There’s no possible reconfiguration of moral principles that can make Roman Polanski come out looking good. If age is the main concern, then the girl was too young by almost every legal system on the planet … other than some in the Middle East, and even under those systems you must marry the woman.
If consent is what matters, well she claims she never consented and besides that he slipped her drugs and alcohol, although Polanski denies there was anything other than alcohol involved but even if you accept that at age 13 the influence of alcohol is going to be a very powerful influence.
On the other hand, if parental approval is what really matters … well Polanski lied to the parents and claimed it was only a photo shoot … so he comes out looking bad on that one as well.
If truth is the key issue … well Polanski’s story has changed, after initially pleading guilty and later on brushing things up a little for public consumption.
When you consider the arguments that he used in Poland to protect from extradition (they based it on EU human rights law) it’s a reminder that the USA justice system is not held in high regard around the world. Although my general conclusion is that Polanski was guilty (with the caveat that I wasn’t there, and I only know the story after it’s been retold a few times) … I wonder whether the US handling of other high-profile cases such as Assange or Manning has assisted Polanski in being able to claim he’s the victim.
I agree with most of what you’re saying, but large parts of the USA are as bad as the Middle East when it comes to forced child marriage. And parents who wish to force-marry their children will often drive to the states that have the most permissive laws with respect to that.
According to a 2018 article from the New York Times, 20 states in the USA have no minimum age for forced child marriage. (And I doubt that number has changed much in the past 4 years.)
Delaware was the first state in the USA to completely ban forced child marriage, and that didn’t happen until 2018.
I feel really depressed about this. From time to time in the USA, some rich person will go on some rant about how they are a responsible, tax-paying adults and they shouldn’t have to do with “irresponsible” homeless people messing up their lives by being alive in public spaces. But it’s pretty well documented that a high percentage of homeless people (including homeless men) were sexually abused at some point in life, often while still children… and if it wasn’t sexual abuse, it was usually some other type of abuse.
And abuse of both children and adults … including child sexual abuse… is routinely tolerated in the USA. The fact that forcing children to marry their rapists is still legal in most states (in a number of cases, with no minimum age) is just one particularly blatant example of this. But even when marriage isn’t involved, people will often cover for people who molest children. If accusations surface, they’re often shut down with accusations that the child is “crazy” or whatever.
What I’m getting at is that people crying about how they are “responsible taxpayers” and they shouldn’t have to deal with “irresponsible homeless people” are generally child sexual abuse enabling lunatics who only think they’re “responsible”, and the fact that they are proud of paying taxes to a regime that enforces child sexual abuse (children fleeing abusive forced marriages can be legally reported to the police as runaways) is just, utterly disgusting. I understand that some people only pay taxes because they are afraid, or just because it’s really hard to avoid (sales tax, withholding, and so on make it hard to resist taxes even if you want to) but it’s not something to be proud of. If certain people are paying taxes to an evil, child sexual abuse enabling regime, they should at least have the decency to be ashamed of it, and they certainly shouldn’t flatter themselves by calling themselves a “responsible adults”.
And police do plenty of other evil things besides enabling child sexual. abuse. Like, even if people are just totally oblivious to the whole forced child marriage thing (and I wouldn’t exactly regard a person who was oblivious to such an atrocity going on in their country a “responsible adult”), it’s been all over the news about the police shooting unarmed black people. Like, unless someone is actually a hermit, they must have some level of awareness of injustice in the USA (assuming they live here).
Also, after watching this documentary, plus doing some additional searching on the topic, I believe homelessness would be reduced by 98% in the USA if slum-building were tolerated. (As it is, if the homeless were to build slums, the police would probably tear them down, and indeed, they do have a history of doing so.) And since the allegedly “responsible adults” who hate the homeless are probably the sort of people who vote for the sorts of zoning regulations that prohibit slum building, that kinda makes them complicit for about 98% of homelessness. (In the sense that they probably vote for the laws that are enforced by the police that cause homelessnes. Not like, personally, individually responsible, but in the sense that any person who votes for or otherwise supports human-right-violating laws can be considered complicit.)
Slums: Cities Of Tomorrow
www [dot] youtube [dot] com/watch?v=uq6DR-RNuw8
The 98% figure is based on Googling the number of homeless people in India, versus the number of slum-dwellers in India. Based on the numbers from Google, slum dwellers outnumber homeless people in India by 48 to 1. So, I figure, if the USA tolerated slums to the extent India does, it would probably reduce homelessness by 98%.
