US law and Pedophilia

[Custos Morum]

A dear friend and I was arguing wether there is inbedded in the law that child abusers should receive mental care, if they are condemned as pedophiles. I said so, she said that there wasn't. Sadly, none of us know too much about US law. Anybody here that knows?

[Sherona]

I believe in some states that there is a law that makes it to where convicted sex-offenders repeatedly convicted can be sent to a mental health institution after they have paid their debt to society for an indetermined amount of time until the doctor declares them a non-threat to society.

Not sure if that is precisely it, law is not something I am at all knowledgable in.

[Trieste]

As far as I know (I'm not a legal expert - just offering personal experience via hearsay here) sex offenders in general (pedophelia, rape, etc) do go to jail but are often required to undergo counseling as part of their rehabilitation, or as a requirement to their probation. If they miss too many of their therapy sessions when theyr'e on probation, they go back to jail. The father of one of my exes was on probation and went to jail due to missing too many group sessions.

[ShrowdedPoet]

Some places require it, some prisions give it, but from what has been seen, most of the time it doesn't do any good.  I don't think it's required everywhere though.

[kongming]

most of the time it doesn't do any good.

Mainly due to the prison system itself (Monday: counselling. Tuesday: prison rape. Wednesday: being beaten unconscious.), and the fact that if someone is imprisoned as a murderer, once they're released they are free to go, but for sex crimes, once released, they have to register as a sex offender and can never again live a normal life.

Basically the system doesn't want to rehabilitate people or help them, it just wants revenge for crimes, more in line with a barbarian tribe than a civilised society. So no real help is provided to criminals of any variety, and in plenty of instances, they reoffend because they weren't honestly helped to stop doing so.

That and the fact that mental help would rely on it being a mental disorder - I'm willing to believe many paedophiles think the way they do because of mental issues that therapy and medicine can help with, but plenty more do not. So for the person who likes kids because they're afraid of adults and can't form proper adult relationships, that would help. But for the person who simply likes kids since birth and doesn't have the ability to not act on desires/channel them through other means (writing, watching more than half the hentai out there, whatever), or for the person who has been exposed to too much "Let's dress 6 year old children up as street prozzies! It helps them feel more grown up!*"... in those cases, there may not be a real answer other than to convince them not to act on urges.

*I congratulate all parents who resist this trend. Besides, that form of dress looks ugly, so we don't want people growing up liking it!

[Custos Morum]

That and the fact that mental help would rely on it being a mental disorder - I'm willing to believe many paedophiles think the way they do because of mental issues that therapy and medicine can help with, but plenty more do not. So for the person who likes kids because they're afraid of adults and can't form proper adult relationships, that would help. But for the person who simply likes kids since birth and doesn't have the ability to not act on desires/channel them through other means (writing, watching more than half the hentai out there, whatever), or for the person who has been exposed to too much "Let's dress 6 year old children up as street prozzies! It helps them feel more grown up!*"... in those cases, there may not be a real answer other than to convince them not to act on urges.

*I congratulate all parents who resist this trend. Besides, that form of dress looks ugly, so we don't want people growing up liking it!

Yes, but, I don't know. I don't think anyone is capable of being a pedophile since birth, seeing that most sex offenders that focus on children often has gotten raped themselves as childes. Actually, but this is my philosophy, I live by the thought that no one intentionally does bad things, and that all that is some way or another things that life has made them to do, and that no one us born a criminal.

[Trieste]

The idea that anyone is 'born' a criminal is a very, very dangerous concept. It's one of the most heated facets of the nature vs. nurture debate, and scares me quite a bit.

That said, I believe there are some who are not rehabilitable. Is it society's job to try anyway? Only to a point. Most don't get considerable jail time until they hit their third 'strike' anyway... before that, the jail time is too negligible to do very much good, other than to scare the living shit out of offenders when they spend a few months in jail. So do we proceed to be inhumane by not first trying, or inhumane by extending initial jail sentences so we can say we tried when we fail?

But this is pretty far off-topic, so if people want to discuss it, they should probably make another thread. :)

[Nephili]

Mainly due to the prison system itself (Monday: counselling. Tuesday: prison rape. Wednesday: being beaten unconscious.), and the fact that if someone is imprisoned as a murderer, once they're released they are free to go, but for sex crimes, once released, they have to register as a sex offender and can never again live a normal life.

Basically the system doesn't want to rehabilitate people or help them, it just wants revenge for crimes, more in line with a barbarian tribe than a civilised society. So no real help is provided to criminals of any variety, and in plenty of instances, they reoffend because they weren't honestly helped to stop doing so.

That and the fact that mental help would rely on it being a mental disorder - I'm willing to believe many paedophiles think the way they do because of mental issues that therapy and medicine can help with, but plenty more do not. So for the person who likes kids because they're afraid of adults and can't form proper adult relationships, that would help. But for the person who simply likes kids since birth and doesn't have the ability to not act on desires/channel them through other means (writing, watching more than half the hentai out there, whatever), or for the person who has been exposed to too much "Let's dress 6 year old children up as street prozzies! It helps them feel more grown up!*"... in those cases, there may not be a real answer other than to convince them not to act on urges.

*I congratulate all parents who resist this trend. Besides, that form of dress looks ugly, so we don't want people growing up liking it!

This country does, admittedly, have a problem with rehabilitating criminals, but the problem is, while there ARE almost certainly ways in which pedophiles could be helped, there isn't a strong consensus on what those ways are. Therapy of some kind, certainly, but that isn't a very specific answer, and it's hardly an area where we can afford to just experiment and see what works. Forcing sex offenders to register as such when released does certainly make it a lot harder, if not impossible, to live a normal life... but the alternative is hardly viable... given the choice between potential harm to a convicted rapist and potential harm to an innocent child... well, it's not a very hard decision to make. Ideally, yes, we would have a system where criminals, once released, are able to live a normal life, WITHOUT risk of repeating their previous crimes... but until that happens, there isn't really much of an alternative to erring on the side of cation. And, on the subject of pedophilia as a mental disorder... I'm almost certain as it is! But as strong as the urges may be, the person still is aware that acting on those urges is illegal... they still know that doing so is horribly cruel to the child in question... and they know what the consequences are if they get caught. To say that sexually abusing a minor is less of a crime because they have the urge to have sex with minors... is the same as saying vanilla rape is less of a crime because the rapist has the urge to have sex with adults. In the end, the person still made the conscious choice to commit the crime, choosing to break the law and cause harm to the victim for their own pleasure. Finally... one line in your post that I took offense to:

" or for the person who has been exposed to too much "Let's dress 6 year old children up as street prozzies! It helps them feel more grown up!*"

This seems far too close to the argument that a woman who dresses scantily is "asking for it" if she gets raped :/