Debate
Pedophiles molest young children, some of them either kill children after abuse or cripple them psychologically. Hence this house will execute Adult Pedophiles. However, when Pedophiles are non adults, below 17 years of age, how should they be penalized? They should not be given a free hand to destroy the core values of a society. No matter what age group they belong to the sex offenders should be executed with some serious penalties.
The age barrier on most occasions comes in the way of the execution of the teenagers who involve themselves in different kinds of sex offense. The problem is if teenage pedophiles are not punished they would do the same crime again and again.
Here I would present some of the arguments that would strengthen my case.
Solvency.1 Civil commitments
First up, Pedophiles according to many psychologists and psychiatrists are the problem children. They do not grow normally like other normal kids. Either they bear some domestic violence at home or they have been victims of sexual abuse themselves at a very young age.
This justification for the sinful acts of the pedophiles might not be enough. A pedophile must get the necessary punishment according to the laws. If this does not happen then society can be in a chaotic situation.
The teenage pedophile should not be executed. Instead this house would enforce penalty in the form of monitored psychological treatment.
Secondly, the teenage Pedophiles should be made to perform some civil commitments.
There are numerous treatment plans for these young sex offenders. There is one treatment called the National Adolescent perpetrator network. Its stated as an offender they are accountable for their crimes. Meetings and social gatherings with one another are very suitable treatments. Of course, the main issue to stop offending is by stopping them from further abusing and making it a safer for public. The only issue with sex offenders is they will always have this
Child molestation and sexual assault is an ever growing problem in the United States today, but an even bigger problem is that these pedophiles are being released after only serving as little as one quarter of their sentence. In California alone (at the time the bill was first passed), there was an estimated 680 individuals on parole for molestation and other sexual assaults including sodomy by force with a victim under the age of thirteen as well as child molestation with foreign objects.
Throughout the ages, media and society have been concerned over children. Instead of youth as folk devils, children nowadays serve as the victims of folk devils (Critcher, 2002, p.532). With these trigger events popping up, stereotypes are gradually formed. In recent British history, Paedophile had become one of the most terrifying folk-devils (Jenkins, 1992, p.99). Paedophile behaviour is a moral panic one legal case and the panic is generally fuelled by the sensationalism of media in
1} There should be a longer sentence for these offenders. Because it is such a terrible and scarring experience for those who survive it, these people shouldn’t be able walk freely and live a normal life. These kids have to live with it for the rest of their lives. It causes them to lose trust in people.
It’s time to separate the child sex offender from the children being accused of sex offending unreasonably. There are many stories of teenagers 15, 16, 17, just trying on young love for the first time. What should be happy memories can be turned to shame, and they don’t even have to have actual intercourse for it to be called a “sex offense.” Here are some examples of needed changes to our laws:
Is it ethical then to punish people who commit sexual abuse against children? Or should our approach be treatment not punishment? This is an age old debate, while there have been attempts to treat the 'disease' of pedophilia, there are exceptions to this treatment whom despite it do reoffend. Counseling, monitoring, medicating, and even chemical castration are some ways our society has developed to "treat" the biological and psychological side of the argument
Should children be given their sentence based on their age or should they be treated the same as adults since they commented the same crime?
In today's society, there are many crimes going on. Adults are not the only ones that commit crimes. One issue today is that juvenile offenses and whether juvenile offenders should be tried as adults in criminal court. A common phrase that is often used in this case of young juveniles committing crimes is "Old enough to do the crime, old enough to do the time." This phrase should be cleared to people that juveniles are not adults, and with this being said it will not make them one. "It has redefined juvenile offenses by treating most of them as delinquent acts to be adjudicated within a separate juvenile justice system that is theoretically designed to recognize the special needs and immature status of young people and emphasize rehabilitation over punishment" (Steinberg). While juveniles should be responsible for their actions, and should be held accountable for the crime, then the juvenile justice system is design to determine the consequences. Youths are still minors and are less mature. They often face a lot of negative peer pressure. Therefore, juveniles should not be tried in courts as adults.
Adult prisons are too extreme to have a child of 13 years of age contained in. Also be sentenced for life in prison can destroy a young adult’s mentality that is still going under development. Juveniles that commit crimes should be sent to facilities where there are other of the same age so it wouldn’t be so extreme on them. A way of also handling not having juveniles serve their entire life in prison is putting them in special programs to why they did that in the first place. In that program they can find answers to their rehabilitation so they can clear their confusion and start over with their life. It also not is always the child’s fault because sometimes they can be diagnosed with illness they have or a disorder. It can cause them to act rash and make them have the sensation to kill and destroy.
There are very few things that people agree on universally, however one of them is their attitude toward pedophiles. No other type of person elicits the same kind of reaction as those who prey on arguably our most vulnerable population. Pedophiles alone out of other sex offenders drive intense fear and anger into the public, so much so that they are the reason for Megan’s Law requiring sex offenders to register as such since 1994. More recently, the enactment of an “International Megan’s Law” that was voted on last year requires for all sex offenders to get their status added to their passports. The only issue with all of this is being a pedophile isn’t a sex crime.
If a juvenile, over fourteen has the ability and willingness to commit a violent crime they should be tried and punished as an adult. A fourteen year old knows right from wrong. He (or she) is able to tell whether they are committing a crime. If a juvenile is mature enough to commit an adult crime, they should be treated as an adult, and punished justly according to the adult law. The difference in age in two people should not determine their punishment if they have committed the same crime under the same or similar pretenses.
Many young adolescents who have committed horrendous crimes have been a huge topic amongst the Supreme Court. Whether young adolescents are viewed as innocent, naive children to the public, this not changed the fact they can commit brutal crimes. In spite of the fact that adolescents have committed brutal crimes such as murder, one needs to understand that their brains are not as fully developed as an adult brain would be. Adolescents should not be trialed to a life sentence or attend adult prisons; however, they should be punished for their actions and undergo rehabilitation programs to help them be prepared to fit in with the rest of society.
Cohen, Seghorn, and Calmas (1969) described three types of child molesters derived from their clinical studies. One type had a history of relatively normal functioning and the incident of molestation appears to reflect a reaction to a severe threat to their sense of sexual adequacy. Another type had a history of poor social-sexual functioning and is regarded as primitive and immature in terms of social-sexual skills. The last type they found in their study had offenses involving cruel and vicious assaults on children and the act of molestation is regarded as more aggressive then sexual. (Mc Creary, 1975)
In 2002 the Catholic Church was rocked with scandalous reports of Priests sexually molesting young children and particularly boys. The scandal is the result of numerous investigations, allegations, arrests, trials, convictions and imprisonment of Catholic Priests. It became largely reported that once trusted and respected Catholic Priests were pedophiles. The Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM) categorizes pedophilia as a mental disorder if the sexual fantasies or urges involve prepubescent children , if they last six months or longer, if the individual has acted on them, or if they cause marked distress” (American Psychiatric Association, 2000).
The American Psychiatric Association has declared that pedophilia is no longer thought of as a mental disorder. In early studies, (DSM-III-R), pedophilia was characterized as a disorder if "the person acted out on the urges, or was markedly distressed by them" (Medinger 2). Nowadays, the diagnostic description is that pedophilia is a disorder if the offender is mentally impaired, agitated, or experiencing guilt as a result of what he is doing. In other words, a pedophile can "play" all he wants until he becomes irrational about it. Outwardly, the pedophile may, in today's society, seem to be a perfectly normal human being. Pedophilia, like homosexuality and transvestitism, is just a sexual preference (APA).