News In Briefs

DAILY TELEGRAPH'S SENSATIONAL HEADLINES!

Bastion of Australian tabloid rubbish, The Daily Telegraph, has sunk to a new low. On a day when they could have run with the US Open, the East Timor jailbreak, or the continuing dramas in the Middle East, the DT has chosen to create a story. the headline reads: "HIDDEN EVIL" with the byline "2400 Paedophiles living amongst us." I'm going to ignore the issue of public interest v what the public is interested in for a moment and tackle the nonsense that Australians love.
DT's example is of John Lewthwaite, who last week was arrested for cavorting naked on a Sydney beach. Ok, so he was skinny dipping. OH, and he was convicted of raping and murdering a five-year-old girl in 1974. DT doesn't tell us how long he was in prison for, but NSW takes a dim view of such activities. While that's certainly horrible, our justice system works around the idea of serving time in prison to punish and rehabilitate, then releasing the convict when their time is up. DT wants a version of 'Megan's Law' introduced, like in the US, so that released paedophiles must be identified to communities they move into when they're freed.
In their view, you serve time, then you continually serve time in the outside world till you die. But this is Australia, no-one would attack a known paedophile or discriminate against them. Probably better to simply re-introduce the death penalty like they have in some states of the US. They only have a 90% rate of serious reversible error in capital cases, and of those 47% get thrown out altogether. 7% of those executed are found to be innocent after their death. There's an idea! We have a weird guy living next door. Must be a paedophile. Therefore, we'll execute him! More humane than a life of prejudice and hatred.

posted by Steve @ Thursday, August 31, 2006