What is a fair punishment for rape?

[Natapoc]

This thread seems wrong somehow. Like the question itself is offensive in a way. How can there possibly be a "fair" punishment for rape? I don't believe it to be possible without a time machine.

[Free Baltic]

Excuse me, but, unless I missed it, the definition of rape was never completed. You can't really discuss a crime or the consequences if you don't have a clear idea about it.

I am male, I have never been raped, commited rape or even thought about doing that [sexually]. However, I was raped, in a manner of speaking. I felt violated for years, and, of course would never wish that or anything remotely similar on anyone else.

I was at a party with people from my university, half of the people there were unknown to me, but I assumed that they were at least friends of friends and OK. Someone gave me a browny, a rather large and tasty one, which I ate with gusto and a beer or two. Know two things, I had never used any drugs except sugar, chocolate and beer or wine [in moderation] and had no desire to experiment.

The technical term for what happened to me is, I believe, "The Mother of All Bad Trips." It turns out that unbeknownst to me I was allergic to THC. I nearly died, and was not feeling anywhere near normal for weeks. I suffered flashbacks after that, was a bit paranoid for some time about any drugs or eating or drinking anything with strangers. One of my friends told me later that when I started to flip out, the couple who brought it thought it was very funny, and said everyone does it.

So, was that rape? It was physical violation, with potentially serious [even life-threatening] consequences, performed casually by a couple of colossal jerks. It resulted in fairly disturbing ongoing mental distress. I did not die, and I don't think there has been permanent injury [possibly because I have been extremely careful, even paranoid, about avoiding a repetition].

How would I have punished them? After I started to feel normal again I would go into a rage that I coldn't find out who they were or call the cops and have them arrested. I wanted them charged with reckless endangerment, assault and battery and any other charge available, but I did not want them killed, mutilated, raped or sent up for life.

So there you have it. Rape is not sex, I think it is any kind of physical and/or mental violation of another human being.

[Kreanoltha]

Rape - is violation of the lowest degree. It is never justifiable. It is a premediated act on par with murder 1.

A rapist knows what they are doing is wrong.

They are giving into thoughts and then try to shirk blame by saying they are sick. Drunkeness should not be counted as an excuse - they still have the ability to control thoughts and actions. They choose not to. The act starts in the mind - in the wilful decision of the criminal to take something by force.

Therefore, castration (removing the penis/labia) would only treat the symptoms of the crime, not the origin.

How do you change what's going on in someone's head?

You can't. Therefore you punish them. Castration/emasculation is the best way to do it. You can also let people know that they are a rapist by branding a symbol or letter on their hands and forehead. That would increase the level of punishment a great deal.

[Vestbredden]

A rapist is a sick person. Every rapist should get all the help that they need to get well including:
-counseling
-teraphy (both individual and group)
-coaching

To rape someone is a call for help.

[Bottle]

This thread seems wrong somehow. Like the question itself is offensive in a way. How can there possibly be a "fair" punishment for rape? I don't believe it to be possible without a time machine.

I don't understand exactly what you mean here. Why couldn't there be a fair punishment for rape?

[Olthar]

What do you think would be the best most and fair just punishment for rape?

A check for $20 and an ice-cream sundae.

[Kreanoltha]

A rapist is a sick person. Every rapist should get all the help that they need to get well including:
-counseling
-teraphy (both individual and group)
-coaching

To rape someone is a call for help.

Uh... No. They need to be punished. There are better ways to call out for help then to destroy someone's life. Rapists deserve the worst punishment that Hannibal Lecter can devise.

[Bottle]

A rapist is a sick person. Every rapist should get all the help that they need to get well including:
-counseling
-teraphy (both individual and group)
-coaching

To rape someone is a call for help.

Uh... No. They need to be punished. There are better ways to call out for help then to destroy someone's life. Rapists deserve the worst punishment that Hannibal Lecter can devise.

While I absolutely do not agree that rape is a "call for help," I also think there is a lot to be gained by providing therapy for rapists...while they are in prison for the rest of their lives.

[Natapoc]

This thread seems wrong somehow. Like the question itself is offensive in a way. How can there possibly be a "fair" punishment for rape? I don't believe it to be possible without a time machine.

I don't understand exactly what you mean here. Why couldn't there be a fair punishment for rape?

Because the damage can not be undone.

[Bottle]

I don't understand exactly what you mean here. Why couldn't there be a fair punishment for rape?

