Last week was an interesting week for children and sexual abuse. We've been discussing the supreme court decision and contrasting it with the 16 city sweep of sex traffickers.
We are torn on the issue of the death penalty for people who rape young children. On one hand, we all wish we lived in a culture where the death penalty was not necessary or a consideration. We also all believe that the death penalty is not a deterrent to crime. But, we also acknowledge that there are some offenders who are so terrible and have such a long history of vicious attacks on our society . . . that we don't want our tax dollars keeping them alive.
Most of us in the office understand an economic argument for the death penalty. Our society has limited resources . . . and unfortunately, we have to pick and choose those issues and groups of people we will devote resources towards. It happens all the time. Every time we cut free lunches or supportive services to communities with big military deployments . . . we are deciding who deserves our resources and who doesn't.
At the same time this ruling was made . . . federal officials were rescuing trafficked children. If anyone deserves to "disappear" from the planet . . . I think it would be someone who sexually enslaves children for profit, no?
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Murder is murder - whether committed by an individual or by the State. I believe those who abuse children should be punished and helped to deal with the issues which caused them to abuse. And if they cannot be prevented from attacking again, then they must be kept confined - but murder, no. I don't see that killing even a child molester is less wrong than killing any other human being.
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