuke on November 06, 2012, 10:57:23 pm
Mildly? That guy's nuts. I'd rather have him imprisoned for a lifetime, either in prison or mental institution.

id deal with the problem in the vlad the impaler sort of way. i also had an intresting idea a few months back. get a giant plexiglass tank, and chain some pedophiles to the bottom of it. seal em in and at the top of the tank, place public toilets. you literally drown them in human waste in public view, and anyone who wants to can go take a dump. this idea is, needles to say, not original. but i think it would be quite effective.
Title: Re: If you are going to kidnap children....
Post by: Dragon on November 07, 2012, 11:59:02 am
Mildly? That guy's nuts. I'd rather have him imprisoned for a lifetime, either in prison or mental institution.

id deal with the problem in the vlad the impaler sort of way. i also had an intresting idea a few months back. get a giant plexiglass tank, and chain some pedophiles to the bottom of it. seal em in and at the top of the tank, place public toilets. you literally drown them in human waste in public view, and anyone who wants to can go take a dump. this idea is, needles to say, not original. but i think it would be quite effective.
Good thinking, Nuke. :yes: Of course, some would complain, but I guess they've never been kidnapped as children. I'm afraid the chances of such method being implemented are slim though. TBH, if I had anything to say, I'd simply have the guy executed. It's UK though, so it's also not an option. He ruined the lives of two children, so it'd seem like a just to deprive him of his. Lifetime imprisonment seems too good for them, especially that there are honest people in Poland who live in worse conditions than UK prisoners.
Title: Re: If you are going to kidnap children....
Post by: 666maslo666 on November 07, 2012, 12:57:46 pm
Quote
He ruined the lives of two children, so it'd seem like a just to deprive him of his.

Its not like he killed them, they just have a trauma. So no, I dont see how it is supposed to be just.
Title: Re: If you are going to kidnap children....
Post by: Flipside on November 07, 2012, 01:21:36 pm
That's the problem between justice and vengeance. It's very easy to get confused between the two.
Title: Re: If you are going to kidnap children....
Post by: Nuke on November 07, 2012, 01:52:34 pm
dont think of it as vengence, think of it as showing an example of what happens when you do bad things. i know in the us, these guys would be put in a prison system full of inmates who would like nothing more than to torture, rape, and murder pedophiles. so its all kind of an appropriate hell-simulation. problem is this kinda thing is never used to inspire others to keep their perverse impulses in check. it should be televised and shown as some kind of public service announcement.
Title: Re: If you are going to kidnap children....
Post by: SypheDMar on November 07, 2012, 02:09:22 pm
Except allowing for death penalties has not shown to be an effective deterrent, and it may increase homicides as well.

e: It's also very expensive in the U.S. and the process is agonizing.
Title: Re: If you are going to kidnap children....
Post by: Nuke on November 07, 2012, 02:21:50 pm
its not that you kill them, its that you make everyone watch them suffer.
Title: Re: If you are going to kidnap children....
Post by: Dragon on November 07, 2012, 06:17:14 pm
Quote
He ruined the lives of two children, so it'd seem like a just to deprive him of his.

Its not like he killed them, they just have a trauma. So no, I dont see how it is supposed to be just.
You've never had a trauma, did you? Those kids will feel the effects for the rest of their life, and this won't be pretty. There were two children who had their lives half destroyed, so I'd say it adds up pretty well.
Except allowing for death penalties has not shown to be an effective deterrent, and it may increase homicides as well.

e: It's also very expensive in the U.S. and the process is agonizing.
Well, I'd say it's a pretty effective deterrent once it's applied. I didn't heard to anybody doing whatever they did again. The fact that U.S. can't even execute a convict without wasting taxpayers money is another thing, but it's not like prison maintenance is cheap, either. Tropico 4 illustrates this well. You can build and maintain a prison, hire policemen and put criminals there for 1000$ each. Or you could have them shot for 500$ and give an unrelated, pompous speech to reduce the respect penalty. The choice is rather obvious.
Oh, and excuse my grim attempts at humor, my government is annoying me again.
Title: Re: If you are going to kidnap children....
Post by: karajorma on November 07, 2012, 09:24:57 pm
To all those claiming we should have draconian measures, I just have one sentence to say.

What about those wrongly imprisoned?
Title: Re: If you are going to kidnap children....
Post by: SypheDMar on November 07, 2012, 09:35:03 pm
Exactly. The point of having a slow, deliberately expensive and wasteful process for the capital punishment is to ensure that the person who is to be executed truly guilty. If being efficient in executing people is a good thing, then I'm glad that many states in the U.S. don't have a death penalty.