Because the damage can not be undone.

So? That's true of many crimes. How do you undo the damage of murder? How do you undo the damage if somebody destroys a priceless piece of art? How do you undo the damage if someone is kidnapped and held prisoner for weeks on end?

Punishment often isn't about repairing the damage done.

[Sebytania]

Uh... No. They need to be punished. There are better ways to call out for help then to destroy someone's life. Rapists deserve the worst punishment that Hannibal Lecter can devise.

While I absolutely do not agree that rape is a "call for help," I also think there is a lot to be gained by providing therapy for rapists...while they are in prison for the rest of their lives.

Or, if the counseling is done right, they could also return to society as contributing citizens.

[Bottle]

While I absolutely do not agree that rape is a "call for help," I also think there is a lot to be gained by providing therapy for rapists...while they are in prison for the rest of their lives.

Or, if the counseling is done right, they could also return to society as contributing citizens.

I do not personally agree with that idea. I believe rapists should not return to society, although they certainly can contribute by working hard while in prison.

[Kreanoltha]

Because the damage can not be undone.

So? That's true of many crimes. How do you undo the damage of murder? How do you undo the damage if somebody destroys a priceless piece of art? How do you undo the damage if someone is kidnapped and held prisoner for weeks on end?

Punishment often isn't about repairing the damage done.

Exactly. Punishment for a crime is the ultimate way to remind people that actions have consequences. I trust you know that according to the laws of nature state that for every action there is an equal and opposite reaction. Why should this not be true for crime?

[Tahar Joblis]

I read the article. It was a nice article. It isn't doing anything spectacularly silly, and the author did take measures to control for as much as possible given the scale of the study.

I'm not really certain why you cut my quote so short here. I pointed out numerous issues I had with the study. Do you think that they are not issues?

I think they are common issues. And not necessarily a complete list of issues, either, but I felt like addressing some of them and bringing up some other new issues.

Indeed. My point was that such a policy - particularly when it doesn't sound like "offered" is the proper word - would be likely to increase the number of people who recanted. The idea of taking a polygraph makes most people nervous - and it immediately puts the alleged victim on trial. If they think you aren't going to believe and they're going to get in trouble anyway, why continue on with the process?

Discontinuing the process is not the same as recanting.

Polygraphs, which measure the level of anxiety a person is displaying, really should not be a standard practice with an alleged rape victim - who is likely to be extremely anxious even if she is being completely honest. And, in a society where most rape victims are aware that they are unlikely to be believed, starting out with, "Well, let's just check and see if you're a liar, shall we?" isn't really a good way to begin.

Polygraphs are in general not particularly effective. They're not admissible in court, and I assume that the police will mention that they aren't admissible in court.

However, police are going to question any accuser in detail. Is the use of a polygraph specifically influencing the results? This is a question that seems to have occurred to Kanin:

n 1988, we gained access to the police records of two large Midwest-
ern state universities. With the assistance of the chief investigating officers
for rape offenses, all forcible rape complaints during the past 3 years were
examined. Since the two schools produced a roughly comparable number
of rape complaints and false rape allegations, the false allegation cases were
combined, n = 32. This represents exactly 50% of all forcible rape com-
plaints reported on both campuses. Quite unexpectedly then, we find that
these university women, when filing a rape complaint, were as likely to file
a false as a valid charge. Other reports from university police agencies sup-
port these findings (Jay, 1991).
In both police agencies, the taking of the complaint and the follow-up
investigation was the exclusive responsibility of a ranking female officer.
Neither agency employed the polygraph and neither declared the complaint
false without a recantation of the charge. Most striking is the patterning
of the reasons for the false allegations given by the complainants, a pat-
terning similar to that found for the nonstudent city complainants.

The use of a polygraph doesn't appear to result in a different recantation rate. Now, that said, we're talking about "forcible rape" according to the paper, but as we see here, the national average rape reports peaked at 0.4 per 1,000 per annum in 1992. For an average town of 70,000, that would be a peak of 28 reports per year. His reported "forcible rape" rate is a low 0.2 per 1,000, which compares favorably with the current crime statistics for Muncie (a town comparatively near to Perdue, which had a population of around 70,000 during the period of the study). This is, in other words, an environment in which fairly low reporting is occurring, and that would be a reason to ask some questions. Some people seem to have suggested that having female officers handling rape cases makes a big difference in figures, but the Kanin's addenda suggests that isn't part of the explanation for the figures he documents.

