Poll: How much is an innocent worth?

[The Heik]

Okay. Here´s the scenario:

There are eleven people. All of these people are being brought into court. They are accused of rape. If charged, they will face 10 years in prison and be marked for the rest of their lives. Ten of these people have commited the act of rape. However, one of them, is 100% innocent.

However, in order for the Ten guilty to be charged, the one innocent would also be charged.
If however, the innocent is not charged, the Ten will get away scott-free.

How much is an innocent worth?

Me? I´d let them all go. I value an innocent person very highly.

EDIT: I´ve just decided that there is a chance they will commit the crime again. If they do, they will be charged as normal. The innocent will have nothing to do with it.

If you see someone saying they won´t commit the crime again, please excuse them.

I would still convict them all. Sure one innocent would have to pay the price, but if you let them all go, you risk the lives of many innocents by releasing them all.

Saving the one would be what I like to call the Batman Syndrome. Batman, instead of killing the villains he defeats, repeatedly sends them off to prison because he says he says by using their methods he would sink to their level. However, those villains always break free, and cause more pain and death each time. By refusing to commit a small act of perceived evil, he effectively condones the acts of great evil to be committed again and again, making him worse than the criminals he defeats.

In some situations, there is no right way out. All we can do in those situations is pick the choice that can do the most good to the most people.

 

[Lullabye]

Um....well I would just charge em all. Life sucks, deal with it.

 

[InfiniteSingularity]

I'm willing to be that 99.6% of the people that voted "charge everyone" has never been wrongfully penalized in a truly life-destroying way.

The other 0.4% can't be trusted to provide a reasonable answer, given that being the victim of a wrongful accusation has damaged them beyond repair.

I'm willing to bet that a similar percentage of the people that voted "charge no one" probably doesn't understand that rape is a horrible violation of a persons body, a terrible crime which is not considered anywhere near as bad as it actually is by most justice systems. Rape is inexcusable, and anyone who offends should be put away for life, and the 10 people who are guilty for one innocent? You'd have to be a sexist, a rapist, or insane to let them all go.

A harder question would be "10 innocents, plue one guilty of rape, and you don't know who did what. Jail all or none"

I like how you topic changed into populist rhetoric without actually addressing my post, showing you remembered the most important lesson of Thank You for Smoking.

Never seen it :/

Anyway, I just think it's more important to jail ten rapists than to keep an innocent free

I agree with you to some extent, but consider this: If you have ten rapists, plus one innocent person, remember that you also have ten innocent people (likely women) who have been violated and likely traumatised. A rapist that gets away with their crime is likely to reoffend, so you can assume that if you let them go, you now have 20 innocent people violated with rape. For the sake of one innocent's freedom I don't think it's worth it.

It's not very often I take the extreme utilitarian viewpoint - I generally don't believe in punishment anyway. And yes we are playing God - but is it better to harm one innocent person, or save that one person but potentially, and most likely, have another 10 innocent people harmed? I never usually agree with utilitarianism, but I strongly believe in this case it is the right thing to do.

But not only is this a punishment - it is disabling rapists to offend, and violate innocent people again, and a disincentive to after their ten year sentence is up. The next step would be castration of rapists - but I think that's a bit extreme even for me.

I think that our justice system, or in western countries at least, seem to see rape as being a "minor offence", possibly a result of most countries beginning largely patriarchal, and women have had to fight for their basic rights as individuals and citizens, and some women are still fighting today. Our male-oriented society doesn't get the severity of this offence, and our justice system doesn't take it seriously enough. I believe rape is a very serious and damaging offence - in some ways it can be worse than murder, and can be likened to torture for some people, in some cases. But offenders only seem to get a slap on the wrist, relatively speaking, for rape. And think we need to start punishing rapists in a much, much more severe way than we are now, so people can get the idea that this is not acceptable

We simply will have to agree to disagree on a few points here. I don't believe rape is worse than murder; ever; and no woman I have ever known believes that she would rather be murdered than rape. Murder is final. It. Done. Gone. Rape might be extremely hard to recover from, though it can be done. (And I won't go into details here but I have a bit more experience with this topic, and exactly how harmful rape can be, than you might think.)

Are some rapists under-punished? Probably. We'll agree on that point - I know what >>I<< personally would feel appropriate to do to a man who, say, raped my wife - but I also know that I am emotionally wrapped up in that case like that; far too much to be "just" since I would simply want "vengeance" .

Also, a point you seem to be overlooking; men CAN be raped and many ARE raped; by other men. It can be equally - if not more - traumatic for a man to be raped because a lot of the support systems in place for women who are raped just aren't there for men; like in the case of prison rape. Let's say a non-violent drug offender (or worse, an innocent man) gets raped in prison. I would have to say that men can understand how this is an evil, hateful, and dangerous crime just as well as women.

I don't think gender even needs to come into place here to answer the original question. It's not a matter of men vs. women on this; anyone can be raped and it's never a positive thing. The question, though, is would I feel comfortable punishing 1 innocent man to get 10 guilty ones.

And the answer remains, "No." I would not. Even if those rapists went out to commit other crimes. I wouldn't put 10 murderers away if I had to jail 1 innocent man, either. The crime doesn't matter in this case. Murder, rape, theft - replace "rape" with "murder" if it makes you feel more comfortable.

I *refuse* to send an innocent man to jail, even to protect others.

You make sense. A valuable and rare quality on the internet.

I agree with you on most points, however i will clarify: Rape can be worse than murder in some ways - for example, it's probably more traumatic, and does more psychological damage than murder, and it can have a longer lasting negative effect (this is mostly stemming from my belief in reincarnation to an extent, so agree or disagree i don't care). Sure, you can't recover from murder, and you can from rape, so theres differences rather than a black-and-white contrast.

I understand both men and women are raped, i didn't specify women, i did mention is was likely a woman, but you could never know. I did however mention that the general "rape is sort of OK" mindset comes from our roots as a patriarchal society, and many people, when they hear the word "rape", automatically assume the victim is a woman; hence, we seem to think as a society, that rape is not as bad as it is, and we are in the process of a reform which is changing that perspective, but we're not there yet.

You must also factor in that it is very likely that a rape offender will likely reoffend if they have gotten away with it - if you break a law or rule once, doesn't matter what, and you have gotten away with it, you will almost definitely do it again, because you will be more confident you will get away with it the second time. It's just the way most people think. Also considering there are ten rapists here - ten victims now, ten later, you are allowing 20 innocent people to be victimised for the sake of one innocent person's freedom. It's a conflict of values here

But I will agree to disagree; I see, understand and respect your views. I just disagree with them

 

[InfiniteSingularity]

If they say they wont commit the crime again then they just admitted to doing it the first time so lock the fucker up.

Anyway I would lock em all up. Rapists have a tendency to re-offend. So even if only half of them re-offend and they only re-offend once then that is 5 more lives ruined. So yeah, sucks for the innocent one but gotta go with the good of the majority.

I like how you say you'll get them again when they recommit....what about the next poor person they rape?

My reasoning exactly

captcha: the essicy