The Get-Soft-on-Crime Model

Thursday, January 05, 2006

You know, I'm not even the least bit surprised by this:

There was outrage Wednesday when a Vermont judge handed out a 60-day jail sentence to a man who raped a little girl many, many times over a four-year span starting when she was seven.

The judge said he no longer believes in punishment and is more concerned about rehabilitation.

Prosecutors argued that confessed child-rapist Mark Hulett, 34, of Williston deserved at least eight years behind bars for repeatedly raping a littler girl countless times starting when she was seven.

But Judge Edward Cashman disagreed explaining that he no longer believes that punishment works.

"The one message I want to get through is that anger doesn't solve anything. It just corrodes your soul," said Judge Edward Cashman speaking to a packed Burlington courtroom. Most of the on-lookers were related to a young girl who was repeatedly raped by Mark Hulett who was in court to be sentenced.

The sex abuse started when the girl was seven and ended when she was ten. Prosecutors were seeking a sentence of eight to twenty years in prison, in part, as punishment.

But Judge Cashman explained that he is more concerned that Hulett receive sex offender treatment as rehabilitation.

The sentence outraged the victim's family who asked not to be identified.

"I don't like it," the victim's mother, in tears, told Channel 3. "He should pay for what he did to my baby and stop it here. She's not even home with me and he can be home for all this time, and do what he did in my house," she added.

The pro-rehabilitation advocates are so fixated on "educating" criminals that they either forget or chose to ignore the importance of retribution in our criminal justice system. Repeatedly raping a seven-year-old girl warrants a long period of incarceration.

Conveniently, the idiot judge who claims punishment doesn't work but "corrodes your soul" left out in his ruling the recidivism rates for child sex offenders. It's not untypical to find numerous convictions of child pornography possession and sexual assault on the criminal records of offenders who eventually upgrade to murder - and are able to do so because judges like Edward Cashman are all too eager to release said scum back into our society.