Do Rapists deserve the death penalty?

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22 Sep 2014, 10:07 am

This is a sensitive subject, and it's completely understandable to feel angry to the point of wanting rapists dead, but I'm not sure that the death penalty would even lead to a reduction in crime. Criminals who commit these types of crimes are sick, highly impulsive people--they don't think the same way as the law-abiding populace. Life in prison is already a scary enough deterrent for a rational human being. The problem is that most criminals are not very rational.

Humanaut wrote:

Maybe it would have a preventive effect, but it could also lead to more rape victims being murdered, especially in cases where the victim knows the rapist.

This is possible. If the punishment for rape is the same as for murder, more criminals would probably impulsively commit murder after the rape in an attempt to hide the crime.

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My biggest problem with the death penalty is, however, the possibility of putting an innocent man to death.

This is also a serious concern. The justice system is not perfect--another reason to favor imprisonment over the death penalty.

"After being falsely accused of rape by a classmate, Brian Banks spent more than five years in prison, but had his conviction overturned in 2012 after his accuser was secretly recorded admitting she had fabricated the story."

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22 Sep 2014, 11:18 am

It'd be interesting to hear some opinions on institutions like Coalinga State Hospital (as seen in Louis Theroux's "A Place for Paedophiles").

Is indefinite segregation in specialised maximum security hospitals preferable to risking recidivism in cases of sexual assault? According to some reports I've read, as many as 35% of convicted paedophiles will re-offend over the long-term (15 years). One thing that was apparent from the documentary is that the patients considered their treatment to be unfair on the grounds that they should have been considered to be "rehabilitated".

I don't think prison alone is sufficient to cure unhealthy minds. Should we set up enough institutions like this to house all sex offenders on their release from prison? Would the safety of potential victims of released rapists justify the cost?

ooOoOoOAnaOoOoOoo
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22 Sep 2014, 2:15 pm

Janissy wrote:

Here is a research paper from Emory University which concludes that the death penalty for murder does have a deterrent effect. They conclude that each execution prevents 18 potential murders. My math skills are insufficient to figure out how they came to that figure or what percentage drop that figure represents. Here's the study if anyone is interested enough to analyze its conclusions.

http://www.cjlf.org/deathpenalty/DezRub ... rFinal.pdf

They do put in the caveat at the end that there are costs too. There is the risk of executing an innocent person. That's a very real and sobering cost given how many prisoners have been exonerated and freed based on evidence that surfaced after their imprisonment.

http://www.innocenceproject.org/

Also, that the death penalty may be unfairly applied. Not every murderer in a death penalty state gets the death penalty. Who gets it and who does not is a source of unfairness.

Of course all that is about murder and the OP was writing about rape. Proposing it for rape comes up routinely in public discussions when the victim is a child. It's my reflex reaction too. Kill KILL KILL!! ! But the entire concept of law was created millenia ago to prevent reflex reactions from being the response. Because it's never the right response even if it feels right. Humanaut brings up an excellent argument: the death penalty for non-murder crimes creates an incentive for murder.

IMO you MUST have compelling DNA evidence to merit death penalty even though I would away with it altogether and just give them all life in prison and make the prisons more like they are in Latin American. No cushy prisons, and no death penalty. No media access or profiting from their crime once they are found guilty, either. They cannot give interviews or harass people in any way. The problem isn't they are still alive, the problem is in how US does prisons and we give them too many rights after they are convicted. They deserve a fair trial and once they are found guilty with good, solid evidence to back it up, throw them in and throw away the key.

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22 Sep 2014, 2:35 pm

ooOoOoOAnaOoOoOoo wrote:

Janissy wrote:

DNA evidence has mistakenly convicted people before...

I suggest you look into a) what the point of the justice system is, and b) how successful the justice system was before prison reform. Western prisons - which are far from "cushy" - are much better than Latin American ones.

ooOoOoOAnaOoOoOoo
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22 Sep 2014, 3:37 pm

The_Walrus wrote:

ooOoOoOAnaOoOoOoo wrote:

Janissy wrote:

Nothing is completely infallible but if DNA evidence is non existent imo you should not be able to seek the death penalty. The evidence has to be really good for that.

I do think the reason people are not deterred by the idea of spending their lives in prison is that the government has gone and made them way too comfortable so if a guy is feeling down and out, disparate and depressed and very impoverished, he might do something rash like kill another for their money which is the kind of crime that tends to end up on death row. A guy in that situation will not care if he is found guilty and spends the rest of his life in prison because he will pretty much be responsibility free, kept by the state kinda like how a zoo keeps an animal. That is what needs to change, this idea that prison is where people are simply kept. It should be far worse than that, so worse, it is enough to keep them from committing crimes. Special jails just for the murderers and assaulters that are far worse than jails for others. The message is, if you are violent against another, life is gonna be very uncomfortable for you, so best behave. Our society is far too tolerant of violence.

Last edited by ooOoOoOAnaOoOoOoo on 22 Sep 2014, 3:43 pm, edited 1 time in total.

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22 Sep 2014, 3:41 pm

Dox47 wrote:

^
You're good with stats GGPV, you wouldn't happen to have anything on the actual recidivism rates for rapists handy, would you? I've been trying to hunt down some reliable ones, but keep getting bogged down in old academic papers with conflicting conclusions and small sample sizes, or oddly phrased abstracts.

IIRC, it's less than is commonly thought, but I like to have facts in hand before making that kind of claim.

A frequently mentioned source is a 2003 study from the Bureau of Justice Statistics (BJS) investigating the 3-year recidivism of various sex offenders in the US released in 1994.

