I was at Ron & Tamryn’s house last night when I was reminded of an earlier conversation with them. We were talking about punishment for the most heinous of crimes, such as rape and murder. While I’m very liberal on many subjects, when it comes to crime, the liberal description doesn’t fit me.
Some people feel that rape is worse than murder. I think murder is very final. Someone who is raped can at least rebuild a life (in many cases). However, for the sake of this post, we can make the punishment equivalent. When we’re talking about murder, we’re not talking about the guy who accidentally killed his wife with a BB gun. When we’re talking about rape, we’re not talking about statutory rape between an 18- and 16-year-old. We’re talking about clear-cut crimes against humanity. My friend Jess says there are a lot of cases where the wrong person is convicted, so we’ll deal with that at the end of this post too.
My idea is to build a giant microwave, put the criminal in, and set it to “popcorn”. To make it more interesting, we could make it a turntable microwave. Anyone who survives this punishment (impossible) would be set free.
Tamryn’s idea was to use the criminals instead of animals for laboratory testing. Cosmetics, for example, are tested on rabbits. Rabbits have no tear ducts, so putting cosmetics on their eyes is particularly cruel. Use the criminals instead. Test new drugs as well as cosmetics. We’ve solved the whole animal cruelty issue.
I don’t like the idea of people being wrongly convicted and then being sent to the microwave-chamber. In our system, people are supposedly presumed innocent. However, prosecutors and the police are both rewarded for successful prosecutions. How about an incentive to exhonerate the innocent? That might go a long way towards reducing police intimidation and prosecutor misconduct. Also, stiff penalties for the aforementioned misbehavior might work.
Until next time.