Posted by Scott on August 9th, 2007 — Posted in Teen Violence
Dennis O’Brien recently wrote about teenage sexual assault victims and their need for parental support. I include an excerpt:
Teens are victims of sexual assault more frequently than many adults realize, said Dawn Jonas, a therapist at Bridgeway Counseling Services who deals exclusively with survivors of rape, incest and other types of sexual abuse.
Bridgeway serves individuals who experience domestic violence, sexual assault or addictive disorders.
According to the recent National Crime Victimization Survey from the Bureau of Justice Statistics, one in six American women is sexually assaulted in her lifetime; 10 percent of sexual assault victims are men; 44 percent of rape victims are younger than 18; only 36 percent of sexual assaults get reported; girls ages 16 to 19 are four times more likely to be sexually assaulted; and 15 percent to 20 percent of teen pregnancies occur as a result of rape.
Dennis O’Brien goes on to point out that some parents “blame the victim,” especially when the teenager partook in alcohol, drugs, or other riskier behavior.
Remember to give young victims the emotional support they need. Resist the temptation to use them as a scapegoat for your anger.
What do you think?
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Posted by Scott on August 8th, 2007 — Posted in Politics & Commentary
Jeremy J. Collins recently wrote an article about the death penalty. In the article he included that following statistics:
Murder rates are lower in states without the death penalty. This holds true even when comparing neighboring states.
While Southern states account for over 80 percent of the executions in this country, they have consistently had the highest murder rate of the nation’s four regions.
Since 1972, homicide rates in Canada and the United States have moved in lockstep, yet in that period, Canada has not executed a single person and the United States has executed over 1,000 people. When homicides go down in the United States, they go down in Canada, even though Canada does not use capital punishment.
One of the authors of the Emory study (Joanna Shepherd) found in a separate study that while the death penalty deterred murder in six states, it actually increased murder in 13 states and had no effect on the murder rate in eight states. Other studies have found that the death penalty has a “brutalization effect,” increasing the number of murders.
Generally, I believe most people already consider it settled that the death penalty does not deter murder.
I personally do not have a preference between executing or permanently jailing unrehabilitatable victimizers. However, I find it asinine to use execution or incarceration as a form of moral punishment or vengeance. I only want them used to protect innocent people from victimization. To that end, we incarcerate convicted victimizers so that they can not physically hurt anybody.
If we can rehabilitate them, then I say let’s do it and release them so that we can make room for more victimizers.
I would much rather have a rehabilitated ex-murderer set free than a unrehabilitated sexual assaulter.
What do you think?
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Posted by Scott on August 7th, 2007 — Posted in Child Protection
A recent article on ABC News offers 12 tips for parents to keep their children safe on the internet. I want to highlight 1, 2, 4, and 12:
1. Spend time with your children online. Have them teach you about their favorite online destinations.
2. Talk to your child about sexual victimization and potential online danger. Explain that whatever they are told online may or may not be true.
4. Keep the computer out of your child’s bedroom. Put it in a common room like the kitchen or living room. 5. Do not install webcams. It is dangerous to put images on the Internet.
12. Be mindful of your child receiving phone calls from men you don’t know or making calls, sometimes long distance, to numbers you don’t recognize. Most predators want to talk to the children on the telephone. They often engage in “phone sex” with the children and often seek to set up an actual meeting for real sex.
Some outdated tips still circulate. For example, telling people not to post pictures of themselves on the internet has little point. Posting a normal picture of yourself on the internet, say on your social networking profile, won’t cause any harm. Telling someone not to post one is equivalent to telling a person to wear a bag over their hand when they go out to the store or park.
In today’s world, the internet is becoming a safer version of the real world. Instead of sneaking out to a strange clubs to meet older men, teenage girls go online in the safety of their own home. The difference is that parents may not be familiar with these new internet-based risks as they are of traditional risks.
What do you think?
