markfiend wrote:The problem as I see it with irreversible "treatments" like castration is -- well, that they're irreversible.
A hypothetical: a man is accused and convicted of raping a 7-year old girl, and is castrated as punishment / treatment. 9 months later, evidence surfaces that shows his conviction was in error; he never touched the girl in question. How are you going to sew his bollocks back on?
They have false teeth, false boobs, false legs... I don't see the problem.
AND it is still easier than resurrecting an innocent man after a death penalty.
Now, on a serious note...
You see, the Law is all but infallable, of course. A lot of people have been put to death while innocent. A lot are imprisoned for life for something they did not do.
People have died because doctors diagnosed them wrong.
Whole trains, planes and boats crashed and sunk because of one human being going 'oops'.
'Due to human error' is a saying that is so true. We are mere humans, we make mistakes. The law-abiding ones as well as the law-breaking ones.
But, in my opinion, that does not give the law-breaking ones the right to just do their crimes, put them away for a couple of years and then release them with a "don't ya do it again, now, kiddo".
When I was lil' Iz, I was punished for things I did wrong. When I came home too late, I was punished by house arrest for the next weekend. When I stole a cookie, I got a slap on the buttocks or the head and sent to my room without music or TV (the horror! no music!).
I became a better person because I was taught the difference between right and wrong.
NOT by a hard upbringing with a daily dose of beatings, but also NOT by a too lenient upbringing where all you do is praise the kid when he does something good and never say something when he does something bad (the 'modern' upbringing, so to say).
My parents found the golden way between 'tough' raising and 'too soft' raising of children.
The people who rape young children ... *counting on the Severity Scale where 'coming home too late' equals 1 weekend imprisoned with LESS than the average prisoner today, to whit no TV or radio...*
... well, sorry. 25 years seems nice to begin with. Or put them in a psy clinic.
IZ.