I wonder whether the US handling of other high-profile cases such as Assange or Manning has assisted Polanski in being able to claim he’s the victim.
That’s possible. There’s a school of thought (which I agree with) that holds that no matter how depraved a particular criminal is, that either A) you shouldn’t torture them or B) you should prevent the torture from crossing certain threshholds. (And since the border between torture and abuse is ill-defined, A sort of blurs into B. Basically, the concept is that there is a line that shouldn’t be crossed even when dealing with the most depraved criminals, although even among people who agree with that statement, there is still much disagreement about where exactly that line is.)
Part of the idea is that although killing might theoretically be justified to defend oneself, one’s family, one’s community, or whatever, torture serves no such purpose. (Especially if part of your definition of torture is the target of the torture is basically a helpless captive, not someone with a serious chance of being able to fight back.) So, for example, if someone breaks into Charlie’s home and starts hurting Charlie’s family (where “Charlie” is a hypothetical character), Charlie might believe the only way he can stop them the attacker is to injure and/or kill them, and he might do just that. And while we could debate whether Charlie believes that because it’s true, or merely because Charlie isn’t tactically creative enough to come up with an alternative solution, it’s at least true to the extent that taking into account the limitations of the situation, including Charlie’s tactical skills, it was all he could come up with.
However, while it makes sense that Charlie might choose to protect his family by injuring and/or killing the attacker invading his home, there’s no defensive explanation for keeping the attacker locked in his basement and torturing him on a daily basis for the next 20 years. There is, I suppose, some argument in favor of simply locking the attacker up so he can’t run around invading other family’s homes, but that could still be done without the torture. Also, I think even the imprisonment argument is somewhat dubious, since it puts the guards at risk. Guards are in danger from prison riots, and also from prison-incubated diseases (which can potentially spread to the guards’ families and into the community and even around the world). But at least, I understand part of the reason the prison system enjoys broad public support is because people are afraid that violent criminals will keep on committing violent crimes if they aren’t locked up. (Though that still doesn’t explain why a lot of the people in the prisons are non-violent criminals.)
Regarding prisons as disease incubators, here’s 3 articles on the topic.
“Prisons in Post-Soviet Russia Incubate a Plague: The collapse of the Soviet health care system in the 1990s coupled with prisons releasing improperly treated inmates and endemic poverty escalated incidences of multidrug-resistant tuberculosis to epidemic proportions”
by Merrill Goozner https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/prison-plague-post-soviet-russia/
“Prisons as Incubators and Spreaders of Disease and Illness”
by John E. Dannenberg
prisonlegalnews [dot] org/news/2007/aug/15/prisons-as-incubators-and-spreaders-of-disease-and-illness/
“Prisons around the world are reservoirs of infectious disease”
by Lateshia Beachum
washingtonpost [dot] com/news/to-your-health/wp/2016/07/20/prisons-around-the-world-are-reservoirs-of-infectious-disease/
So, one way to consider the question of whether a criminal ought to be locked up would be to ask, not just “are they violent”, but also “are they violent enough to be a greater risk to society than a potential disease incubator?” and also, “are there alternative ways to protect society from this person’s violent tendencies, without using them as a potential disease incubator?”
The view that prisoners should at least not be tortured is enshrined in the United Nations’ Mandela rules.
“All prisoners shall be treated with the respect due to their inherent dignity
and value as human beings. No prisoner shall be subjected to, and all
prisoners shall be protected from, torture and other cruel, inhuman or
degrading treatment or punishment, for which no circumstances whatsoever
may be invoked as a justification. The safety and security of prisoners, staff,
service providers and visitors shall be ensured at all times.”
unodc [dot] org/documents/justice-and-prison-reform/Nelson_Mandela_Rules-E-ebook.pdf
There’s an article here about how American prisons don’t even come close to following the Mandela rules.
“What ‘The Mandela Rules’ Mean for American Prisons”
by Christopher Zoukis
huffpost [dot] com/entry/what-the-mandela-rules-mean-for-american-prisons_b_7649928
So, even accepting that someone is a a violent criminal of the most disgusting and depraved type, there are a substantial number of people in the world who think we still shouldn’t torture that person, and also that torture is a rampant problem in United States prisons.
All that taken into consideration, we still need to make efforts to protect children from Polanski, and have some sort of justice which discourages future people from acting as Polanski has. That might mean a more humane prison system that the one in the United States, or it might mean an alternative, non-prison system of justice.