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Posted by Scott on August 6th, 2007 — Posted in Child Protection
In a sarcastic article about molestation and sex offender rights, Terry Brown cites a real statistic about child molestation:
“Sexual assaults committed by youth are a growing concern in this country. Currently, it is estimated that adolescents (ages 13 to 17) account for up to one-fifth of all rapes and one-half of all cases of child molestation committed each year.”
This statistic tells you to remember that you have to take care to protect your children from other children as well as adults. For the same reason you would not leave your child alone with an adult you cannot trust, you also do not want to leave your child alone with other children. Additionally, you want to teach your children about sex, and teach them about inappropriate touching. Make sure they know to tell you if anyone touches them in appropriately.
If you suspect someone may have abused your child, get a professional to interview them as quickly as possible, preferably on video tape. The more people that talk to a child about an alleged incident before the child officially reports it, the less reliable the child’s testimony. Many alleged sex offenders get acquitted by claiming that adults may have lead the child, which thus casts reasonable doubt on the reliability of the child’s testimony.
Talk to your children before incidents occur, not after.
What do you think?
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Posted by Scott on August 2nd, 2007 — Posted in Facts and Stats
Mark Potter recently wrote about rising robbery rates in the United States. I include an excerpt:
A boom in bank robberies, many of them fueled by criminals in search of money for drugs, is alarming law-enforcement officials across the nation.
After declining a couple of years ago, robberies in the U.S. are on the rise again, according to the FBI, and two recent violent cases prove just how dangerous those crimes can be.
[...]
FBI statistics show bank robberies rose nearly 4 percent in 2006 to 6,985, the equivalent of one heist every hour and 15 minutes. That compares with 6,748 in 2005. Authorities said this year’s numbers appear to be climbing even higher, with some areas hit particularly hard.
“There’s been pockets; there’s certain cities like Detroit, Chicago, Dallas and Boston,” says FBI Assistant Director Kenneth Kaiser.
Unlike theft in general, robbery specifically refers to using violence or the threat of violence to obtain the victim’s property or money. For that reason, I find myself especially disappointed by these numbers. I wonder how many of these robbers have previously been convicted and jailed for similar crimes, and then released.
When we convict someone, we have to restrain them to protect everyone else. We put robbers in jail so they can no longer rob anyone. We need to keep them in jail so long as they still may rob or otherwise victimze anyone.
I realize that mainstreaming someone may help get them back on track. In other words, a person needs to get back out in society to learn how to live peacefully in society. However, if the state wants to help get these people back on track, they need to keep on eye on them by using a conditional release. Deny these people the ability to do anything that may enable them to recommit. For example, if the robber committed robbery to get money for drugs, then make it a condition of the robber’s release that he cannot use drugs, and give the robber regular drug tests. Additionally, we need to make sure previously-convicted robbers do not have access to guns, knives, or other such weapons.
What do you think?
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Posted by Scott on August 1st, 2007 — Posted in Facts and Stats
Rachael Aram recently reported statistics from a year 2000 Justice department Report. She reported the following disturbing statistics:
-Forty percent of teenage girls ages 14 to 17 say they know someone their age who has been hit or beaten by a boyfriend. In one study, from 30 percent to 50 percent of female high school students reported having already experienced teen dating violence.
-Teen dating violence most often takes place in the home of one of the partners.
-In 1995, 7 percent of all murder victims were young women who were killed by their boyfriends.
-One in five, or 20 percent, of dating couples report some type of violence in their relationship.
-One in five college females will experience some form of dating violence.
-A survey of 500 young women, ages 15 to 24, found that 60 percent were currently involved in an ongoing abusive relationship and all participants had experienced violence in a dating relationship.
I hope these statistics help illustrate the terrible plague of teen violence and dating violence. We need to put an end to the violence. We have to educate children as well as adults about all the different forms of violence and how to prevent it. We also have to put more resources towards investigating claims of violence, tracking down the offenders, arresting them, convicting them, jailing them, and rehabilitating them. If the offenders cannot be rehabilitated, then let’s not let them out of jail.
What do you think?
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