Originally posted by badw0lf
Originally posted by Kailassa
Originally posted by debz325
If you are saying that mentally disabled people should not be in prison then the prison's would be empty.I am also not sure that intelligence is
important in moral questions.I personally believe all child molesters should be hung in a public square.What kind of society does not protect the
innocent?God bless Texas!
If the boy had been fondled by a 7 year old boy, would you hang the boy who fondled him in a public square?
If an adult, through no fault of his own, only has the intelligence of of a seven year old boy, should he be hung in a public square for feeling up a
child?
If you say yes and are typical of Texans, then I say God help Texas.
An adult man with the mental age of a 7 year old, still has the urges of
an adult. So while I get your point, I don't think it is completely valid.
There must be an alternate solution to the problem.
what a stinking situation, no less.......
My point was that neither life imprisonment nor capital punishment are appropriate when punishing someone for a law they cannot understand. The
important thing when dealing with an overgrown child is to teach, and to punish in a way that gets the point across and makes him remember that what
he did was wrong.
When my son started exposing himself on the train, I talked to the local station-master, who agreed to help. I took my son to the station, persuaded
him to confess to the stationmaster, who then told him off mightily and made him clean up the station. Confession to the injured party, and genuine
remorse, followed by an appropriate punishment to clean the slate, can turn a person's behaviour around.
With the intellectually disabled man feeling up the girl, ideally the parents would get together and decide on a suitable punishment. The perpetrator
should have to apologise to the child's parents, and fulfil some clearly laid out obligations both as a punishment and as a way of showing
remorse.
Where I grew up, in the Aussie bush, we didn't have much time for the local sole policeman, despite him being a good man. People in the community
were valued. It was understood that some would go off the rails in their younger days and the community took on the responsibility of "bringing them
around."
I guess the fact that many off us dealt with animals, and we valued those with "heart", so we would spend time training a difficult animal without
breaking its spirit, meant people developed the character and experience to handle their difficult offspring. We also had fires, floods and droughts
to contend with, which brought the community together.
Being part of a community which you have contributed to and which has taken care of you makes for a special breed of person.
When people are brought up alienated, getting nothing and giving nothing, the community becomes fractured and everyone loses out.