rutger5000 said:
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You're absolutely right, but any prison sentence at all is overkill. Sure the parents have the right to be angry, and what he did was wrong. But sending a man to prison ruins his life, and has a huge impact on the people that love him. Do you seriously believe that the man deserve such a heavy punishment?
This arguement can be made about anything, any time someone goes to prison. Punishments have to be a deterrant against behaviors, enough to make people fear breaking the laws or stepping over the line. The problem with wrist slapping is that it's not much of an actual deterrant, especially when there are gains to be made from the behavior in excess of what the punishment costs.
I hear a lot of people saying "OMG, this is bad, but nobody deserves to go to prison for that" or "prison is for real criminals" in response to a lot of things on these forums. I think a lot of it comes down to fear of the sentence, and that's exactly the point, and as far as I'm concerned if you break the law your a real criminal.
In a case like this what he did was extremely exploitive, and a massive violation of trust. What's more even if he didn't profit off of this (which I think he did) the potential exists for people to do the same basic things and to profit off of it. You simply give him a slap on the wrist and nobody is going to be deterred by it if they come up with an angle they can exploit by taping and editing children this way. It can get a lot worse than what this guy did, yet the precedent established here can be used to evade serious punishment.
This guy does 20 years, and then people who might have similar ideas are going to look at this and decide they'd rather not take that kind of risk. Give him a slap on the wrist, and then it's an incentive for wierdos with video cameras to try and get footage of kids they can edit for various purposes to make money off of and so on. Personally I'd prefer to give the guy the 20 years and have a lot less wierdos trying to exploit kids with video cameras and editing equipment.
I'm trying to keep it basic since I don't want to go on wierd "what if" tangents here, but the point is that the law has to be consistant, and when your dealing with big issues like people messing around with kids in places they are supposed to be safe like schools, then big penelties are appropriate. Sure, this guy might have his life ruined, and it might hurt his family, but that's the point, and exactly why someone else in the same situation might decide he really doesn't want to edit that video and put it up on Youtube, or take it around to local performances with him.
The same can be said of other cases where I've supporting penelties people have thought were going way too far. If a penelty isn't scary, then it's not much of a deterrant. The point of a punishment isn't just to punish the person receiving it, but to scare people out of doing the same things. A lot of people don't seem to get that when it comes to crime and punishment... a trivial punishment in many cases is actually worse than no punishment at all when it comes to setting precedent.
Believe it or not there are cases when I think the system can be too heavy handed. I am actually all for compassion in goverment... However when it involves people like this going into schools where people believe their children to be safe, and doing things like this, I am hardly forgiving. In other cases like hacking (which is another issue that comes up) I oftentimes advocate or support strong penelties, largely because people think that these crimes are either ridiculously trivial or not "real" crimes at all. Wrist slapping turns
it into a sort of game. The lack of strong action actually encourages more and more people
to do it. Thus in a lot of cases when I sit there and suggest sticking some teenage hacker in prison until he hits retirement age, the entire point is that by doing things like that you can get people to take it a lot more seriously. It's not a joke then. Nobody wants to be that guy, and can empathize with how sucky that might be, and perhaps how unfair in context of what he did. In the end though, that's exactly why people will stop doing it if you stick to your guns. The behavior dies down, then maybe you can look at being a bit more merciful in the big picture.
I'm rambling (and this is much longer than intended) but my thought processes on things like this are not like a lot of people on this site, and I understand that. To me putting a guy in prison for exploiting children on video, even if it's not "kiddie porn" for 20 years is perfectly reasonable, especially seeing as I consider what he did pretty heinous, as opposed to this being purely a matter of it being a deterrant. Parents need to believe their kids are safe in school, and that means people who do things like this need to feel the full wrath of the law. You back down, give a little wrist slapping, and your just going to wind up encouraging another thing for people to worry about.
