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Comment by anigbrowl | Hacker News Reader

This is a very tricky issue. I'm against the notion of perpetual punishments in general, but some kinds of sexual behavior are compulsive and historically the response to that has been to detain people who exhibit dangerous behaviors of this sort indefinitely in a psychiatric facility, which is obviously even more restrictive of liberty than tracking their whereabouts.

Mind, I'm not saying Wisconsin's law is well-drafted or demonstrated to work, just observing the existence of a conflict between individual rights and public safety in a context where the risk is very hard to measure.

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If a person has a psychiatric illness that makes them hurt others, then treating them in a close facility is right and proper. Its no more restrictive of liberty than any other involuntary hospitalization.

If a past criminal moved next door, it should not matter what kind of uncontrolled violent behavior they had. Is it that much better to know that instead of sexual violence criminal, you get a person who slashed a knife into a innocent person? What if they shot a person, or kicked and stomped on someones head and cause irreversible brain damage? If Wisconsin's law is good, then why not apply it to all criminals that has been found guilty of serious violence?

> If Wisconsin's law is good, then why not apply it to all criminals that has been found guilty of serious violence?

I honestly don't have a problem with that.

I think we should acknowledge that some people are psychopaths who are mentally incapable of having moral qualms about hurting people, whether sexually or otherwise. They can't be redeemed; the only thing you can do is keep people safe from them.

Who decides?

What prevents this from degenerating into "You voted for X in 2016, so you have to wear this bracelet / 'voluntarily' attend this re-education camp / only travel in the orange zones on the map"?

"What prevents gay marriage from degenerating to polygamy and beastiality?"

This is the same argument just from the other side.

Now while I don't agree with this law on principle I really hate this type of hypothetical argument. If you embark on this road you can argue that a law which is aimed at fixing pot holes will cause the rise of the 4 riech.

It's not the same argument at all.

Why not beastiality? Consent.

Why not polygamy? Agency, inherent power inequality.

The reason why gay marriage won't "degenerate to polygamy and beastiality" isn't because people are somehow reasonable and know where to draw the line on the slippery slope.

It's because there's no slippery slope at all.

We have involuntary registration of various violent offenders for several decades now. Some offenders like sexual offenders actually have to go and make it known to all of their neighbors that they are a sexual offender. However I have yet to see it degenerate to people having to go around admitting that they voted for Bush. Slippery slopes are only as slipper as people want then to be. Society knows very well where to draw the line usually if it didn't it wouldn't function, you might not like where it draws it but it's not up to you to decide that on your own anyhow.

The constitution -- and the fundamental inalienable rights it enumerates -- were written to provide a backstop for when society fails to draw the line on a slippery slope.

This is exactly what happened with the legalization of gay marriage through the judicial branch.

Your comment is incredibly naive in the face of even contemporary world history, nevermind the generations of slave and feudalistic societies that came before us.

The plaintiff in this case is a serial molester of young children, convicted twice, paroled, and sent back to prison when he acknowledged contact with two kindergarten-aged children (a grave violation of the terms of his parole) and admitted to considering molesting them.

There's not much more justice in committing him involuntarily, nor would we prefer to incarcerate him for the rest of his life, if we can find other ways to prevent him from coming into contact with children.

> There's not much more justice in committing him involuntarily

In what way are you describing a healthy person? Would we call a person as being healthy if they had a problem with being aggressive, repeatedly committing assault, convicted several times, and admitting that they can't control their aggression and intentionally goes and look for people to beat up?

I think such person is likely to have a medical condition, psychological or actually brain damage, and treatment (involuntarily if needed) is best for both the individual and society. Trying to "find other ways to prevent them for coming into contact with people" would be horrible bad idea and unlikely to work.

Not time to go wobbly when constitutional liberties are at stake.

How wobbly would it seem if he moved next door to you and your family?

There is a reason people scream to prevent parole and scream to have life sentences for sexual predators, my friend.

Why not simply advocate for killing them then? I'm not personally arguing for this, but it would be more honest than purporting to settle on a fixed term while actually creating a shadow life sentence.

It's also completely abandoning any notion of rehabilitation. Prison, in no sense, rehabilitates people, but at least some level of redemption should be possible. It seems as though prison no longer pays back the convict's debt to society.

There may be no approach to rehabilitating serial child rapists that will not in some way shock our conscience.

Then make it capital offense, or a life sentence. I'd be willing to accept that certain kinds of criminals can't be rehabilitated. But (apparently) some jury of his peers decided 15 years + psychiatric care was enough.

I don't care so much what the rules are, I care that the rules are consistent

Once you have the laws, the "wobbliness" as a weakness becomes apparent.

Go see how many people are on lifetime lists as sexual offenders because they got caught pissing in the woods. Or someone saw them naked in their own house through their own window (I didn't make that up).

I don't think anyone would disagree about the clear-cut cases (child rapists... actually any rapists), but once you give the government a powerful tool that follows you your entire life they tend to abuse it.

I would be more comfortable if a committee of trained medical professionals put people on lists or GPS trackers, vs. judges or DAs.

re: the committee:

As would I, but after reading and listening to the ridiculous statements and ideas from the current batch of "social justice warrior" types, I think the rapists would be back on the street quicker than they are now. Medical professionals are no more immune to this trend of lunacy than are any other people.

I agree that there are too many asinine reasons for being placed on the lists. Who is to blame for that? The lawmakers? The people who elected simpletons? The people who'd rather leave a sexual sadist locked in cage forever? Certainly not those who'd as soon have such a being immediately hung after sentencing.

If there was as cure them, a way to prevent it from happening, I'd be happy. But this is why there are so many no-go zones for sexual offenders. Everyone says NIMBY, but aren't willing to do anything concrete to fix the issue besides add even more laws upon the ones that already result in lax sentencing.

I don't think anyone would disagree about the clear-cut cases

That's where the problem lies. It's very easy to get agreement on such things based on fear rather than probability. You're so worried about giving the government power to make someone wear a monitoring bracelet that you're willing to trade lifelong incarceration on a smaller number of people against the possibility.

I would be more comfortable if a committee of trained medical professionals put people on lists or GPS trackers, vs. judges or DAs.

What do you think that court-ordered psychiatric evaluations are for, if not to get the input of trained medical professionals for use in the deliberations of trained legal professionals?

Their point is that it's more free than that alternative of life imprisonment for comparable crimes which is already well-established and completely legal. How is that remotely wobbly?

It is incredibly wobbly considering it is not being used as an alternative to life imprisonment, but as an addition to sentence already being served or already finished.

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