SCOTUS: Sex offenders can be held indefinitely

Convicted sex offenders don't deserve rights. They deserve to be raped and killed in prison.

 

That applies to a lot of criminals.... repeat offenders.
I realize sex offenders are particularly heinous, but this screams discrimination.
Small Potatoes summed up my stance ... Life sentences are fine as long as it is imposed up front.

 

Debbie Downer checks in

 

There used to be, but in the 1980s we dismantled the public health apparatus that would have institutionalized them.

D'oh.

 

Is it just me, or do these two rulings seem to contradict each other?
The sex offender ruling is ridiculous. We'll turn murderers out on the street (assuming they've pleaded to manslaughter) but this group of criminals is too dangerous to let loose when they've served their time? I always thought constitutional law was built on the slippery slope premise. The Supreme Court just greased that mutha with Crisco and bacon fat.

 

Discrimination? I don't know. Yeah, discrimination based on race, religion, gender, etc. is bad & wrong, but do we really have to worry about discriminating against sex offenders.

I mean, shouldn't we? Especially if we still consider them a risk?

 

One of the big problems is, who decides they're not a risk anymore? The possibility for abuse of power is tremendous.

 

Not sure I see the validity of the comparison, actually. 42 days is a long time, but at least it's fixed.

It's clear the definition of "rights" utterly eludes you.

 

The do seem, if not to be in direct contradiction, to come at similar arguments from opposite sides.

I wonder about how the view the application of the 8th amendment. Clearly, they don't look at life without parole to be "cruel & unusual punishment" in all cases.

What about the age of the offender changes their opinion? Does it become cruel because of the duration of the confinement or is it strictly because the offender was young?

 

Hard to argue with that. I guess I'd lean on the side of being more careful.

But I'd think that some of the concerns are based on the offenders own words about what their impulses are.

 

So if the offender says he doesn't have impulses, you keep him locked up. And if he does say he has impulses, you keep him locked up. Seems asking him is a bit pointless.

That sort of nebulous power handed to the government is, I thought, the kind of thing that those Founding Father types wanted to avoid.

 

And it remains bizarre that the people, by and large, who will support this decision are the same ones who insist that government is to be limited in every way, shape and form.