Life imitates television!

June 5, 2000 2:25 PM

Life imitates television! Helicopter escapes -- just like a Quinn-Martin Production! Where is Barnaby Jones when you need him?
posted by elgoose (2 comments total)

Ah, the old Gulag system. We hate this man, but he's served his time? Well, let's just say he's crazy and imprison him indefinitely. After all, we control the people who will decide when he's sane...and we'll make sure they never do.

It's simple. If you want to make it impossible for sex offenders to repeat, Norplant them with chemical castratives that make erection impossible as a condition of parole. Or, if we must, make surgery a punishment for said crimes. But let's not become a gulag state. It's an easy jump from 'He's a sex offender, let's lock him up for life' to 'He's a pervert, let's lock him up for life' and frankly, who decides who is a pervert? Repressed people who wouldn't know mental liberation if it bit them, and who would probably consider that idea perverted.

Once we make perversion an imprisonable offense, even in mental institutions, whose to say that gay people, people who practice tantric sex, drug users, smokers (hey, it's addictive and people hate it) and so on, and so on, won't be next? The thought police are repugnant because it's supposed to be okay to think privately. Without that, what rights do you even have?

I'm sorry, but it's just entirely too Orwellian for me.
posted by Ezrael at 11:23 PM on June 5, 2000

Well, the whole story is just bizarre, including the part that he had served his sentence, but wasn't being released pending official decision whether to just keep him in jail.

Branding a "sex offender" as a criminal for life has already happened whether they end up incarcerated beyond their sentence periods or not, whether they end up defined as perverts or not, since in many states they have to register as sex offenders and public notification takes place.

Talk about cruel and unusual punishment.

But I still want to know how he got access to a helicopter to break out in the first place. It's like the Bizarro A-Team.

posted by elgoose at 7:25 AM on June 6, 2000