When is pre-emptive punishment justified?

L

laughing weasel

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At what point and for what types of crimes it reasonable to take pre-emptive action to prevent a crime from being committed.
 
That depends how you 'know' that a crime is going to be committed.
 
ddovala said:
I would say crimes with irreversable consequence: like murder or rape
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You didn't answer the question. How do you know that someone is going to commit murder or rape?

The legal standard for convicting someone of a crime so they can be punished after the fact is to know "beyond a reasonable doubt" that they actually commited it. We'd certainly have to apply a standard that is at least as strict as that to predictive punishment before the fact. We'd have to know beyond a reasonable doubt that the person is going to commit the crime.

When it comes to rape I'd say we have that... but only after the first offense has been committed. We've got no way of predicting in advance who's going to turn out to be a rapist, but the statistics on recidivism are dismal. As far as I know from years of contact with people in the judicial system and the social services, the probability of a rapist committing rape after you let him out of prison is exactly 100 percent. The same with any kind of child molestation, whether it's technically rape or not.

So I have no problem with rapists and child molesters not being given a second chance. Whether that means life without parole, or the death penalty because there's always the chance that he'll escape or be let out by a lint-headed judge, is a choice we'll have to make. But I don't think they should ever be set free.

The only possible exception is date rape. I don't know much about the topic, I haven't kept up my contacts with people in the professions since the term was coined and they actually started nailing guys who do it. If it turns out that men who commit date rape are capable of being reformed then I'd give them the chance.

Ask any cop or shrink and they'll assure you that rape is not about sex, it's about violence. The proof is that men who have been castrated or otherwise rendered incapable of intercourse nonetheless go out and find other creative ways to violate the bodies of women and children. Whereas date rape, in some cases, may actually be about sex. So many of the offenders are horny teenage boys, it just may be that their parents didn't raise them right and they're capable of being reformed. I'll let the experts figure that one out.

But as for murder? Most murders are crimes of passion. The extreme confluence of conditions that motivate a person to become irrational and kill another human being never happen to most of us. They happen to a few people once in a lifetime. The odds against happening to the same person twice are "beyond a reasonable doubt."

Mob enforcers, yatta yatta. As long as they "keep it in the family" and stick to killing other mobsters, I don't see a big problem. It's an "ecclesiastical matter." Serial killers, yatta yatta the other way. By the time we catch them they've committed so many murders that they automatically get the death penalty or life without parole. We don't have to worry about them getting out.

While we're on the subject of the death penalty, I don't actually support it for rapists and serial killers, but I do favor it for terrorists. The reason is that a standard terrorist tactic is to kidnap a whole bunch of hostages and threaten to murder them if the government in question does not free the imprisoned members of the same terrorist gang. The only way to prevent that is to walk them straight from the courtroom to the gas chamber.

Now that, to me, is the appropriate use of preemptive punishment.
 
I was wondering this because someone was stating "as a joke that they intended on having sex with an eight year old. They were immediately eviscerated. But it made me think what situations are you justified in protecting the innocent by punishing the not yet guilty where is the line between killing a dog with rabies and arresting someone for planning a crime.
 
laughing weasel said:
At what point and for what types of crimes it reasonable to take pre-emptive action to prevent a crime from being committed.
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Paedophilia, rape, murder etc etc but this a grey area to boot. A lot of the time this is tried and it is shot down in court (as evidence or mistrial) because there are very few legal means to go about pre-emptive action, even those means are fishy. Criminals have good laws in their support to prevent the justice department from getting incriminating evidence or creating situations to capture possible criminals.

Ofcourse there are prostitution stings where possible johns are captured but as soon as one of the undercover cops acts interested or, in anyway, incites a possible customer that man has a good defense in court.
 
Look, mate, we've all seen Minority Report. Tom Cruise has shown us the truth. It's a very VERY baaaad idea to try to prevent stuff by assuming the future. If someone's a threat-gaol them.
 
As much as it would easier to punish pre-emptively the law should not be about paranoir or assumption of guilt especially prior to the event.

it's a bit like teh difference between thinking about doing something and actually doing something.

Can a person be punished for merely thinking about something.

I don't think the Law can be used to punish persons for just thinking about doing something.
 
I agree that there is difference between thinking about doing something. Who hasn't had a fantasy about harming their boss at some point? It just seems so tempting to try to stop something bad before it happens. How can I resolve the conflict between goings after the terrorist in Iraq with due process? I feel that it is criminally stupid to wait for the terrorist to take another shot so I will end up supporting Bush. I just can't feel right about what I feel must be done. I do not want to live in Israel having terrorist attack every day. We have held American citizens arrested in Chicago without charges and without access to lawyers. It is amazing how fast our ideals fade in the face of fear. I am for the war in Iraq and even I see that there are unpleasant aspects to this war on terror. maybe I am just naive but I think that we can fight this war without sacrificing our principals but it all comes back to when can you punish someone for a crime that they haven't committed.
 
Laughing weasel,

I think you have to define the word "Crime" very carefully. I know the legal professions are still trying to do this and they have been at it for thousands of years.

It wasn't all that long ago that we were burning witches and performing inquisitions.

Salem was a good example of our notions of criminality.

The law is not about emotions. It is supposed to be about facts and not fictions.

dah dah dah...of course you know this already....
 
possibly the only option open to you is to quarrantine the problem. Put what you fear in isolation like they did during the second world war with American citizens of German or Japanese ancestory.
 
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