Hi all,

I was just having a nose on the news pages and came across this.

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/worldnews/article-1225006/Saudi-Arabian-paedophile-beheaded-crucified-string-sex-attacks-including-left-toddler-die-desert.html

What do you think? Too harsh or an approach that we should take in order to reduce these horrible crimes? Now I know there are always going to be those that are innocent but for all those innocent there are 100's more that are not. We hear of horrific crimes and the sentences being as small as 6 and 7 years.

I'm not sure what country it is, possibly also Saudi Arabia but I know there is one where if you get caught stealing they chop off your hands. Now I know it sounds extreme but I bet they don't have the level of theft that we do!

Should we be making harsher punishments ie death penalty or should we just lengthen sentences for more serious crimes? Or do you belive rehabilitation is the answer?

First of all it wouldn't act as a deterrent, a person capable to murdering someone doesn't fear the sentence or death usually. We see it in America all the time, people know the state has the death sentence yet they still join gangs knowing they will likely have to kill someone or be killed themselves. It simply doesn't work.

Of course because this is a paedophile, which is currently the in-thing along with hitting a child for people to hate. So people love this punishment, as is shown on the comments of that article page. The attitude of people today strikes me of the mob like mentality from the middle-ages, we've improved in a technology sense but mentality, no just as barbaric as we were then. Which is fine.

The comment I've always made about excessively harsh and brutal laws (here for instance, fine give him the death penalty, shoot him in the back of the head, same punishment), is they're fine as long as you accept your children may have to endure them in the future. Would you be able to live with yourself if your child was beheaded and then the beauty of the death penalty find out later he was innocent. If you supported the introduction of the laws then you have nothing to complain about, except a lack of foresight.

Also the day we start adopting laws from Saudi Arabia is the day I move to the moon...

Also..this execution is done because it is sanctioned by the Islamic faith (according to the BBC article quoting the Saudi authorities), should we introduce Sharia Law over here too?

Hi Sleepz,

Your comment about moving to the moon mad me laugh!

I don't know about your comment about paedophiles being the in thing for people  to hate. We seem to be hearing more and more about it happening recently but I wouldn't say people detested it more now than they did say 5 or 10 years ago, it's probably just more public now.

I have done a couple of counselling courses and one of the things my tutor once said to me when we were discussing how it is hard not to judge but how we shouldn't is the fact that over here we see sex with a minor as something that is disgusting, wrong etc but in other countries it is considered perfectly normal to marry at the age of 14 and sometimes even younger.

I'm not exactly sure what my point is, I find it hard to put things into words on paper/online. I suppose what I am trying to say is it is so hard making decisions on subjects like this. You made a couple of really good points that got me thinking, one which is obviously really, it's not a deterrent in America and if someone is capable of murder then it's not going to deter them. Secondly when I think that my children may be on the receiving end of one of those punishments then it gets me thinking again. One thing is for sure I am glad it's not me that has to decide these laws. I do thikn to myself that things need to change but then if asked what and how I don't know if I know.

Hi

I am generally anti-death penalty because of the room for margin of error and because I think they serve no deterrent. This man (assuming he is guilty) knew the punishment would be death and yet he wasn't deterred from committing his crimes, humans like this are basically arrogant, they are sure they can get away with it or they simply don't care because their obsession (in this case sex with children) is so strong it outweighs anything else.

This sort of punishment is meant as more of a deterrent than a punishment IMO, afterall you can only die once. And he will be dead pretty quickly, it is not as though his death will protracted or excessively painful. It meant to deter others. The only reason I would ever agree to a death penalty is on the basis of cost (it costs a lot to keep someone in prison) and because of course it means they cannot ever re-offend.

It is not the sort of thing I would want to see here though. Like the OP said think about if it was a member of your family who was accused, a husband, parent or child. No matter what they might or might not have done, it is not something you would ever wish to see being carried out. I can understand the need for vengeance and if someone in my family was murdered then doubtless I would feel very differently, but I hope we don't have the death penalty here in the UK.

I think we need stiffer sentances though and I think that if you get life for murder then it should mean just that, especially some of the mass murderers or particularly sadistic killers who should never go free. No parole, no serving only half the sentance. Some people are beyond hope and have no place walking the streets.