http://www.thenation.com/doc/20091026/trillin

As someone who’s worked as a victim advocate for 7 years, I’m glad to see Polanski in the slammer. Rape is to women as lynching is to African-Americans. Rape is a political act, whether or not the perpetrators think of it as such, because its effects are absolutely and every day felt in the public realm. (This is not to discount the trauma suffered by male rape victims–they certainly exist. But males in general aren’t as often raped as women are.)

Yep, the wishes of victims should always be respected. Most often, however, rape victims’ wishes are ignored in the other direction–prosecutors choosing not to take a case to trial when a victim wants to because they don’t think they can win it. This causes trauma, too. Once someone has been raped, there’s really no winning, no matter what happens with the criminal justice process.

“I think that’s the crux of the question, right there. If, and I grant it’s a big and loaded if, but if we can agree that he NO LONGER presents a danger to society, then I think the proximal victims should be allowed to decide his fate. The role of society in pursuing “justice” against such (or any) trespass should be one of self defense – “will this person commit further harm” – and not vengeance.

He’s a bad and cowardly man who did a very bad thing, and if it had been my daughter the flight to France would not have saved him. But I ask, who – now – will benefit from re-opening this case for closure?”

I tend to agree with your general stance, if not the specifics — I’m not a fan of retributive justice. Punishment without the valid, reasonable expectation of fruitfully altering the probabilities of future behaviour is vacuous and essentially torture. Just making someone suffer for wrong-doing for the sake of making them suffer is wrong, IMV. As such, prison (again, IMO) should serve one primary function — segregating from society those that prove themselves unable to deal with others nonviolently. As an aside, I think prison is largely stupid in most cases and causes more harm than good — about the *only* people who should be in prison are violent offenders (not that I think there shouldn’t be other measures in place for other crimes — just that prison is a bad one-size-fits-all solution to criminal trespasses on society). But that’s a separate can of worms to open.

Let’s leave the question of Polanski’s chances for re-offending in the future (or any possible criminal re-offense he may have done since his flight) as open, or even at nil — let’s say that he hasn’t done anything criminal since and that he won’t again in the future. He was still a participant in that society, enjoying the benefits thereof. Fleeing like that is wrong. He cannot engage in selective participation. And while vacuous punishment is wrong, his offense is no longer simply the act against the girl in question, but his flight and circumvention of the mechanics of society that are in place to adjudicate wrongdoing. That trespass in particular is outside of the scope of the proximal victim’s discretion, real or imagined, over due process. That machinery, even if it is flawed, has to be seen to work for all — allowing those with wealth and prestige to summarily avoid the system is wrong, IMV.

But, what about any future victims of this man, Roman Polanski?

He is an admitted child rapist, and, we all know that these guys don’t get better. I would bet anything I own that he has raped other young girls in his lifetime and I believe he is a danger to do so again.

So, having a daughter, I have a difficult time with the idea that this man should be allowed to go free. I understand the victim’s wishes, but can you in good conscience take the fate of other potential victims in your hands and say he will never do it again?

Justice is about more than the wishes of the victim, which is why we don’t allow vigilantes and cruel and unusual punishments. The other side holds true as well, sometimes, we must do what is necessary to protect more potential victims, even though it may cause more hardship for the victim.

The whole notion of a progressive class just yanking all the reins of power to save society or bring it forward — Fritz Leiber’s _Gather, Darkness_ makes a nicely eloquent argument about how that pretty much always turns out. And he had exactly such folks as Cromwell, Robespierre, Hitler, Stalin, and Tojo to use as archetypes, but nicely made his attack on the guys who developed the bomb.

The guilty plea is null and void, because it was part of the plea bargain that was set aside by the judge who caved into the same extreme right-wing forces you are now defending. There is, at this time, no actual guilty verdict against him for any crime whatsoever.

He’s a bad and cowardly man who did a very bad thing, and if it had been my daughter the flight to France would not have saved him. But I ask, who – now – will benefit from re-opening this case for closure?

@ Bawrence: Actually, I’m only trying to ignore the facts irrelevant to my position. ;-)

Those are interesting examples. Robespierre, the Terror and Napoleon have a parallel in Lenin, Stalin and pogroms. Cromwell failed completely to establish a new government or even to maintain his nebulous ideal for a single generation. Both wanted to impose an entirely new system of government on a nation by revolution but really had no way to support their new ways other than pure personality, whether their own individually or the collective personality of a party.

I’m not actually attacking Marxism or socialism per se, just the idea that a philosophy, whether economic or political, can produce viable long-term results without having established in advance the practical, boring, tedious day-to-day details necessary to support it, and I can’t help but wonder those who support such ideas anticipate success in the long run. In that light, the WSWS article which started it all just seems so typical, an emotional outburst criticizing something without the author’s offering specific ideas on how to change what he felt was wrong in the first place.

To attempt to determine such details is neither possible nor necessary, nor even desirable; once we have true democracy, I think letting the people decide is entirely appropriate.

Another interesting question, one which is maybe so far afield I shouldn’t ask, but how does true democracy fit in with Marxism? As I recall, the vote was to be constrained to only those who earn a living with their own labor, which would disenfranchise a significant portion of the population, while true democracy would mean everyone with no limits – social, economic or otherwise – gets to vote.

….Texas Socialist Conference; I’ll look into it.

I’m sure you’ve found it, but I should have included this link.