My grand-daughter gets what
she wants.
Foxy,
Sounds like her Grandmother needs a serious talking to !

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Dear Loudmouth,

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You wrote :

« … Manson died a couple of years ago. So no release, except to the worms »

Thanks for the info.

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Dear o sung wu,

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You wrote :

1. « You seem to be a keen student, of some of, the more depraved & homicidal boofheads …»

My interest is in the tenets and praxis of contemporary society. Justice happens to be at the top of the list.
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2. « … many folk of your particular genre, don't fully appreciate the specific nuances associated with these crimes. The very worst that has been perpetrated upon any human being. Gaol them for long periods, without any possibility of parole; for the most serious of them all. Without an easy escape, by a quick, painless needle »

Punishment can play a useful educative role but that makes no sense for somebody who spends the rest of his life in jail. The educative and rehabilitative value of incarceration for periods in excess of 10 years is problematic. It is often counterproductive and produces the inverse effect.

Life imprisonment of people convicted of atrocious crimes is a cruel form of punishment designed to protect society and revenge the victims.

A much healthier approach to the problem would be to take example from nature. The human immune system, like that of many animals, detects foreign invaders such as bacteria, microbes, viruses, toxins and parasites and creates antibodies that attack and kill them. Our body does not isolate the malignant invaders until they die their natural death. It does not punish them or seek revenge. It simply eliminates them as quickly and as efficiently as possible.

Whether it be the body of a single human being or the collective body of society, the problem is the same.

In the same manner, farmers and gardeners eliminate weeds and invasive insects from their crops and flower beds. Who could imagine that they should isolate them in a cage and tend to them until they finally die their natural death ? It just doesn’t make sense.

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Dear HenryL,

.

You wrote to ALTRAV :

« … with the Pell case, where 4 years previously, in Victoria, the rules were altered to remove the laws that protected persons from getting convicted by accusations alone. Prosecutors were having trouble in finding evidence on which to convict paedophiles, so they allowed convictions based on accusations only »
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That is not a general rule, HenryL. It applies to sex crimes.

In the large majority of sex crimes it boils down to “my word against yours”.

As a result, in the US, 97% of rapists never spend a single day in jail. In Italy, a 2006 survey found that 91.6% of rapes were not reported to the police. In Australia, in 2005, it was found that 81.1% of sexual assaults, including rape, were not reported to the police.
My word against yours has always been and continues to be the nemesis of justice.

The sacrosanct principle of presumption of innocence is an effective means of guaranteeing legal immunity to sex offenders and denying justice to the millions of victims it was designed to protect. In its present form justice is counterproductive. It achieves exactly the opposite result to that for which it was intended. Instead of preventing and punishing crime, it encourages and facilitates it. It is headed in the wrong direction.

The perverse effect of the presumption of innocence in sex-related crimes is usually due to the lack of material evidence and/or of a credible eyewitness and the impossibility of proving that the victim was not the instigator or had given her (or his) consent. Any doubt is to the benefit of the offender. The victim is presumed to be lying.

In my humble opinion, in the case of sex crimes, there should be no presumptions of any sort whatsoever – neither of innocence nor of guilt. Plaintiff and accused should be placed on an equal footing and each case judged solely on its merits.

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Hi Banjo,

So how do you do that ? Neither a presumption of guilt nor innocence ?

Societies have only those two options - a presumption of innocence, as in our society, or a presumption of guilt, as in China and many other backward legal systems. Certainly a presumption of guilt saves a lot of time and costs, and probably reduces lawyers to messenger boys. But it's ideal for repressive regimes. [Hence the opposition to extradition to China in Hong Kong].

On the other hand, a presumption of innocence forces (or ought to force) the legal system to weigh up charges and the defence against them. Harsh as it may be for the victims of evidence-less crimes, how else can a civilized society operate ? Otherwise we leave the door wide open to every accusation against anybody, evidence or not.

On those grounds, one suspects that if Pell had claimed that the two young boys had assaulted him, thrown him to the floor, and had their evil way with him, he might have got off. As it happened, he was found guilty on no more evidence than that, only on the likelihood that the evidence-free charges against him could have happened.

But surely justice has to be based on more than 'what could have happened' ?

Yes, many guilty people must go free, or have pathetic sentences levelled against them. That's the price we have to pay for a system based on the presumption of innocence and the need for evidence to back up any charge. Sometimes justice is cruel indeed.

Cheers,

Joe

Joe,

The jury and judges found the complainant in the
Pell case totally believable with no room for
any doubt.

Justice was served.

Emotions drive us like the wind but do we know about William , little Samantha Knight
The Simpson girl drowned in a dam over the road from my gradmums once property
Are there any cases we think we should hang the criminal
And the two most infamous rape and murder teams, add Virginia Moses killers
Sorry still waiting for Breaker Morant to be pardoned but in some cases we should murder the murderers