PLEASE CHECK THIS OUT. Our own Aeronmelon is going through some shit at the moment and could use some help. Check it out here and consider an upvote or a comment to push it into activity. Sorry, not something I do often or will be spamming. But I care about my friend and if I can get a couple more eyes on his situation then I’m going to try to do what I can. (Last one I promise. Just twice. Not going to spam but dude is a big part of the Lemmy community, especially with Trek, and he deserves the help. And to the mods, if this doesn’t fit and you want to remove? Go for it. I completely understand it and I am sorry)

Edit: Oh wait I’m the mod here. Well, I say it is fine

  • absentbird@lemmy.world
    182·
    6 days ago

    There is a tragically high recidivism rate for sexual predators, which is probably the best argument for long sentences: there aren’t many opportunities to abuse children in prison.

    Though the American rehabilitation system is pretty weak in general, other nations have had much better results. Norway has a sex crime recidivism rate below 10% (vs 67% in the US).

      • absentbird@lemmy.world
        111·
        6 days ago

        Yeah, the solution is to have a functioning rehabilitation system. But in the US, with the system we currently have, it doesn’t seem to make a difference how long you keep them there. We actually have a higher recidivism from our rehabilitation than from doing nothing at all.

        So, in order of effectiveness:

        1. Effective rehabilitation
        2. Nothing
        3. American prison system

        The only benefit to a long sentence is that it reduces the number of years they can spend harming children, though there’s a fairly high chance they abuse fellow inmates instead, who could then become abusers themselves once they get out, so the whole thing is fucked and stupid.

    • lmmarsano@lemmynsfw.comEnglish
      4·
      6 days ago

      tragically high recidivism rate for sexual predators

      I’ve seen that debunked as a myth, so we shouldn’t be so confident. A quick web search reveals a review of crime statistics finding lower than average recidivism rates & a comprehensive overview of the scientific literature finding the older studies that drew your conclusion to be fundamentally flawed & the concept of a base rate of sexual recidivism to be built on sand (unfounded assumptions driven by biased pseudoscience & government pressure rather than science). The latter includes gems like

      The risk paradigm faced serious criticism for its portrayal of all individuals convicted of sex crimes as having fixed and continuing propensities to commit sexual offenses (e.g., Soothill, 2010), particularly given the relatively low recidivism rates reported in numerous studies.

      When homologous recidivism (i.e., recidivism involving the same offense type) is examined, sexual recidivism rates are not just relatively low but some of the lowest across types of crime (e.g., Langan et al., 2003).

      It also points out that the definition of sexual offense is a moving target since research began, especially with conduct that was an offense before & is now legal.

      • absentbird@lemmy.world
        6·
        6 days ago

        Huh, well I took criminology in 2006 so I guess I’m out of date on that. I’m glad it’s not as bad as expected; I still think the US in particular has a long way to go in regards to rehabilitation.

        It’s also strangely cultural, where it seems that some countries have substantially lower rates of offenders and others much higher. It just seems like the systems here perpetuate the crimes in a way; like the abuse of children is this curse inherent to capitalistic christian patriarchy.

      • chonglibloodsport@lemmy.world
        3·
        6 days ago

        The key word here is predator. Not everyone who commits a sex offence is a predator. You can be convicted of a sex crime for public urination.

        A sexual predator is pretty much a serial offender by definition. So the claim that these people would have high recidivism rates should not be surprising.

        • lmmarsano@lemmynsfw.comEnglish
          2·
          6 days ago

          The key word here is predator.

          Not much of one. Is there a reliable scientific definition for it & is there good quality scientific research supporting your claim that isn’t outdated?

          If your definition of predator is tautological (eg, those highly likely to reoffend), then why limit your argument to only sexual predators?

          As pointed out by the comprehensive overview linked before, a problem with your claim is that there is no static & fixed propensity to reoffend even when narrowed by type of offense. The idea of a static & fixed propensity first began to unravel when researchers noticed risk to reoffend vary with offender age

          The first was the issue of offender age—the idea that risk of sexual recidivism is age dependent had been overlooked in previous research (e.g., Barbaree et al., 2003), and work in this area became something of a precursor to the ideas and research that followed (e.g., Lussier & Healey, 2009).

          Then they noticed rates vary by their developmental periods

          Examining recidivism rates across developmental periods raised clear challenges to the idea of a static propensity to offend for all offenders.

          Examining dynamic aspects of human lives led researchers to reconsider

          whether a person’s level of risk remains stable over time (e.g., whether a high-risk offender always remains at a high risk to reoffend) (e.g., Thornton et al., 2021).

          The field of correctional psychology stressed the importance of dynamic risk factors responsible for criminal recidivism (e.g., Hanson & Harris, 2000), and developmental and life-course researchers emphasized the dynamic aspects of offending (e.g., Lussier et al., 2021a). Central to the paradigm shift is the idea that the risk of sexual reoffending is more dynamic than previously thought: it can change over time and across developmental stages and can fluctuate according to life circumstances.

          Newer research finds these dynamic risk factors affect the rate of sexual recidivism, which can reach quite low, so it isn’t simply a fixed, static rate.

          Predicting who will be a sexual recidivist (if that concept is scientifically valid) isn’t straightforward, so a tautological definition of predator doesn’t get us far.