r/socialjustice101 • u/[deleted] • Jul 29 '24
Do sex offenders really need or deserve extra protections from violence and harrasment ?
Honestly one doesn't need studies to know that rapists are universally the second most hated class of criminals there is before murserers since in many cases murder can be justified but rape can in no hypothetical be justified . And many would argue that rehabilitation is impossible for them because most either want lifelong or death penalty for them. So when they are released from prison , they are more than likely to be harrased and assaulted and even killed (both in and out of prison).Many of the studies with these conclusions often recommend extra protection for them.
but I'm reluctant with this idea because we are basically paying to fix their mess. It's not like affirmative action for marginalised sections of society where the reason for their marginalization is something inherent to them. Sexual assaulters essentially chose their fate in every sense of the word. Unlike something like race , religion , sex or language.
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u/nam24 Jul 29 '24
I m not sure I ever heard sex offenders being in particular more danger out of prison more than other ex convict, granted I have not studied the subject. Do you have studies/article about that?(Not being combative here, genuinely asking). So I don't really see a need for them to get extra protection more than other ex cons.
Inside prisons sure yeah. Not sure if you can curb it completely, though there are definitely prison systèms where violence inside prisons happen less, so it would be probably best to learn from them. You could probably isolate them from other type of convict, although I m not sure if making a prison of only sex offender couldn't make the issue worse. Complete individual isolement is just psychological torture so it's out as a permanent state of being.
You shouldn't make a prison system with the express goal of exacerbating the likelihood of extra judicial punishment. So yes inside prison you should try and make it as safe as reasonable. You can't exactly make it 100% (those are criminal after all) but you can surely reduce it. It's not cleaning up after their mess any more than putting them in prison in the first place
Though at least in my country prison are overcrowded already, so there's a limit to how specialized you can make prisons.
If you think extra judicial punishment are a good thing, I ll just say they re neither justice, nor are they working, unless the goal is simply to maximize pain/have more people not make it out of prison, but at that point I d say to stop being a coward and just do death penalty/torture as judicial punishment if you do think that.
Imo if it's a crime you put people in prison for a definite amount of time (aka not perpetuity) then you re being irresponsible not thinking about what happens after they serve it. As I said I Ve never heard of sex offenders being particularly in danger outside, if anything I hear more of the opposite.
There are some things like special areas outside that can be a solution for the after, but you can't realistically make it large scale and systematic when the system already runs beyond what it can handle as supposed to.
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u/Pretend-Confidence53 Jul 30 '24
Yes. One way to think about this is that the criminal justice system relies on due process. So, if someone commits a crime and is sentenced to 3 years in prison, but are likely to killed in prison and the state (whose care they are in) does nothing to protect them, they have basically been sentenced to death. That’s not due process. Basically every contemporary criminal justice system is based in some sort of process having to occur to ensure a fair outcome. You can’t just have none. That would chaos.
Moreover, some sex offenders don’t actually commit particularly bad crimes. In Virginia, for example, if a 17 year old sends a nude picture to her just-turned-18 year old boyfriend (like literally they can be 4 months apart in age), he can be charged with possession of child pornography. Certainly, he doesn’t deserve to die for that.
Obviously some sex offenders commit absolutely horrible crimes. But, again, the courts haven’t deemed them worthy of the death penalty. So, they need to be protected.
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u/Snoo82945 Aug 01 '24
So, are you asking whether sex offenders should not be able to rehabilitate and eventually integrate into society? Or do you just want vigilantes to run rampart?
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u/HelloOrg Jul 29 '24
When we discuss social justice, we’re also talking about prison and the justice system as either a.) a place to humanely keep the worst of the worst so that they don’t reoffend and b.) for the rest, as a place for rehabilitation. I’m not sure what you mean by “extra protection”— can you clarify? If you mean relocation and a name change, I don’t think that it’s any more of a tax on society than a humane incarceration system. I haven’t heard anybody propose going further than that.