American courts routinely shackle children

A risk for what? Sexual assault? Drug use? Vehicular manslaughter? Because white teens are definitely a risk for those.

I live in one of the states where shackling is not automatic. California found that unconstitutional, and deals with it on case-by-case basis. This article provides a list of states where shackling currently has restrictions. This document from 2010 shows that Alaska (not on the ā€œcontrolledā€ list) has some people in their advocacy section that recognize why shackling every juvenile defendant is wrong.

If you disapprove of juvenile shackling, but your state isnā€™t on the list of states already restricting it, I recommend you do some research. You may find that other advocates have already made attempts to change state policy, and you can add your voice to theirs.

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Pity itā€™s so hard to detect sarcasm on the internet.

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Please donā€™t conflate sadism with pedophilia.

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In a just world, whomever called the police to arrest an 8 year old (WTF?) would be hauled off in shackles.

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Oops, good thing you asked. The 4% number comes from John Jay Report which was commissioned by US Bishops, applies only the US, and includes those accused of molestation.

The pope actually said 2%: Pope Francis: 'About 2%' of Catholic clergy paedophiles - BBC News

Well, no, but people did arrange to become priests. Assuming Catholics are exactly as likely to be pedophiles as everyone else, the rate of child sex abuse among the priesthood probably gives us some idea of how high a rate of child sex abusers you are likely to find in a self-selecting organization that provides people with the opportunity for child sex abuse. If itā€™s 2% to 4% thatā€™s probably a lot higher than the general population.

I donā€™t think anyone meant to conflate these: Itā€™s just that, as @Medievalist points out, they arenā€™t exactly mutually exclusive. But I would have to think that if you took the population of people who are sexually attracted to children, and looked at the sub-population of those who actually acted on those desires, youā€™d find over-representation of sadists.

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Aaaaaah, that hurt to readā€¦ :frowning: Fuckā€™s sake.

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Hmmm, that actually sounds like a valid reason to shackle everybody. Otherwise random sherriffā€™s deputies get to influence the outcomes of trials by choosing who does and doesnā€™t get them.

Psst! Officer! Iā€™ll give you 20 bucks and a six-pack if you leave Melvin shackled, OK?

Itā€™s not more fair if everyone get convicted, itā€™s more fair is fewer people have unfair biases against them. People should only be shackled if we can actually say that the threat they pose to other people around them in the court is so high that it actually outweighs the damage done to their rights by shackling them.

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I think that would make an undue bias against all defendants then, that would lead them all to appear unduly guilty of the crimes they are accused of.

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pedophilia isnā€™t mutually exclusive to blonde hair and I have to think that if you looked at the sub-population of those who actually acted on those desires, youā€™d find over-representation of blondes.

See how insane that sounds? One has nothing to do with another. Thatā€™s the same as trying to say gay people are more likely to be pedophiles. One can be a healthy sadist in a good relationship with a healthy masochist. The same cannot be said of pedophiles.

The problem is who gets to decide, though. Generally speaking itā€™s going to be a cop, right? Or are we going to have a pre-trial hearing on shackling, with a judge and jury, and is the accused going to be shackled for that? You see what I meanā€¦ you are absolutely right about what should happen, certainly, but I donā€™t know if thatā€™s actually pragmatically achievable anytime soon.

@ethicalcannibal, exactly. Setting a new baseline is more fair than simply allowing the rich to buy their way out of shackling, or allowing the physically attractive to multiply their existing advantage. And you know thatā€™s how it actually would work - the pretty girl and the cute little white boy get unshackled while ungainly scarred kids with shabby clothes would be adjudged too dangerous. I think itā€™d have have little or nothing to do with real risk. But maybe Iā€™m just overly pessimisticā€¦

Iā€™d just as soon nobody got shackled, if it was up to me. Let the chips fall where they may.

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I have to agree with @dacree here.

The psychology of pedophiles was heavily discussed in this thread. Sadism and pedophelia are only tangentially-related psychologies - in that both actors seek control - but they do it for very different reasons.

Many pedophiles seek association with children because they cannot cope with adult relationships, but they only seek psychological control as a means to an end. They only require control for the stability and security it provides. They seek children because they can more easily direct the relationship. (Itā€™s the same reason someone may seek a relationship with a sex doll.)

