Delusions about predators

There have been several articles in the local media and the local blogs regarding the recent predator that attempted to make contact with local children with his "slumber party" scam. Kudos to local school officials and police personnel for the fast apprehension of this scumbag. The following article by Thomas Sowell of Stanford University is an excellent read and sums up my personal thoughts on this matter quite well.

We're delusional to think we can control predators

Horrifying stories about the rapes and murders of children, and about judges who go easy on sex offenders who prey on the young, have prompted some state legislatures to tighten up the laws and restrict the sentencing discretion of judges.

Few in the media or among the intelligentsia have been as outraged about these sadistic crimes against children as they have been about whether terrorists' phone calls have been intercepted.

Part of this is current politics but part of it is the continuation of a tradition that goes back more than two centuries, de-emphasizing the punishment of criminals.


People who today point to the flaws of "society" as the "root causes" of crime are echoing what was said in the 18th century by Condorcet in France and William Godwin in England, among others.

So are those who speak loftily of "alternatives to incarceration" or who continue to rely on hopes of "rehabilitation" or "prevention."

People with this mindset engage in much hand-wringing about what to do with sexual predators. While many ordinary people would say that they should be locked up -- and, if they are too dangerous to be at large, we should lock them up and throw away the key.

But those whose whole sense of themselves is based on their presumed superiority to ordinary people can never go along with such ideas. They balk even at notifying the public when some convicted sexual predator is released into their neighborhood.

Their thinking -- if it can be called that -- is that sexual predators who have been released from prison have "paid their debt to society" and so the slate should be wiped clean and these sadists allowed to hide their past.

It is amazing how many innocent young lives have been sacrificed for a half-baked phrase.

Going to jail doesn't repay anything. People are put behind bars as punishment and to keep them out of circulation. Child victims of rape and murder cannot be made whole. The debt can never be repaid.

The most we can hope for is to spare other children and their parents from the anguish inflicted by evil people -- not "sick" people, but evil people. Sexual predators know exactly what they are doing, know that it is wrong, and either don't care or enjoy it all the more for that reason.

Saying that they are "sick" implies that there is some treatment or cure that other people can apply to them. How many more lives are we prepared to sacrifice on the altar to that notion?

The illusion of being able to control sexual predators who are set loose in secrecy among families with children has taken many forms and has been couched in much soothing rhetoric.

"Supervised" parole is one of those soothing phrases. The reality is an occasional reporting to a parole officer who has huge numbers of parolees -- who cannot be controlled the other 99 percent of the time when they are not reporting.

The latest pretense of control is the global positioning satellite which can be attached to sexual predators.

Think about it. What would a global positioning satellite have told us when a sexual predator had two girls imprisoned in his basement? That he was home. What reassurance!

While rising public pressures to get serious about protecting children have forced some state legislatures to make some efforts in that direction, resistance and evasion are still the order of the day in many places.

In California, the state legislature is considering bills to use global positioning satellites to track released sex offenders -- but only those deemed "dangerous."

The sponsor of one of these bills describes GPS as "incredibly valuable technology." Not doubt it is -- if you are lost and want to find your way. On the other hand, if you don't want to be found, you can always take it off.

The bills in the California state legislature are presented as alternatives to a ballot initiative by which the voters could impose "Jessica's Law" with some real teeth in it as far as sentencing is concerned, instead of these political alternatives to reality.

Sexual predators should NEVER get another chance. You destroy one young life, you forfeit your right to ever having freedom again. Period. You had it, you used it in the worst possible way to satisfy your sick personal needs, game over. buh-bye. Be grateful that we allow you to continue to draw breath. In many of these cases, even that should be taken away.