You'll notice - again - very different figures on rape rate estimates within just that Post article. There's a lot of disagreement over what the "false rape rate" is. Given widespread misunderstanding (or perhaps we should say widespread disagreement) on the definition of rape, legally or linguistically speaking, it's going to be very difficult to nail down. However, while I can see how someone might recant in order to try to avoid trouble, I have trouble believing that an overwhelming majority of recantations are false, and he's talking about a pretty high recantation rate among accusers who have gone to the police.

If you're going to falsely accuse someone of rape, do you think you would go to the police, or would you rather just make the accusation so it can stand there and serve most of the same social functions? We can question Kanin's study - but it's no more dubious than many of the low figures thrown around, and false accusations don't stop with recantation. US DOJ statistics are probably the most generous respectable figure, and they give an 8% "unfounded" rate for rape reports, meaning that police are throwing out 8% of rape reports, but many of these studies are trying to measure the rate of false accusations using different metrics.

I believe the justice system works most of the time in most ways. To point out where it isn't, I want to see hard data. I expect that if 42% of rape cases brought to trial result in a verdict of "not guilty" and 58% "guilty," that a significant percentage of the 42% and a measurably smaller minority of the 58% (perhaps as high as 5-10% in the latter case, I don't have that much faith in the justice system) were in fact innocent (just like with most crimes, there's both type I and type II errors). You might feel differently, but I like to try to treat most people who are found "not guilty" as innocent, and that means a fair number of false accusations are not simply dismissed by the police - the police are sufficiently convinced to make an arrest, and the case then moves along to trial.

So, if you like, we have several kinds of "false rapes" that exist - just as many as the types of "unpunished rapes," nearly.

First, false perception of rape. This complements the category of victims who were raped, but don't realize it was really rape ("He didn't hit me..."), and relates to definitional disagreement over what constitutes rape, as well as the occasional (but very rare) instance of psychiatric delusion.
Second, false accusation of rape that made it to friends/family. This complements the category of victims who were raped, but didn't tell anybody.
Third, false accusations of rape that made it to the police. This complements the category of victims who didn't report to the police (probably because they didn't trust the police).
Fourth, false accusations of rape that made it to court (but are revealed there as false). This complements the rapes that didn't make it to trial in spite of a police report.
Fifth, false accusations of rape that resulted in conviction. This complements the rapists who were found "not guilty" in court.

Kanin is trying to measure false accusations revealed in the third step. An accurate measurement of this would be an underestimate of the number of false accusations present at that step, since there will be false accusations the police don't detect as false.

This article is publicly available and talks about a 2006 literature review (visible here if you have a subscription, e.g., through a university IP). In the literature review, I think the most salient criticism of Kanin is that he relies heavily on the police following their own policy, which is indeed a questionable assumption, and it's puzzling that it's almost the only study of its particular kind. Most of the studies cited in the literature review (again, this is all about the third step) show a substantial fraction of false accusations.

]See the bolded portion. A victim could be pressured to recant without even being aware that doing so would carry a penalty. And afterward, why should she suddenly start trusting the system?

If she doesn't trust the system, why is she even going to the police? Any accuser of any crime is going to be questioned in detail, usually with some skepticism. This is true of other crimes as well.

That might very well be part of it - even a substantial part. There are plenty of people whose first thought when a claim of rape is made is that the victim is likely to be falsely reporting it. Most people also have preconceived notions about how a rape victim "should" act and see anything outside of that as evidence that there was no rape.

But there's also an issue that we really can't do anything about. Rape is, by its very nature, difficult to prove. There are rarely any witnesses to a rape, so it comes down to the word of the people involved. Physical evidence (if the victim has the presence of mind to go straight to the police or a hospital and the evidence is even gathered) can often also be explained by consensual sex.

And therefore, in a criminal standard of "beyond a reasonable doubt," we would expect rape convictions to be fairly low. Yet they're actually quite high by some measures - rape cases brought to trial are concluded guilty a whopping 58% of the time in the UK - and exoneration by DNA evidence after the first trial is hardly unheard of for older cases. That's scary for someone getting accused of rape. It comes down to convincing twelve people. It's pretty good, but you make errors both ways.