Although somewhat dated, the advantage of this study is that it allows one to match those who both (1) was initially convicted for a sex offense and (2) re-arrested for a sex offense.

Here are some (truncated for brevity) figures from the study:

As evident above, the 3-year general recidivism rate for sex offenders in the US is 39.4 - 49.9 percent depending on category. However, the 3-year recidivism for another sex offense is only 5.0 - 5.5 percent.

Furthermore, here is the reconviction rate for the same offenses, showing that the conviction recidivism rate for sex offenders commiting new sex offenses is 3.2 - 3.7 percent.

Source:
http://www.bjs.gov/content/pub/pdf/rsorp94.pdf (See page 24 and 34-35)

Some caveats:

Statutory rape laws in particular vary significantly between US states, so the national figure may not be a completely meaningful aggregate figure.
The re-offense rate suffers from the same problem as the initial offense rate - Rape is an under-reported crime, so one can only assume that the true recidivism is higher than the reported recidivism.
It is only a 3-year follow-up period. BJS has a more recent study investigating a 5-year follow-up period.

Source: http://www.bjs.gov/content/pub/pdf/rprts05p0510.pdf (page 9)

Here the 5-year recidivism for violent crime (both original sentence and re-arrest) is about 33 percent. However, this newer study does not allow one to track the sex offense recidivism of convicted sex offenders, only violent crime in general. Page 8-9 of this report actually has data for both original sex offense and subsequent arrest for sex offense, but not combined as the first study above.

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22 Sep 2014, 5:20 pm

AspieOtaku wrote:

I know it may seem extreme to most softies but in my opinion once a rapist always a rapist and if a law were to implement a death penalty for rape was put in place it might give potential rapists a second thought not to do it. If they still go through it then that's their loss and they are executed after found guilty and shown as an example not to rape people! What are your thoughts on this? I might come off as an inhumane monster coming up with this proposition but man I dont find rapists as human at all. If a law like that were to be put in place everyone can walk the streets on their own and feel safe and rape would be reduced 99% that remaining 1% would be killed.

You do not give someone the death penalty based on opinion; "]I know it may seem extreme to most softies but in my opinion once a rapist always a rapist"

What you consider to be "softie" might otherwise be considered "rational" Taking a life for the act of rape alone is not rational. I do not believe any crime deserves the death penalty. The only justification for the taking of human life is when they are caught in the act of taking a life and killing them is the only way to prevent the act. If you want to stop rape the most effective method is education. Not barbarism.

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22 Sep 2014, 6:19 pm

"Rape" is too ambiguous of a term. Most rapings arent grounds for the death penalty, IMHO.

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22 Sep 2014, 7:10 pm

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23 Sep 2014, 2:13 am

Rapists are monsters they are no longer human and I hate them I think they should be killed in a slow and painful way and not in a human way and die slowly knowing they are hated!

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23 Sep 2014, 2:45 am

AspieOtaku wrote:

Rapists are monsters they are no longer human and I hate them I think they should be killed in a slow and painful way and not in a human way and die slowly knowing they are hated!

If rapists are no longer human we can't prosecute them as such. I'm certain this is not something you desire.

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23 Sep 2014, 9:19 am

adifferentname wrote:

AspieOtaku wrote:

Rapists are monsters they are no longer human and I hate them I think they should be killed in a slow and painful way and not in a human way and die slowly knowing they are hated!

If rapists are no longer human we can't prosecute them as such. I'm certain this is not something you desire.

So are you saying they should be let free so they can rape again and again and not get punished? I have no sympathy for these monsters.

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23 Sep 2014, 10:09 am

ooOoOoOAnaOoOoOoo wrote:

Nothing is completely infallible but if DNA evidence is non existent imo you should not be able to seek the death penalty. The evidence has to be really good for that.

The evidence has to be really good - beyond reasonable doubt - for any crime. And yet we still convict innocent people.

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23 Sep 2014, 4:34 pm

khaoz wrote:

Taking a life for the act of rape alone is not rational. I do not believe any crime deserves the death penalty. The only justification for the taking of human life is when they are caught in the act of taking a life and killing them is the only way to prevent the act. If you want to stop rape the most effective method is education. Not barbarism.

Agreed - pretty much exactly this ^

AspieOtaku wrote:

Rapists are monsters they are no longer human and I hate them I think they should be killed in a slow and painful way and not in a human way and die slowly knowing they are hated!

I am quite relieved that you are not responsible for creating laws because this sort of medieval, red-mist rage seems a sure route back to living in caves and flinging poo at each other.

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23 Sep 2014, 4:44 pm

AspieOtaku wrote:

So are you saying they should be let free so they can rape again and again and not get punished? I have no sympathy for these monsters.

Read my post and you tell me if I'm saying that.

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27 Sep 2014, 10:18 pm

Problem about the death penalty is that it's society lowering itself to the same level has the criminals.
And besides Japan, Korea, India and the USA no other real democracy in the world uses capital punishment anymore, even countries like Russia have abolished it, Cuba hasn't carried an execution in a long time, and even some Muslim countries like Algeria, Tunisia and Morocco don't execute anymore.
And Europe has abolished such a barbaric punishment almost 4 decades ago (last execution in Europe was in 1977 in France by Guillotine)
And last time I check the crime rates are lower in Europe than they are in the US.
And the argument about the fact they keeping people in jail cost the taxpayers money, I answer, has a society we agree to pay a certain amount of taxes to keep these people locked up. Anyway, besides the 3 democracies I cited before, most countries who still have a death penalty are neither democracies, neither are they know for their human rights. And for me, America should be the example, the light of the world, the country of example, sadly killing people, even the worst of the worst is simply wrong.
Just my opinion.

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