/townhall/ - Townhall

All legal systems are...systems.  Laws are a series of instructions meant to alleviate much more complicated moral questions, like when it's okay to kill someone.  And unfortunately, a lot of those laws are a bit underbaked, if nuance can ever be truly factored in to begin with.

So molesting people is quite bad in general, and molesting children is even worse.  I would in fact put molesting anyone as equivalent or worse than murder on a general moral scale.  If someone witnesses someone else molesting a child, and murders them to save the child, and I know that all of this is how it occurred, then they're off the hook in my eyes.  Like you probably also saved some number of future children from being molested.  People are fucked up, they can't all be safely contained or rehabilitated, that's too optimistic.

Now, separately, can we always trust what the random person said happened?  Like if we know that's how the scenario went down, then sure.  But if the scenario is we know someone has killed someone else, and their defense is "they were molesting my daughter", like I'm going to stop and consider it, but I'll still have to ask questions.  Are you sure?  How did you know?  Is any of that verifiable?  Because as soon as we allow for leeway, then people will want to take advantage of that.

>>14814
Those are fairly reasonable points.

What if the family of the child molester is outraged and demand what they regard as justice on the behalf of the deceased?

[Continuing with the events of said British TV thing.]

>>14816

I think this can be approached more generally, because I do not believe in punitive justice.  The law and/or law enforcement should not be an avenue by which you can seek revenge because you are angry.  The family of the person we know to be a child molestor is allowed to be unhappy about it, but...they were a child molestor.  I'm not even especially inclined to pay them damages of any kind in this case.  Like be mad that your family member was secretly (hopefully you didn't know about it) a child molestor, not that they were killed in the process of molesting someone.

Again, primary goal here?  Stop people from being molested.  Sure, that could've been stopped by a cell, but the mission here is accomplished.  Do I need to stop the other guy from killing more people?  I don't really think so, I think they're at least partially the victim here, they didn't seek out this guy to kill them, they tried to stop an active violent crime and that required some violence.  I don't expect it to happen again, and I'd probably tell them as much to be certain, too.  You know "Once is an anomaly, and I feel for you, twice is a pattern and then it's going to require more investigation."

>>14818
Fair points to add. I see what you mean.

What you describe is just the death penalty without any form of oversight that usually comes with the death penalty. What the person did is murder, regardless of what the person they killed did.

Like, get real here. The government, with all it's rules and regulations and oversight, kills the wrong person 12.5% of the time. 1 in 8. How is some vigilante going to get it right with nothing to go off of? Even if you take that aspect of it away and you know 100% FOR SURE that the person killed was actually a child molester, it's still murder. It is against the law and chances are you're not going to get away with it. Should the cops not arrest you for that? I think they should. You took a person's life. Even if that person was a child molester. I don't believe in dehumanizing people for any reason, it goes bad places very quickly.

Personally, I don't think anyone should be killed for any reason whatsoever, regardless of what terrible things they did, so I would never be okay with someone taking the law into their own hands like this, just like I'm not okay with the government doing it with the death penalty.

If it were me, I would totally understand the desire to kill the child molester, but I would still arrest them. IF I was a cop.

I'm also a prison abolitionist and I don't think incarcerating this individual would be a worthwhile endeavor either. But they should still be somehow punished.

Suffice it to say there is a lot going on here.

>>14809
A murder is a murder.
Though oft you'll find a lack of jurors willing to convict.

>>14826
>>14826
If I was one of those jurors, I don't think that I could convict the person, even though I'd view their action as morally wrong. I wouldn't have it in me to do that.

>>14809
Someone should mention that in the show the cops actually did let go that murderer and didn't do anything against them. Before the credits roll.

Of course, this is a work of fiction. So, what the characters eventually said and did doesn't mean anything in real life, mean anything for what should happen.

extrajudicial killing by agents of the state, without clear articulable fear for their or another life, is wrong full stop.

all people have a right to face a jury of their peers regardless of their charges.

it is understandable to want to take revenge on a person who has hurt a loved one, but vigilantism weakens our ability to protect innocent people from wrongful convictions.

If you are a cop you follow protocol. Your job is not to be judge, jury, and executioner. Your job is to enforce the laws and detain those who break them.


I fucking hate cop shows they poison how people think about the law.

>>14838
Now this I will agree full throatedly.

I think the role of police has long been one corrupted by idiots and media alike.
They are not here to do good, to uphold some divine order, or to even protect you.
They exist to facilitate justice.
To bring about the process by which one is judged, and some measure of fair recompense is wrought for their actions.

It's a noble purpose, but one that requires adamant integrity. Our issues today are because so many have fallen prey to the types as the Punisher, defined by vengeance, instead of characters defined by principle, as Judge Dredd.

>>14839
DeShaney v. Winnebago happened in 89 and people still don't get it.

It's super cool these days to treat pedophiles and child molesters as subhuman filth. This is because the truth, that they're as human and psychologically understandable as anyone else, is scary.

They're not demons, they're not changelings, they're not apes who failed to evolve or anything like that. They're people like anyone else. They're just psychologically disturbed people.

Psychological disturbances can be fixed or mitigated. You can redeem bad people. They can become productive members of society. But we can't bring back the dead yet.

The murderer in this instance is taking agency away from both the justice system and the child molester, and robbing the latter of any possible redemption because in their subjective opinion they don't deserve it. And generally speaking, if we all killed everyone we didn't think deserved to live, the world would be an even more horrific and dystopian place than it already is.

In any case, this movie sounds shitty.

Context for the fictional drama can be found here:

https://www.imdb.com/title/tt4192812/

It was created by media figure Chris Lang of London, England.

>>14885
Hot take: pedophiles that do not act upon their urges should not be treated as subhuman filth because they haven't actually done anything.

Thoughts?

>>14885
I don't really care if they're human or not.
It's not inherently wrong to kill a human.