I think a lot of people don't quite understand how bad it is to be falsely accused of rape, and that includes people making false accusations. It really bites to be falsely accused. The "Don" referenced in that article was the older brother of one of my older brother's classmates (way back in elementary school, even), and was the assistant track coach at my high school when I went there. His suicide came very shortly after I graduated.

In that case - unlike spurious accusations, which we're debating the rate of - rape indubitably happened, but he didn't do it. He got to have the experience of his entire life being turned upside down. Overnight, a lot of "friends" stop being friends, and the rumors always spread further than the retractions. People hunt through your history to justify "why you became a rapist" when you didn't. Sure, it's "psychological trauma," but that's the main damage of rape most of the time, now, isn't it?

[Dempublicents1]

Discontinuing the process is not the same as recanting.

True. But people who wish to discontinue the process will generally be pushed to give a reason for it.

Polygraphs are in general not particularly effective. They're not admissible in court, and I assume that the police will mention that they aren't admissible in court.

You know what they say about assuming, right?

However, police are going to question any accuser in detail. Is the use of a polygraph specifically influencing the results?

The polygraph itself may not necessarily influence the decision, but the implications of having it as standard policy for rape cases says something about the police in question. I highly doubt that they employed the polygraph for every report of a crime, yet they made it standard practice in rape cases. This suggests that they already believed that a large number of rape cases were false reporting - that they were already biased to see the alleged victims as liars.

And that can be true even if the polygraph isn't employed. There are all sorts of ways in which a police officer can indicate to a victim that he is not inclined to believe her and that can lead to someone recanting.

Note: I'm not saying every case was a false recantation or anything like that. But I am disputing the idea that this precinct was somehow an ideal pick for such a study. And using a university setting afterward - a setting which is undoubtedly a different demographic from the population as a whole - isn't any better.

You'll notice - again - very different figures on rape rate estimates within just that Post article. There's a lot of disagreement over what the "false rape rate" is. Given widespread misunderstanding (or perhaps we should say widespread disagreement) on the definition of rape, legally or linguistically speaking, it's going to be very difficult to nail down. However, while I can see how someone might recant in order to try to avoid trouble, I have trouble believing that an overwhelming majority of recantations are false, and he's talking about a pretty high recantation rate among accusers who have gone to the police.

If you're going to falsely accuse someone of rape, do you think you would go to the police, or would you rather just make the accusation so it can stand there and serve most of the same social functions?

As I pointed out in my first post on the article, many of their "typical" cases don't seem to have been people who intended to go to the police. Many of them claimed that a rape had happened to a doctor or parent or other authority figure and were then brought to the police by said authority figure. It sounds like a lie that got out of their control, rather than an intent to report to the police.

In addition, many of the "typical" cases were women who did not name any specific assailant.

We can question Kanin's study - but it's no more dubious than many of the low figures thrown around, and false accusations don't stop with recantation.

Like I said, I haven't really seen any good evidence that false reporting in rape cases happens any more or less often than similar false reporting of other crimes. I'm just as skeptical of claims that there are far fewer cases of false reporting in rape. I understand the reasons that people believe either to be true, but reasons that make sense aren't actual hard evidence.

I believe the justice system works most of the time in most ways. To point out where it isn't, I want to see hard data. I expect that if 42% of rape cases brought to trial result in a verdict of "not guilty" and 58% "guilty," that a significant percentage of the 42% and a measurably smaller minority of the 58% (perhaps as high as 5-10% in the latter case, I don't have that much faith in the justice system) were in fact innocent (just like with most crimes, there's both type I and type II errors). You might feel differently, but I like to try to treat most people who are found "not guilty" as innocent, and that means a fair number of false accusations are not simply dismissed by the police - the police are sufficiently convinced to make an arrest, and the case then moves along to trial.

I think equating "not guilty" with "innocent" is an incorrect characterization of the justice system. "Not guilty" means that a jury was not convinced beyond a reasonable doubt, not that they were convinced that the accused was innocent, much less that the person was in fact innocent. Rape is, by it's very nature, going to be incredibly difficult to prove beyond a reasonable doubt - regardless of whether or not it happened.

And therefore, in a criminal standard of "beyond a reasonable doubt," we would expect rape convictions to be fairly low. Yet they're actually quite high by some measures - rape cases brought to trial are concluded guilty a whopping 58% of the time in the UK - and exoneration by DNA evidence after the first trial is hardly unheard of for older cases. That's scary for someone getting accused of rape. It comes down to convincing twelve people. It's pretty good, but you make errors both ways.