There’s no possible reconfiguration of moral principles that can make Roman Polanski come out looking good. If age is the main concern, then the girl was too young by almost every legal system on the planet … other than some in the Middle East, and even under those systems you must marry the woman.
If consent is what matters, well she claims she never consented and besides that he slipped her drugs and alcohol, although Polanski denies there was anything other than alcohol involved but even if you accept that at age 13 the influence of alcohol is going to be a very powerful influence.
On the other hand, if parental approval is what really matters … well Polanski lied to the parents and claimed it was only a photo shoot … so he comes out looking bad on that one as well.
If truth is the key issue … well Polanski’s story has changed, after initially pleading guilty and later on brushing things up a little for public consumption.
When you consider the arguments that he used in Poland to protect from extradition (they based it on EU human rights law) it’s a reminder that the USA justice system is not held in high regard around the world. Although my general conclusion is that Polanski was guilty (with the caveat that I wasn’t there, and I only know the story after it’s been retold a few times) … I wonder whether the US handling of other high-profile cases such as Assange or Manning has assisted Polanski in being able to claim he’s the victim.
I agree with most of what you’re saying, but large parts of the USA are as bad as the Middle East when it comes to forced child marriage. And parents who wish to force-marry their children will often drive to the states that have the most permissive laws with respect to that.
According to a 2018 article from the New York Times, 20 states in the USA have no minimum age for forced child marriage. (And I doubt that number has changed much in the past 4 years.)
“An American 13-Year-Old, Pregnant and Married to Her Rapist”
https://www.nytimes.com/2018/06/01/opinion/sunday/child-marriage-delaware.html
Delaware was the first state in the USA to completely ban forced child marriage, and that didn’t happen until 2018.
I feel really depressed about this. From time to time in the USA, some rich person will go on some rant about how they are a responsible, tax-paying adults and they shouldn’t have to do with “irresponsible” homeless people messing up their lives by being alive in public spaces. But it’s pretty well documented that a high percentage of homeless people (including homeless men) were sexually abused at some point in life, often while still children… and if it wasn’t sexual abuse, it was usually some other type of abuse.
And abuse of both children and adults … including child sexual abuse… is routinely tolerated in the USA. The fact that forcing children to marry their rapists is still legal in most states (in a number of cases, with no minimum age) is just one particularly blatant example of this. But even when marriage isn’t involved, people will often cover for people who molest children. If accusations surface, they’re often shut down with accusations that the child is “crazy” or whatever.
What I’m getting at is that people crying about how they are “responsible taxpayers” and they shouldn’t have to deal with “irresponsible homeless people” are generally child sexual abuse enabling lunatics who only think they’re “responsible”, and the fact that they are proud of paying taxes to a regime that enforces child sexual abuse (children fleeing abusive forced marriages can be legally reported to the police as runaways) is just, utterly disgusting. I understand that some people only pay taxes because they are afraid, or just because it’s really hard to avoid (sales tax, withholding, and so on make it hard to resist taxes even if you want to) but it’s not something to be proud of. If certain people are paying taxes to an evil, child sexual abuse enabling regime, they should at least have the decency to be ashamed of it, and they certainly shouldn’t flatter themselves by calling themselves a “responsible adults”.
And police do plenty of other evil things besides enabling child sexual. abuse. Like, even if people are just totally oblivious to the whole forced child marriage thing (and I wouldn’t exactly regard a person who was oblivious to such an atrocity going on in their country a “responsible adult”), it’s been all over the news about the police shooting unarmed black people. Like, unless someone is actually a hermit, they must have some level of awareness of injustice in the USA (assuming they live here).
Also, after watching this documentary, plus doing some additional searching on the topic, I believe homelessness would be reduced by 98% in the USA if slum-building were tolerated. (As it is, if the homeless were to build slums, the police would probably tear them down, and indeed, they do have a history of doing so.) And since the allegedly “responsible adults” who hate the homeless are probably the sort of people who vote for the sorts of zoning regulations that prohibit slum building, that kinda makes them complicit for about 98% of homelessness. (In the sense that they probably vote for the laws that are enforced by the police that cause homelessnes. Not like, personally, individually responsible, but in the sense that any person who votes for or otherwise supports human-right-violating laws can be considered complicit.)
Slums: Cities Of Tomorrow
www [dot] youtube [dot] com/watch?v=uq6DR-RNuw8
The 98% figure is based on Googling the number of homeless people in India, versus the number of slum-dwellers in India. Based on the numbers from Google, slum dwellers outnumber homeless people in India by 48 to 1. So, I figure, if the USA tolerated slums to the extent India does, it would probably reduce homelessness by 98%.