And studies have shown that capital punishment is an ineffective deterrent. Otherwise, nobody would be committing crimes in pre-20th century Britain, Texas, or China.
Title: Re: If you are going to kidnap children....
Post by: Hades on November 07, 2012, 10:04:26 pm
I think the moral double standard of "He did this/killed this person/whatever, therefor it is totally fine for us to kill him too because murder is bad" kind of doesn't jive well with me, either.
Title: Re: If you are going to kidnap children....
Post by: Phantom Hoover on November 08, 2012, 03:01:35 am
Well, I'd say it's a pretty effective deterrent once it's applied. I didn't heard to anybody doing whatever they did again. The fact that U.S. can't even execute a convict without wasting taxpayers money is another thing, but it's not like prison maintenance is cheap, either. Tropico 4 illustrates this well. You can build and maintain a prison, hire policemen and put criminals there for 1000$ each. Or you could have them shot for 500$ and give an unrelated, pompous speech to reduce the respect penalty. The choice is rather obvious.
Oh, and excuse my grim attempts at humor, my government is annoying me again.

it's nice to know that your time playing tropico 4 gave you such insight into the broader social effects of the death penalty

Oh and by the way, the reason the death penalty is so expensive in the US is primarily because there are a lot of expensive legal measures to prevent miscarriages of justice. I guess you'd prefer to execute a few innocents if it cut down on prison costs, though.
Title: Re: If you are going to kidnap children....
Post by: MP-Ryan on November 08, 2012, 10:11:25 am
Well, I'd say it's a pretty effective deterrent once it's applied. I didn't heard to anybody doing whatever they did again. The fact that U.S. can't even execute a convict without wasting taxpayers money is another thing, but it's not like prison maintenance is cheap, either. Tropico 4 illustrates this well. You can build and maintain a prison, hire policemen and put criminals there for 1000$ each. Or you could have them shot for 500$ and give an unrelated, pompous speech to reduce the respect penalty. The choice is rather obvious.

Ah, the death penalty.

Couple things:
1.  The general deterrence (effect a sentence has on others) of the death penalty is very low.  Jurisdictions which have and use the death penalty have higher violent crime and homicide rates than jurisdictions without.  Go figure.
2.  Specific deterrence of the death penalty (effect on that individual) is actually not that high either - deterrence is a function of how swift and certain justice is.  The chances of actually being caught and convicted of a death penalty offence are moderate, the the chances of it being swiftly carried out are extremely low.  It can take decades to exhaust the appeals process.
3.  Cost.  It costs more to put a prisoner to death in democracies than it does to keep them in prison for life.
4.  What about wrongful convictions (which are a shocking proportion of convictions, even in the US/Canada/Britain).

The cheapest solution to violent crime is prevention.  Oddly enough, there are a ton of sociological studies out that that show the best way to prevent crime is to provide people with access to abortion* (fun study, that one), basic living essentials, access to health care, a safe living environment (meaning early intervention in domestic abuse/violence), a safe learning environment (safe schools / bullying consequences), and most of all, access and encouragement to pursue education.  It is actually cheaper to do all of that than build more prisons, hire more police, and execute more criminals.
Title: Re: If you are going to kidnap children....
Post by: Nuke on November 08, 2012, 10:26:44 am
shoot em all and let the flying spaghetti monster sort em out!

im glad america has a rape-engine prison system. because if it didnt then child molesters and rapists wouldn't get the ass whooping that they deserve.
Title: Re: If you are going to kidnap children....
Post by: redsniper on November 08, 2012, 11:54:45 am
But if we reduce the crime rates and conviction rates, all those privately run prisons won't have any repeat business! All those poor prison workers will be unemployed! This is just what I'd expect from all you soft-on-crime bleeding heart liberal "intellectual" types. Hmph!
Title: Re: If you are going to kidnap children....
Post by: Dragon on November 08, 2012, 12:09:20 pm
The cheapest solution to violent crime is prevention.  Oddly enough, there are a ton of sociological studies out that that show the best way to prevent crime is to provide people with access to abortion* (fun study, that one), basic living essentials, access to health care, a safe living environment (meaning early intervention in domestic abuse/violence), a safe learning environment (safe schools / bullying consequences), and most of all, access and encouragement to pursue education.  It is actually cheaper to do all of that than build more prisons, hire more police, and execute more criminals.
Indeed. Now try to get politicians to efficiently implement that. The best way of dealing with crime would be to ensure people aren't inclined to go into crime in first place. A person who always could buy everything necessary, was raised with respect to law and order, was educated in a good, safe school and was a wanted child of loving parents (you mentioned access to abortion, it's a logical correlation if you think about it. There's a chance that a mother forced to give birth and raise a child will hate it, or that it'll be treated as "unwanted" in some other way. It doesn't always happen, but has disastrous consequences when it does. Orphanages have their own problems.) has very little chance of getting in conflict with the law. The few cases that do usually could be prevented with psychiatric treatment. On the other hand, ensuring everybody has such upbringing is a titanic task. Also, it can't really be accomplished by government alone, many of those require a good income, which means one or both parents are employed in a decent job.
it's nice to know that your time playing tropico 4 gave you such insight into the broader social effects of the death penalty

