If you haven’t heard, the U.S. Supreme Court has taken up the Louisiana case of Patrick Kennedy, who raped his 8 year old stepdaughter. Under Louisiana law, the death penalty can be applied to someone found guilty of rape of a young child. Kennedy’s attorney claims that for rape, the death penalty amounts to cruel and unusual penalty. Several states are following Louisiana’s lead with allowing the death penalty for the rape of a child. Missouri seems to be considering the death penalty for child rape, and here are some articles from Missouri on the issue: Blunt seeks law, Nixon, too, seeks death penalty and Death penalty for child rape.Personally, like most people, I find the rape of a child sick beyond comprehension, and I am not that opposed to the death penalty, per se. However, I think we should first examine the incentives that would then be in place when we adopt the ultimate punishment for a less than ultimate crime. As reprehensible as the rape of a child may be, it is not as final as the death of that child. Here is the problem I see with this punishment. Once someone has raped a child, he can then let the child go free. If he gets caught and convicted, he is likely to go to jail for a long time. If instead, he murders the child, he is likely to face a death sentence if caught. The extra penalty for the extra crime, the death sentence instead of the lesser punishment, what an economist would call the marginal penalty, is still rather high and may act as a deterrent against the further crime of murder.
At the College of Business Honors Banquet this past Sunday, Associate Justice of the Louisiana Supreme Court, Hon. John Weimer, mentioned a case where a defendant, after being sentenced for life, became violent in his courtroom, and Weimer sentenced him to a short extra term for Contempt of Court. The defendant made the point that he could not serve any more time than his current life sentence. You can be sure that the violent outlash was because the fellow knew there was no further penalty he could face, the marginal penalty was zero.
With the death penalty for child rape, there is nothing else that can be done to the sicko that would be more severe than the death penalty. In addition, the sicko has a reason to go ahead and kill his victim: Dead victims don’t identify, and they don’t testify. By imposing the ultimate penalty for child rape, the marginal penalty for murder is considerably reduced to zero. Economists would expect that the higher penalty will reduce the incidence of child rapists, but increase the incidence of child murders, especially ones who have been sexually assaulted.
The British have a saying, “In for a penny, in for a pound.†The saying actually has a few meanings, but one of them is this: If someone is going to get the same punishment for stealing a penny as stealing a pound, he may as well steal the pound. After all, you will get the same punishment in either case. Same punishment but bigger reward! Or in the present case, same punishment but lower chance of being caught and found guilty.
I should mention that I wrote a blog post in February of 2006 along similar lines. In that post, you will notice that I cite an article by your Econ 211 textbook authors, Ekelund, Ressler and Tollison, who make a similar point about mass versus single murders.
-MC
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April 27th, 2008 at 8:20 pm
Although I believe that child rapists are possibly the sickest criminals alive, I do have to agree that killing them is not the answer. By doing so I too believe rapists would merely kill their victims due to the knowledge of receiving the same punishment rather than letting them live. However, from what I understand, there has recently been a law passed that allows chemical castration to be administered to convicted rapists. I am not sure of the specifics of the new law but it does sound like a positive solution. Instead of just giving a rapist a few years in jail and letting them back into society where they can harm another, this will enable them from raping another person. Although it is harsh it is not as bad as the death penalty and therefore will hopefully prohibit rapists from transforming into murderers.
April 29th, 2008 at 7:21 am
To say that the marginal penalty for committing murder in the case of a child rapist is “0″, assuming the death penalty is instituted for child rapists, is resting on the assumption that child rapists sets out to murder but chooses to rape because if caught, he will get less time in jail.
I am arguing that murder and child rape are independent of each other and equally wrong. If someone would rape a child, then someone who would kill a child would be equally wrong but independent of the rapist. Therefore, since both crimes are equally wrong, both crimes should deserve equal penalties.
If it’s true that rape and murder and independent of eachother. Then the only way you can justify not instituting the same penalty for each is to say that rape is less of a crime than murder, which i would argue against.
S
April 30th, 2008 at 4:56 pm
The death penalty is not they way to go with this kind of case. This would make the world worse than it already is because rapist would not only rape innocent children, they would kill them as well. This would actually give them a reason to kill their victim because if the victim is dead, he or she cannot testify against the rapist.
My Psychology class recently talked about rape cases and we talked about the new law to castrate convicted rapist. I personally think that this is a better way of handling rape cases. I think that they should SUFFER for what they did!
April 30th, 2008 at 7:04 pm
The penalty for child rapist should a harsh and deterant one. Usually, though child rapist tend not to kill the child hoping that they will not tell, but the death penalty I do not think is best policy for child rapist because the door for mercy and continuance of life should always be the goal. The punishment should include life improsonment at hard labour. Why let child rapist get off easy and just kill them, the hard labour sentence will save money. However the sentence for the child rapist should make the offender eligible for parole, atleast after 10 years, in hopes that the offender may have been reformed and be released on the victom child’s testimony that he forgives the offender. Eligibility for Parole I think should be granted in such cases involving an offense whereas the victom still lives, and may plea for the release of their offenders after or if they have been changed, for example, they may have to faith and become a God- fearing morale person.
May 7th, 2008 at 11:42 am
I feel that raping a young child is not only wrong it’s despicable. I know the person has to die but what does that solve? I think the person should spend the rest of their life behind bars with the fact that they physically and mentally abused a child. I would hope that is punishment enough. My psychology teacher was telling us that a few years ago that a state was using a type of behavioral modification that proved successful but was shut down because it was considered inhumane. This behavior modification, in my opinion, should be brought back if it saves just one child the torture of being raped by anyone. If there was some way the marginal penalty could be raised then there may be a deterrent to the crime as well as the killing of the victim. I am concerned that if the death penalty is applied for rape of a child more criminals will consider taking the life of the child since there is nothing more at stake for them to lose. If the justice system could make their stay in jail a miserable one, it may deter the criminal from actually committing the crime.