i’ve been sitting on this post for a while. it’s something i feel needs expressing on tumblr but moreover, it’s something i feel that i need to express.
sex offenders, pedophiles, and rapists don’t deserve the death penalty.
sex offenders, pedophiles, and rapists are not exempt from your radical prison abolition.
when you fight for the abolition of punitive incarceration and the death penalty, you fight for sex offenders, pedophiles, and rapists. you fight for everyone.
there’s nuances to this. and it’s a difficult fucking conversation to have. it’s difficult when you’re a victim, it’s difficult when you’ve witnessed atrocities people can commit, it’s difficult when you have a passion for safeguarding and community protection. it’s difficult to treat people who act without compassion, with compassion, but to achieve the goals that prison abolitionists, socialists, anarcho-communists and the general communal left want, you have to.
before you get your panties in a twist, hear me out. there are different points and different levels to this conversation that need to be discussed and need to be understood.
let’s first look at mistrials, false accusations and bias within the justice system.
there is an ugly, lengthy history of western justice systems accusing bipoc and queer people of sexual offences and using that to perform lynchings and chemical castrations, and to incarcerate in inhumane conditions. sexual offences are an easy, convenient thing for the courts and the justice system to levy against minority groups, as it evokes the strongest reaction from the public seeking punitive justice dopamine, and gets people the most angry and impassioned in opposition to these groups.
take a look at the attack transgender people are under at the moment, for example. what’s the go-to accusation? grooming. because that is the one surefire way to get people banding against you, even if the claims aren’t true. let’s take a look at the vast and troubling history of systemic racism and false accusations of sexual offences coming hand in hand, accusing innocent black men of sexual assault against white women to feed the twisted misrepresentation of poc that justice systems were enforcing.
that all still happens today. systemic racism is far from over, especially in the justice and prison systems.
it’s why it’s so important to understand that false accusations come left, right and centre from prejudiced cruel intent, meaning that death penalties and brutal prison sentences can be handed out to innocent people for the sake of furthering an agenda of division and discrimination.
however, we also need to look at those who did commit the crime.
it is absolutely vital to the upholding of a remotely civil society that we also bring this conversation to the people accused of sexual offences, pedophilia and rape who did do what they are accused of.
feels bad, doesn’t it? of course it does. these aren’t easy conversations to have or easy realities to face. but as a left, as a movement, we need to be less reactionary than the right.
so let’s take it step by step.
there are many reasons why a person may end up committing sexual offences. none of these are justifications, but explanations of behaviour is important when we approach this from a sociological point of view.
sometimes, sexual offences come from a cycle of abuse. it’s what somebody may have grown up with and been socialised with and then, because of a lack of intervention when it was needed in their life, they go on to perpetuate these abusive cycles.
sometimes, sexual offences come from social isolation. things like mental ill health, poor psychosocial development, being ostracised from peer groups due to innocent differences. this can lead people to commit sexual offences as a way to reclaim social control or lost years of appropriate sexual development. this could also, like before, be stopped by appropriate intervention from relevant services.
sometimes, sexual offences come from socialisation. people may get sucked in to a social group or sector whilst still developing and begin to internalise the behaviours of those around them. this is especially prevalent in upper class, white, cisgender men. this could also, again, be prevented by intervention from services, appropriate education and a reviewed division of funding from government bodies.
sometimes, sexual offences come from incarceration. people may go to prison and become socialised to the violence happening around them, and then go on to carry out that violence — often, acts a person would never have committed before socialisation into punitive incarceration. you guessed it — this could be prevented by appropriate intervention from services, but also, by dismantling the punitive justice systems that breed this sort of recidivism in the first place.
sometimes, sexual offences come from nothing.
and guess what? those people shouldn’t be killed either. it’s very, very fucking rare that sex offenders, pedophiles and rapists have absolutely zero developmental, social or psychopathological reasons to commit the crimes they do. in fact, i wouldn’t be shocked if it was completely impossible to behave like that with no precursor to it. but even if it’s possible that somebody becomes a sex offender for absolutely no reason, they still shouldn’t be killed.
because it solves nothing.
killing criminals doesn’t fix a fucking thing. it doesn’t reduce crime, that’s for sure. it sure as shit doesn’t help intervention services offer preventative care before it’s too late.
the death penalty being used for sex offenders does nothing but worsen the problem. punitive justice does nothing but worsen the problem. because then, if there’s somebody engaging in thoughts or behaviours and earnestly want to try and stop, they won’t, because they’ll have been taught by the justice system that they’ll get killed or incarcerated for decades if they do.
even people who haven’t offended but are struggling with thoughts will believe that coming forwards could put them on a watch list, could lead to false convictions, etc. the more inhumanely our justice systems treat sex offenders, the less come forward seeking prevention and support, which means an increase in sex crimes and an increase in overall severity.
there needs to be a whole different approach to this. because when the left demand vitriolically that all rapists and pedophiles be killed, it comes from a place of emotion and a desire to stop bad things happening.
but if we want to actually stop these offences from happening, we need to be more compassionate. tough pill to swallow, right?
norway is a fantastic example of a country that’s reformed their punitive justice system to a rehabilitative one and has seen absolutely fantastic results. the maximum sentence in norway is 21 years in facilities that focus on rehabilitation, resocialisation, therapeutic approaches and understanding.
their recidivism rates dropped to 20%, one of the lowest in the world
and those incarceration laws? they apply to everyone! all the most grisly crimes, the most violent people, the sex offenders and rapists and pedophiles, they’re all included in this. no sentence greater than 21 years. no death penalty. no punitive incarceration. and look — it works. people change, people can access support, people can do the time for their crimes whilst knowing that they still have an opportunity for a second chance which means there’s more motivation to better themselves.
the left need to get less reactionary about this topic, and we need to do it very fucking quickly
these are difficult conversations and i know this from experience. but they’re conversations the left needs to be having when talking about prison abolition and rehabilitation. those conversations need to include everyone. it is so vitally important that those conversations include everyone. all people means all people, even the ones we hate or think are evil or are traumatised by.
