Submitted by Danny R.

One of the points of Justice is to provide an appropriate punishment so as to deter crime. However, what is an appropriate punishment and further, if a particular punishment deters crime when would it be cruel and unusual? Both questions have what at first appear to be simple answers, however the application of the simple answer is difficult.

When looking and asking what an appropriate punishment is, one comes to the answer of: a punishment that stops or deters the crime in question. So lets pick on rape. We know rape occurs, and at first appearances, seems to be on the rise(though some of this could be attributed to an increase in reporting of the crime as women become more confident in reporting it). So, if rapes are increasing in number then does this mean the current punishment of a rather small jail sentence is the appropriate punishment? I'd argue no. So what if a rapist were to be castrated? If no lesser punishment worked to deter rape, would this then be cruel and unusual?

In defining cruel and unusual, one must understand that cruel and unusual has the general meaning of stating, anything that goes beyond what is necessary to deter or prevent a crime from happening. An argument often used though, is what does victim facilitation play in this? Should the punishment be less of the victim helped to facilitate the crime? For instance, should it be a felony charge for stealing a car if the victim started the car, left it unlocked and running in his or her driveway? Or in the case of our rapist above, if the woman being raped was out selling her sexual related services?

So lets argue about castration to solve our problem regarding rape. Since it has an appearance that rape isn't being stopped or deterred through jail time. Should a more "cruel and unusual" punishment take place? In this case, lets say it were proven that castration were to reduce the number of rape cases? When no other lesser punishment did, would castration at this point be cruel and unusual? Should castration take place on the first occurrence of the crime or should it be a three strikes and now we get lop off Mr. Happy? In this particular case, I'd argue that the castration, if no other lesser punishment deters the crime of rape wouldn't be cruel or unusual. However, courts state that this is cruel and unusual because the rapist in question would no longer be able to have children of his own in the future. But would this not lead to men thinking twice before they go and exert their power and control over the females in question?

For further thought, some would argue that if we can't control the crime anyway, why not make it legal(as in the case of drugs and drug use). Well, lets examine this also, we have laws against murder, however, murder doesn't stop because of laws against it, or because the death penalty doesn't entirely prevent it, so should we make murder legal? The answer is no. Some would argue that the drug addict doesn't hurt anyone but him or herself. Does he really not hurt anyone else? When looking at the family structure of the truly addicted drug addict, we find dysfunctional families, many of whom break down or fall apart and left hurting without a dad or a mom, or a lost sister or brother when the sibling is killed in a gang related shooting over where drugs were obtained.

The real questions lie here, the ultimate answers are not so easy to come by. I didn't provide to many of my own thoughts on this, primarily for the purpose of discussion.