Not all that surprising. I don't know about the UK, but I know that prosecutors in the US are not required to actually pursue every possible case. Most won't even bother with a case unless they're pretty certain they can win it.

As you mentioned, this is actually a big part of the problem with many of the statistics out there. They report "unfounded" cases, but these include the cases in which the prosecutor (or the police) didn't find enough evidence to pursue a prosecution.

Much as rape is, by its very nature, difficult to prove beyond a reasonable doubt, it is also, by its very nature, difficult to quantify accurately.

I think a lot of people don't quite understand how bad it is to be falsely accused of rape, and that includes people making false accusations.

I would agree with this.

[Free Lelouche]

All rape is under-reported, you know this is true.

...so that would mean that you have no proof that the majority of all inmates, 50+%, suffer rape in prison?

I consider it a reasonable assumption, if only 1/4 of rapes are reported, at 23% that's basically 92% of the population

even if its not true, it's fairly safe to say, that the number of rapes in prison is so inexorably high, that even if it's not the majority, it's still unacceptable.

[Georgism]

Depending how bad it was, anything up to and including a life sentence, same as you get for murder.

[Great Nepal]

Rape - is violation of the lowest degree. It is never justifiable. It is a premediated act on par with murder 1.

A rapist knows what they are doing is wrong.

They are giving into thoughts and then try to shirk blame by saying they are sick. Drunkeness should not be counted as an excuse - they still have the ability to control thoughts and actions. They choose not to. The act starts in the mind - in the wilful decision of the criminal to take something by force.

Therefore, castration (removing the penis/labia) would only treat the symptoms of the crime, not the origin.

How do you change what's going on in someone's head?

By locking them up for life and forcing them to work and pay the debt back to society?

[Georgism]

By locking them up for life and forcing them to work and pay the debt back to society?

That doesn't change what's going on in their heads, although it seems like a reasonably good punishment. I wouldn't protest very loudly if it was implemented.

[Galt Worshippers]

Rape - is violation of the lowest degree. It is never justifiable. It is a premediated act on par with murder 1.

A rapist knows what they are doing is wrong.

They are giving into thoughts and then try to shirk blame by saying they are sick. Drunkeness should not be counted as an excuse - they still have the ability to control thoughts and actions. They choose not to. The act starts in the mind - in the wilful decision of the criminal to take something by force.

Therefore, castration (removing the penis/labia) would only treat the symptoms of the crime, not the origin.

How do you change what's going on in someone's head?

By locking them up for life and forcing them to work and pay the debt back to society?

Oh yes, I forgot, people who go to jail are fixed forever by the terrible boredom of sitting-in-a-small-room-for-a-very-long-time so they never re-offend. My bad!

[Georgism]

Oh yes, I forgot, people who go to jail are fixed forever by the terrible boredom of sitting-in-a-small-room-for-a-very-long-time so they never re-offend. My bad!

Forcing somebody to work is making them sit in their cell all day?

It's also quite hard to re-offend if you're in there for life, as he said.

[Great Nepal]

By locking them up for life and forcing them to work and pay the debt back to society?

Oh yes, I forgot, people who go to jail are fixed forever by the terrible boredom of sitting-in-a-small-room-for-a-very-long-time so they never re-offend. My bad!

Working hard =/= sitting on ass all day.
Also, it is almost impossible to re offend if they are inside for life. Well other than to their fellow rapist. But what is the problem with a rapist raping another rapist?

[Georgism]

Also, it is almost impossible to re offend if they are inside for life. Well other than to their fellow rapist. But what is the problem with a rapist raping another rapist?

They're already being punished through their sentence. The law should be upheld even between criminals. Vigilantism is not (and should not be) allowed.

[Great Nepal]

Also, it is almost impossible to re offend if they are inside for life. Well other than to their fellow rapist. But what is the problem with a rapist raping another rapist?

They're already being punished through their sentence. The law should be upheld even between criminals. Vigilantism is not (and should not be) allowed.

Legally no, but there is no point in keeping a life of guard in danger for those rapist.

[Georgism]

Legally no, but there is no point in keeping a life of guard in danger for those rapist.

Yes there is, that's the guard's job.

We should however make sure that guards are properly equipped and supported to ensure that they are able to do their job properly, so that the risk of loss of life (or even injury) is minimal.