Supreme Court decision on death penalty for child rape

Hello, this is a new blog devoted primarily to crime and criminal justice issues. I am a professor of sociology at the University of Maine and the author of several books and other publications on crime, justice, and related issues. My latest book, Myths and Realities of Crime and Justice: What Every American Should Know, was co-authored with George Bryjak and just published earlier this week by Jones and Bartlett. As the book's title implies, we discuss realities and misconceptions of crime and criminal justice in the United States. This short and affordable book discusses the causes of crime and how the criminal justice system really works, as opposed to how it is supposed to work (with chapters on crime, victims, courts and trials, and prisons), and it discusses many myths about crime and justice that the media promote and the public holds. It should be interesting and informative reading for anyone concerned about crime and justice in the United States.

Back to the title of this posting, today's Supreme Court decision that by a 5-4 vote outlawed the death penalty for child rape. As a strong opponent of the death penalty, I applaud this decision. Perhaps the reasons for my opposition to capital punishment will be the subject of a later posting, but, briefly, the death penalty doesn't deter crime, it is more expensive than life imprisonment, it is arbitrary and racially discriminatory, and it leaves open the possibility that innocent people may be executed. Because the U.S. is the only western nation that has the death penalty, capital punishment should also be judged as beyond what democracies should be doing in the contemporary world.

For all these reasons, child rape does not deserve the death penalty, no matter how heinous child rape is, and it is certainly about the most horrible crime one can imagine. For these same reasons, I am disappointed with Barack Obama's pronouncement later today that he disagreed with the Supreme Court's ruling in that he thinks child rape is so heinous that it does deserve the death penalty. I am a strong Obama supporter, and I recognize that politicians feel the need to look tough on crime (perhaps also the subject of a later posting). Having said that, Obama should know better than to support the death penalty, and he should have supported the Court's decision while making quite clear his disgust over child rape.