Tel wrote,
That’s possible. There’s a school of thought (which I agree with) that holds that no matter how depraved a particular criminal is, that either A) you shouldn’t torture them or B) you should prevent the torture from crossing certain threshholds. (And since the border between torture and abuse is ill-defined, A sort of blurs into B. Basically, the concept is that there is a line that shouldn’t be crossed even when dealing with the most depraved criminals, although even among people who agree with that statement, there is still much disagreement about where exactly that line is.)
Part of the idea is that although killing might theoretically be justified to defend oneself, one’s family, one’s community, or whatever, torture serves no such purpose. (Especially if part of your definition of torture is the target of the torture is basically a helpless captive, not someone with a serious chance of being able to fight back.) So, for example, if someone breaks into Charlie’s home and starts hurting Charlie’s family (where “Charlie” is a hypothetical character), Charlie might believe the only way he can stop them the attacker is to injure and/or kill them, and he might do just that. And while we could debate whether Charlie believes that because it’s true, or merely because Charlie isn’t tactically creative enough to come up with an alternative solution, it’s at least true to the extent that taking into account the limitations of the situation, including Charlie’s tactical skills, it was all he could come up with.
However, while it makes sense that Charlie might choose to protect his family by injuring and/or killing the attacker invading his home, there’s no defensive explanation for keeping the attacker locked in his basement and torturing him on a daily basis for the next 20 years. There is, I suppose, some argument in favor of simply locking the attacker up so he can’t run around invading other family’s homes, but that could still be done without the torture. Also, I think even the imprisonment argument is somewhat dubious, since it puts the guards at risk. Guards are in danger from prison riots, and also from prison-incubated diseases (which can potentially spread to the guards’ families and into the community and even around the world). But at least, I understand part of the reason the prison system enjoys broad public support is because people are afraid that violent criminals will keep on committing violent crimes if they aren’t locked up. (Though that still doesn’t explain why a lot of the people in the prisons are non-violent criminals.)
Regarding prisons as disease incubators, here’s 3 articles on the topic.
“Prisons in Post-Soviet Russia Incubate a Plague: The collapse of the Soviet health care system in the 1990s coupled with prisons releasing improperly treated inmates and endemic poverty escalated incidences of multidrug-resistant tuberculosis to epidemic proportions”
by Merrill Goozner
https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/prison-plague-post-soviet-russia/
“Prisons as Incubators and Spreaders of Disease and Illness”
by John E. Dannenberg
prisonlegalnews [dot] org/news/2007/aug/15/prisons-as-incubators-and-spreaders-of-disease-and-illness/
“Prisons around the world are reservoirs of infectious disease”
by Lateshia Beachum
washingtonpost [dot] com/news/to-your-health/wp/2016/07/20/prisons-around-the-world-are-reservoirs-of-infectious-disease/
So, one way to consider the question of whether a criminal ought to be locked up would be to ask, not just “are they violent”, but also “are they violent enough to be a greater risk to society than a potential disease incubator?” and also, “are there alternative ways to protect society from this person’s violent tendencies, without using them as a potential disease incubator?”
The view that prisoners should at least not be tortured is enshrined in the United Nations’ Mandela rules.
“All prisoners shall be treated with the respect due to their inherent dignity
and value as human beings. No prisoner shall be subjected to, and all
prisoners shall be protected from, torture and other cruel, inhuman or
degrading treatment or punishment, for which no circumstances whatsoever
may be invoked as a justification. The safety and security of prisoners, staff,
service providers and visitors shall be ensured at all times.”
unodc [dot] org/documents/justice-and-prison-reform/Nelson_Mandela_Rules-E-ebook.pdf
There’s an article here about how American prisons don’t even come close to following the Mandela rules.
“What ‘The Mandela Rules’ Mean for American Prisons”
by Christopher Zoukis
huffpost [dot] com/entry/what-the-mandela-rules-mean-for-american-prisons_b_7649928
So, even accepting that someone is a a violent criminal of the most disgusting and depraved type, there are a substantial number of people in the world who think we still shouldn’t torture that person, and also that torture is a rampant problem in United States prisons.
All that taken into consideration, we still need to make efforts to protect children from Polanski, and have some sort of justice which discourages future people from acting as Polanski has. That might mean a more humane prison system that the one in the United States, or it might mean an alternative, non-prison system of justice.