Oh and by the way, the reason the death penalty is so expensive in the US is primarily because there are a lot of expensive legal measures to prevent miscarriages of justice. I guess you'd prefer to execute a few innocents if it cut down on prison costs, though.
Note, this line about Tropico was meant as a joke, as was the entire game, for that matter. It is, of course, a good thing death penalty isn't used recklessly. One thing though. Shouldn't similar measures be applied to ensure a person isn't wrongfully imprisoned? It's a stigma for the entire life, and being stuck with criminals could lead to becoming like them. While child molesters and rapists get what they deserve in there, putting an innocent person in there could destroy their life for good. It might be worth the expense to ensure this doesn't happen. (well, I guess I strayed from the topic a bit)
Also, I'd say death penalty costs could be greatly reduced in case a criminal had been caught red-handed. There are situations where there's no discussing what happened and who's guilty, because the criminal had been caught in the act. I think that in such case, some procedures could be greatly simplified.
Title: Re: If you are going to kidnap children....
Post by: Al-Rik on November 08, 2012, 12:50:54 pm
To all those claiming we should have draconian measures, I just have one sentence to say.

What about those wrongly imprisoned?
To be cynic:
They help to maintain a good sense of fear in the population.
Fear that is needed to keep the law respected.
Title: Re: If you are going to kidnap children....
Post by: Nuke on November 08, 2012, 01:05:32 pm
But if we reduce the crime rates and conviction rates, all those privately run prisons won't have any repeat business! All those poor prison workers will be unemployed! This is just what I'd expect from all you soft-on-crime bleeding heart liberal "intellectual" types. Hmph!

i can agree that the big part of the problem in the us is we lock up a lot of people for stupid ****. we throw saturday night dope smokers, need to feed my kids hookers and first offense shoplifters in with gang members, rapists, murderers, etc for long periods of time and expect them to come out as better people than when they went in. which is retarded. its not doing anything for crime rates, but it sure as hell is improving gang memebership rates. so kill the obvious bad ones, lock up the ones that are need to be contained, and 50 lashes to the junkies, whores, and petty thieves. and an occasional public impalement of the worst of the worst.
Title: Re: If you are going to kidnap children....
Post by: Polpolion on November 08, 2012, 01:12:01 pm
To all those claiming we should have draconian measures, I just have one sentence to say.

What about those wrongly imprisoned?
To be cynic:
They help to maintain a good sense of fear in the population.
Fear that is needed to keep the law respected.

I don't respect any authority figure that would wrongly imprison people and not care. I don't think many people would.
Title: Re: If you are going to kidnap children....
Post by: newman on November 08, 2012, 01:25:48 pm
To be cynic:
They help to maintain a good sense of fear in the population.
Fear that is needed to keep the law respected.

Perhaps you should get wrongfully convicted of murder one, then? I'm sure you'd be proud to do your bit for maintaining fear of the law. We need to keep fear alive, and you get that - Stewart and Colbert would be proud :P
Title: Re: If you are going to kidnap children....
Post by: Ghostavo on November 08, 2012, 01:48:29 pm
The penal system should mainly be about rehabilitation, not just slapping a punishment.

The fact that the US has so many punitive measures is... weird.
Title: Re: If you are going to kidnap children....
Post by: MP-Ryan on November 08, 2012, 02:22:21 pm
The penal system should mainly be about rehabilitation, not just slapping a punishment.

The fact that the US has so many punitive measures is... weird.

Except that doesn't work.  In fact, the only rehabilitative measure in justice systems that has shown any promise of reducing recidivism rates is 'restorative justice,' also called 'healing circles,' predominantly used in the cases of aboriginal/native/youth offenders in Canada, Australia, and New Zealand.  And it only works for some crimes, typically those in which there is a victim or victim's family left to participate in the process.

