Androgenicx, With respect to your opinion let me tell you a little story, somewhat off the subject but maybe explaining why I would fully support that bill. I used to be strictly against death penalty. My perspective was no human has the right to decide over another humans life. Then, one day, and this was in another country somewhere in this world where I used to live for a few years, a whole family: The mother and her 6 month, 2 year, 5 year and 8 year old children were raped and killed because of gang related retaliation for the husband who they already had killed. Yes the baby's/kids were raped and guess what? The baby's first with the mother having to watch. And then I had to go there and witness the crime. No I wasn't a cop, I "just" had to witness it. Authority's eventually caught the criminals and I was very glad glad to see the death penalty being 're-activated' in that country just for the purpose of getting rid of that scum. I would have pulled the lever if they would have let me. Back to my OP - someone who intentionally rapes children should be kept from utilizing the tool the crime has been conducted with. We are talking children here! The damage done to those kids is life-long and non-repairable and the ones who caused that need to experience that same damage, if not 'worse' (see my off the subject story above). Leap
You can note from the story yourself it was the fact that it happened near you that changed your opinion. You got emotionally involved, to some extent, and thats what changed your decision. "I would have pulled the lever if they let me" - how does that rationally help the situation? All it does is fulfill your emotional desire for revenge and retribution in a slightly more impersonal sense. There is no doubt that the crimes are heinous and hurtful, deeply scarring, and often fatal. The people who do the damage are already living in hell. You need to be traumatized internally, confused, mentally problematic, and living a painful life yourself to be capable of crimes like these. Those people are already hurting, these are just some of the outward effects of how they are hurting. They need help, not hatred, not more pain. It is simply an emotional sense of justice and retribution that doesn't help reform the criminal in any way, but in fact makes him worse off. It is not justice, it is not the rational, humane dealing of with the situation. It will never solve human crime problems. If man wants to improve and find peace and humaneness, emotional retribution must stop and objective reasoning and justice must prevail. There is no morality in indulging emotional retribution, and the fact that it is done in the name of morality, justice, and the law is what makes it hypocritical and to me almost disgusting.
My whole point is that there should be no punishment. Criminals behave the way they do because they are hurt and messed up psychologically due to the harshness of the world and already being punished by the way the world is. Punishing them further just reinforces the part in their heads that thinks the world is a dark place and that makes darkness acceptable and normal. There should be no punishment. That is not to say that you let them free - isolate them from society but deal with them and reform them. If you don't want to or have the time to deal with them - which is societies fault not theirs - just isolate them for life. Punishment is retribution and retribution does not fix.