Sadists enjoy giving pain. Itā€™s the cruelty itself that they desire. (They respond to controlling others through pain.) They take out their frustrations on their sexual partners, work partners, wait staff and more. Sadists enjoy being cruel while most pedophiles donā€™t seek that out, and will only deliberately injure a child out of frustration (they donā€™t see the sex as ā€œinjuringā€ and most never have sex with their victims). Hereā€™s a good article about sadism, and how it differs from psychopathy, narcissism or Machiavellianism.

I feel itā€™s worth explaining this because so many psychological disorders get lumped together when discussed, and thatā€™s something important to avoid.

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Just to be clear here, sadistic personality disorder is no longer considered a psychological disorder or valid diagnosis and is considered more of a paraphilia.

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Thatā€™s due to the overlap with the other conditions, and thatā€™s why I wrote what I did. SPD isnā€™t included in DSM-IV, but it was a part of DSM-III-R. Arguments go back and forth on it.

I think we are using the word sadist in different ways here.

Psychiatrists got (and I think still get) these things confused a lot and pathologize people who have perfectly healthy consensual ways of interacting with one another. Within the last year I saw a study that people who enjoy BDSM are actually, on average, better adjusted and less aggressive than average people. Between that and my own experience, I would typically think that people who participate in that lifestyle are probably less likely to be actually cruel to other people.

But there are people out there who are sadists in the sense that they really enjoy being cruel. If they people they were being cruel to were enjoying it as well, or consenting to it, that would completely ruin the experience for them. I understand that people have claimed the term ā€œsadistā€ as positive, but it is definitely conflated with cruel people, I wouldnā€™t want to confuse the two. I hope you would agree, though, that among those who are attracted to children, cruel people are more likely to actually abuse children. You note that Sadistic personality disorder is not longer broader recognized, but surely we all recognize that there are still people who are callous, vicious and manipulative.

But perhaps it is time to put the word ā€œsadistā€ to rest for describing such people.

So Iā€™m going to use ā€œvicious bastardsā€ instead of ā€œsadistsā€ to describe people who just like to hurt other people. I would never hazard a guess that people who are attracted to children are more likely than the general populace to be vicious bastards, but I would be surprised if they were mutually exclusive. My only claim is that callous, manipulative, cruel people are, given an existing desire directed towards children, most likely to act on that desire. I think that many people who are attracted to children are capable of recognizing that sexual contact with children is bad for children, so I think this is a fairly uncontroversial point.

I think @dacreeā€™s point (or what I take from the point even if it wasnā€™t the point directly) is more that we shouldnā€™t be calling these dangerous assholes ā€œsadistsā€ because itā€™s offensive to a group of people who use the word to describe themselves but who are not at all dangerous assholes.

I recognize that problem, but if wearing shackled prejudices juries towards convicting, then we should be arguing for the unshackling of as many people as possible, even at random, even in a biased way. Of course that will lead to systematic problems - black people will be shackled more often than white, for instance (Iā€™m sure this already happens). But since we are talking about creating prejudices against those accused of crimes, the remedy for prejudice against one group isnā€™t prejudice against everyone.

To use an analogy (which is almost not an analogy because itā€™s talking about the same thing), if African-Americans make up 40% of the prison population and only 12% of the population, the solution is not to incarcerate 4.9 million white people to even things out (well, unless itā€™s the case that all of those African-Americans were convicted totally fairly and the white people got off unfairly, but I donā€™t think thatā€™s reality).

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@anon50609448 and I have discussed this before; there are problems of categorization and taxonomy. If youā€™re healthy, you arenā€™t anything Iā€™d call a sadist or masochist. But certainly thereā€™s some people who call themselves sadists that Iā€™d call something else.

I believe pedophilia, masochism and sadism are all mental illnesses semantically incompatible with the adjective ā€œhealthyā€. Blonde hair is not an illness. Homosexuality is not an illness.

You can be happy and productive despite being mentally ill, but you canā€™t be healthy.

Obviously your opinion may differ.

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The girl was further required to hold her face over a bucket designed to collect the tears for the judge to bathe in later.

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The Onion said it best.

Thatā€™s an utterly disgusting practice. How barbaric, how feudal, how impotent.