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CRIME AND PUNISHMENT (Crimes (Paedophilia: condemn or support: at its core…
CRIME AND PUNISHMENT
Crimes
Paedophilia: condemn or support: at its core, a sexual preference
- abhorred mostly due to danger it poses for children
- to prevent them from acting on their desires is to ask for them to remain entirely celibate
- provide support for or condemn them?
Provide support:
- Stop it Now UK; confidential advice service; allows them to seek help and prevent crime and suicidal tendencies
- 76% suffer major depression in life, 8% mild.
- Tough sentencing and parole conditions (stemmed from US) do little to cut recidivism
- Mandatory reporting: makes therapy less effective, create culture of intolerance that stymies treatment
Innate
- Men attracted to children have evolutionarily driven sexual preference for youthful traits (which may indicate fertility)
Learnt
- ~50% of paedophiles were abused as children = irrational fear of adults = grow attraction to children whom they find less threatening
- Same-sex preference more common in paedophiles than normal people; suggests desire to have a degree of identification with the object of desire
Islamic (Sharia) Law: Punishment fit crime?
- 2016: Pan-Malaysian Islamic Party (PAS) secured PM Najib Razak's support in passing a bill that aims to increase powers of sharia courts to enforce some aspects of hudud(Islamic system of crime and pun. that includes amputations and stonings)
- Authorises such punishment for crimes like adultery and theft
Najib's implicit embrace of Islamic punishment?
Outcomes:
- Emboldens Msia's most reactionary muslims (right-winged, conservative)
- 11% of Msians say they have favourable view of ISIS (2016 survey)
- Increasing emphasis on Islam threatens the social compact(an agreement for mutual benefit for a community as a whole) that underpins Msian society; by championing Islam, govt heightens the sense that minorities are 2nd class citizens
Corruption and Underground Trade
Baby-selling:
Publicised on social media, post pics and particulars of baby. Can choose race, colour, gender (furniture?)
How
- Upon birth, hospital staff changes mother's name on pre-natal medical records
- Fake doc. submitted to govt registry to issue birth cert
- Requires several docs to falsify docs, and govt officials to turn a blind eye (Systemic corruption!)
Why
- strict adoption operations, process takes up to years
Implications
- Lucky: baby ends up in good family
- Grim fate: groomed for paedophiles or exploited by begging syndicates
Punishment
Capital Punishment
- Government-sanctioned practice during which one is put to death as punishment for a crime
- 95% of SGeans believe in retaining
- Capital offences: Murder, drug trafficking, kidnap
Devaluing human life
- Value of human life and right to live: everyone has a basic, inalienable human right to live (some argue murderers forfeit their right to live upon killing)
Retribution or Vengeance?
- Retribution: guilty should be punished in proportion to the severity of their crime
- Deterrence: deter would-be murderers from committing
However
- Vengeance rather than retribution; morally dubious concept
- Evidence on the deterrence effect of cap. pun. is ambiguous, conflicting and far from probative
- Capital crimes committed in such an emotional state that the perpetrator did not think of consequences
- May be true in the past: guillotines; humiliating and public, creates sense of horror
- But modern day execution administered in private, less deterrent effect
- Deterrence effect is at best, unproven
- Cruel, inhumane and degrading: lethal injection supposedly less brutalising for executioner, but requires medical personnel directly involved in killing; fundamentally contravenes medical ethics??
Room for Error
- Execution of innocent: most cogent argument against cap. pun.: due to flawed humans and fallible justice system, innocent will be killed
- Such mistakes cannot be put right!
- USA: 130 on death row have been found innocent since 1973
Conviction by Confession
- extremely high conviction rate of >99%
2 theories:
- Judges pressured to pass guilty verdict; academics find that passing non-guilty verdict -vely affects judge's career
- Prosecutors selectively bring in cases in which conviction is assured
Fallible confession system
- Conviction rampantly based on confessions rather than hard evidence
- Confessions obtained aft. long periods of qning; suspects can be held for ~23 days, qned in isolation w/o access to lawyers or family
- Osaka arson case in 90s: Interrogators manipulated mother into confessing that she set fire to house and killed daughter by using strong words that compelled her to feel guilty (she won't go to heaven if you don't confess)
- Compounded by trauma and guilt she'd already felt by failing to save daughter, render her into emotional state
- Lack of recordings of interrogations provide window of opportunity for police to falsify evi., use violence, guilt the accused, write confession themselves
Reliability of Jury System
- LKY's first case: defending 4 Malay men who murdered Charles Joseph Ryan and his wife and child indiscriminately during Maria Hertogh Riots
- Trial conducted before a judge and jury of 7
- LKY worked on weaknesses of jury; their biases, prejudices, and reluctance to find 4 Muslims guilty of killing the white family
- Acquitted in the end; LKY discharged his duties as defense lawyer but knew he did wrong
- Shaped his views of jury system: have no faith in a system that allowed the superstition, ignorance, biases and prejudices of 7 jurymen to determine guilt or innocence.
Arguments for Jury
- Major judicial decisions should not lie in hands of one person
- Juries encompass a diverse range of viewpoints; 12 people who listened to both sides and can bring multiple perspectives to a case
- Of course, room for bias and errors as stated above
Contentious Topics
Alcohol, Banning Of: Almost all ctys, adults can buy and consume alcohol w/ lil restriction.
- Marked contrast to legal status of other mind-altering drugs; e.g. marijuana, coke.
FOR BANNING: Alcohol is as addictive and destructive as many illegal drugs; banning will reduce crime
- ~3 mil. violent crimes each year committed under alcohol influence, including murder, dom. violence and child abuse; a prime cause of violence and crime
- Banning is only way to stop these preventable acts; orgns like Mothers against Drunk Driving have been successful but not anywhere impactful enough
Against: Banning is impractical; Doesn't address root cause; it exacerbates social issues and fuels crimes
- Humans' natural inclination to violence and conflict: sex and violence are primal parts of genetic make-up, do not need alcohol to bring them to surface; though it may exaggerate these tendencies
- Makes the occasion, but not underlying cause, of crimes
- Just as making rape and murder illegal does not eradicate, making alcohol consumption won't either
- Also, banning will create an undergrnd mkt that is unprecedented in size
Assisted Suicide / Euthanasia
- Euthanasia = physician administers means of death
- AS = person's self-administration of deadly drugs supplied by a physician
- Central Question: If a terminally ill person has decide to end their life; is it acceptable for physicians to assist them?
- Netherlands the 1st cty to legalise both in 2001
Right to life goes both ways
- Basic and fundamental of all rights; every right comes with a choice
- Right to speech does not remove the option to be silent
- In this way, the right to choose to die is implicit in the right to life
No second chances
- Right to life is incomparable to other rights
- Choosing to remain silent; you can change your mind
- Choosing to die leaves you with no second chance
- Participating in one's death is hence tantamount to depriving that person of all choices they may make in the future
- Immoral
Moral obligation not to enable
- Suiciders are not prosecuted or evil
- But, if one had presented to you their intention of dying; you have a moral obligation to stop them
- Will not push a man off the ledge just because he says he chooses to
- You should try to help one with a terminal illness; not help them die
Blanket statement
- that is nebulous and cannot be superimposed on all situations
- AS/Eu is only considered within the premises of a patient's "hopeless and unbearable" suffering, in which death is inevitably looming in the near future/ they are subjected to QOL so low that death is better
- Surely one has moral obligation to help end suffering for which there is no cure?
- e.g. Peter Ketelslegers choice to be euthanised due to cluster headaches (Belgium); constant, excruciating pain for hrs on end