The 1970s-style rehabilitative feel-good model that was temporarily adopted (and was simultaneously responsible for closing a large number of psychiatric facilities) didn't work, still doesn't work, and should frankly be abolished.  Programming has to be meaningful, voluntary (not incentive-based), and progress-driven, and to date the rehabilitation model hasn't been any of these things.  The biggest problem is that it assumes that all people have the fundamental drive to function within society, and there is a percentage (small, mind you) of people to whom this philosophy does not apply (traditionally called sociopaths, now more frequently referred to as ASPD because it's a better descriptor and encompasses more than just sociopaths).

Most studies are pretty clear that the best way of dealing out justice is to keep people out of the system in the first place, ensure those who do end up in contact with the system have a difficult but meaningful way out, and lock the rest up and throw away the key because it doesn't matter what you do, they will continue to break the law until they are no longer physically/mentally able to do so.
Title: Re: If you are going to kidnap children....
Post by: Ghostavo on November 08, 2012, 02:53:51 pm
Can you provide any study not behind some paywall? I'd be happy to read it since I vaguely recall some comparisons made between the US and Norway, I think, that suggested that rehabilitation would be the way to go.

For instance, I keep hearing about ridiculous measures being put forward towards people registered as sex offenders (http://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2012/11/california-judge-blocks-voter-approved-ban-on-anonymity-for-sex-offenders/), time and time again, making anyone in one of those lists have a virtual life sentence.

P.S.
Here's an interesting article about rehabilitation from the American Psychological Association. (http://www.apa.org/monitor/julaug03/rehab.aspx)
Title: Re: If you are going to kidnap children....
Post by: Flipside on November 08, 2012, 04:51:13 pm
The problem is that, once someone sets foot on the road of crime, society is arranged in such a way as to continue pushing them down that road. Having a criminal record is considered pretty much a block to getting any responsible job, and whilst, obviously, there are some crimes (mostly violent ones) that this makes sense with, being caught with a bag of weed when you are 17 should not destroy the next 40+ years of your life. The purpose of punishment is to pay a 'debt' to society, which is why I'm not against Hard Labo(u)r in certain cases, but once that debt is paid, the retaining of that criminal record and the need to announce it to a prospective employer, should really be reviewed with an eye towards encouraging small-time offenders not to become big time ones.
Title: Re: If you are going to kidnap children....
Post by: MP-Ryan on November 08, 2012, 07:18:08 pm
Can you provide any study not behind some paywall? I'd be happy to read it since I vaguely recall some comparisons made between the US and Norway, I think, that suggested that rehabilitation would be the way to go.

Let's be clear, the US system is NOT the way to go, but neither is a traditional rehabilitation approach.  And I'm afraid that pretty much all the major sociological journals are pay-walled, which is an absolute shame.  I've lost access to them myself as my university ID expired =\
Title: Re: If you are going to kidnap children....
Post by: karajorma on November 08, 2012, 11:27:13 pm
Indeed. Now try to get politicians to efficiently implement that.

You do realise that one of the biggest blocks is people like yourself who want to punish criminals.

The most important thing is not punishment, it's making certain they don't do it again. Punishment is secondary.

Yes the death penalty or castration or any of the frankly medieval methods you'd suggest would prevent them committing a second offence, but then we come straight back to the issue of the wrongly accused.

Shouldn't similar measures be applied to ensure a person isn't wrongfully imprisoned?

They are applied. But in the case of the death penalty there is a certain urgency that isn't present otherwise. Imagine the case of two people innocently convicted. One got the death penalty and will be executed in 6 months, the other didn't. If you're a lawyer willing to take either case, all other things being equal, which one would you choose?
Title: Re: If you are going to kidnap children....
Post by: NGTM-1R on November 09, 2012, 11:55:27 am
The death penalty case, because it looks better on your resume. And I mean that in all seriousness.
Title: Re: If you are going to kidnap children....
Post by: Luis Dias on November 09, 2012, 12:29:22 pm
That's very serious (Shirley yeah yeah), but also very cynical.
Title: Re: If you are going to kidnap children....
Post by: karajorma on November 09, 2012, 02:17:37 pm
The death penalty case, because it looks better on your resume. And I mean that in all seriousness.

Yeah, that too.

Doesn't hurt that in the death penalty case he'll probably have had several appeals with other lawyers who failed to get him pardoned/exonerated either.
Title: Re: If you are going to kidnap children....
Post by: NGTM-1R on November 09, 2012, 02:32:23 pm
That's very serious (Shirley yeah yeah), but also very cynical.

Criminal Law is a business and people will try to find cases that get them noticed by clients, just like people in the average office will try to find assignments that get them noticed by the boss or the boss' boss. There's very little cynicism to it and a lot of the fact that lawyers are paid for the job.