My second post at thecourt.ca this week is about the sentencing of a fairly notorious asshole.
It’s worth noting that sometimes, in criminal justice, you have situations where judges are looking for a legal excuse to really nail someone to the wall. This is, I think, one such.
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I understand why you feel the way you do, certainly. Thing is that for some reason I tend to look at crimes, even ones like this, more dispassionately than most. Maybe one day I’ll figure out why.
It’s because I’m looking at a summary of what he did and (for whatever reason) not getting angry that I’m able to say the following: punishing him is not going to do any good. I doubt it’ll change him into somebody who doesn’t want to rape minors. I don’t think that any amount of prison time is going to do that, frankly. Instead of punishment, the objective should be keeping the public safe from him. So the best thing to do is to keep him confined somewhere for the rest of his life, or until they figure out how to ensure he’s not a threat any more. If it’s inevitable that he’ll eventually get out, they should watch him like a hawk afterwards.
If I actually saw the results of what he did, I would probably not be dispassionate and would probably also want to see him suffer. However, reading what he did is not the same as witnessing what he did or witnessing the results of what he did. I don’t know whether that’s unfortunate (since it might be causing me to be too forgiving) or fortunate (since it might prevent judges’ decisions from being affected by emotion rather than the law).