Child molester avoids prison because he is short

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The discussion centers around a controversial court ruling that allowed a child molester to avoid prison due to concerns for his safety based on his height. Participants express strong opinions on the judge's decision, arguing that child molesters should face prison time regardless of their physical stature. There is a debate about the implications of height on incarceration rates, with data suggesting shorter men are more likely to be imprisoned than taller men. Some participants propose that child molesters could be housed separately in prison for their protection. The conversation highlights broader societal issues regarding justice and the treatment of offenders.
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http://www.cbc.ca/story/world/national/2006/05/26/short-prison.html?ref=rss

Like Thompson, I am 5'1". I don't applaud the ruling.

This is almost comical though. Prison is a danger to him, what about the child?
 
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Personally I think the judge did the right thing. If she believed he would be in genuine danger then the ruling is fair. The state is there to punish people not endanger them.
 
How tall was the child?
 
The judge screwed up. The fact is that any child-molester sent to prison is at risk for sexual assault by other inmates, regardless of how tall they are. If she wanted to protect him she should have given him prison time with the option of serving it in solitary confinement for his own protection.
 
Does he like Disco?

http://www.dressthatman.com/view-ACCE358.htm
 
Child molesters deserve nothing less than the black hole of calcutta.
 
turbo-1 said:
If she wanted to protect him she should have given him prison time with the option of serving it in solitary confinement for his own protection.

I agree. It doesn't have to be solitary, but at least limited mixing with the general prison population. You'd think by now there would be enough child molesters in prison that they could send them all to the same facility to make them serve out their time but separated from the rest of the prison population that would take it upon themselves to get retribution for an innocent child.
 
They have something like that in a lot of prisons. Not just for molesters, but for gang informants that have been caught and people who just don't want to mix with the general population (although they need a good reason for being separated).
 
I hope the appeal is successful, and the man gets real prison time. I don't care how short he is.
 
  • #10
I once saw a man who was about 5'-0" tall carry a baby grand piano up a flight of stairs by himself. He strapped on a weight belt, put a strap around the piano to hold onto and up he went. I doubt anyone would mess with him in prison.
 
  • #11
Didn't we have a thread about this a long time ago?
 
  • #12
Probably. I've heard of this a long time ago, so no doubt someone had already reported it here.

Artman said:
I once saw a man who was about 5'-0" tall carry a baby grand piano up a flight of stairs by himself. He strapped on a weight belt, put a strap around the piano to hold onto and up he went. I doubt anyone would mess with him in prison.

...or else he'd carry them up a flight of stairs?
 
  • #13
Gokul43201 said:
Didn't we have a thread about this a long time ago?
I looked at the story again and this time noticed the dateline. That story is over 2 years old. I tried to find out what happened with the appeal. Apparently, the Nebraska Supreme Court was unwilling to hear the appeal, so the light sentence probably holds.
http://www.highbeam.com/doc/1G1-168190446.html"
That story has an Aug 30, 2007 dateline.
 
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  • #14
Does this mean at 6' 3" I am more likely to go to prison? Probably...
 
  • #15
DieCommie said:
Does this mean at 6' 3" I am more likely to go to prison? Probably...
Yep! And if you're in great shape, that means that they'll need an extra guy to restrain you while you get acquainted with your new boyfriend.
 
  • #16
I remember once when I was a teenage delinquent I got mentally evaluated by some court appointed shrink. She gave me an IQ like test. At the end she said I did very well, which means the court will sentence me more harshly. That was messed up... (of course she told me after so I couldn't throw the test)

Maybe this is the way our society is going... Instead of 'let the punishment fit the crime' its going to be 'let the punishment fit the mental and physical capabilities of the criminal'.
 
  • #17
DieCommie said:
Maybe this is the way our society is going... Instead of 'let the punishment fit the crime' its going to be 'let the punishment fit the mental and physical capabilities of the criminal'.
Our society has been there for centuries.
 
  • #18
WarPhalange said:
...or else he'd carry them up a flight of stairs?
They weigh about 600 lbs. You want to pick a fight with a guy who can carry 600 lbs up a flight of stairs all by himself in one trip?
 
  • #19
DieCommie said:
Does this mean at 6' 3" I am more likely to go to prison? Probably...

http://www.dc.state.fl.us/ActiveOffenders/search.asp

No; but at 6'3" you are DRASTICALLY less likely to be incarcerated on parole or on probation.

I researched this at the Florida Department of Corrections website. Short men are substantially more likely to go to prison or be on probation or parole than tall men. Since the average American man is 5'10", there are about equal numbers of men in Florida 5'5" and shorter as there are men 6'3" and taller.

There were 11,838 men 5'5" and shorter in the Florida Department of Corrections who were incarcerated or on parole or probation.

There were 7,761 men 6'3" or taller who in the Florida Department of Corrections records who were incarcerated or on parole or probation.

Very Short men are almost twice as likely to be locked up or on parole or probation as very tall men.

Tall men make about 50% more income than very short men as well, but that's another story.
 
  • #20
jimmysnyder said:
Our society has been there for centuries.

What are you smoking?
 
  • #21
stickythighs said:
No; but at 6'3" you are DRASTICALLY less likely to be incarcerated on parole or on probation.
I researched this at the Florida Department of Corrections website.
Interesting - I'm guessing that in florida the main non-white population is central/south american and that they are on average shorter than the white population?

It would be worth seeing if it was exactly the opposite in, say Chicago.
 
  • #22
How about sending child molesters to a womans prison?
 
  • #23
stickythighs said:
http://www.dc.state.fl.us/ActiveOffenders/search.asp

No; but at 6'3" you are DRASTICALLY less likely to be incarcerated on parole or on probation.

I researched this at the Florida Department of Corrections website. Short men are substantially more likely to go to prison or be on probation or parole than tall men. Since the average American man is 5'10", there are about equal numbers of men in Florida 5'5" and shorter as there are men 6'3" and taller.

There were 11,838 men 5'5" and shorter in the Florida Department of Corrections who were incarcerated or on parole or probation.

There were 7,761 men 6'3" or taller who in the Florida Department of Corrections records who were incarcerated or on parole or probation.

Very Short men are almost twice as likely to be locked up or on parole or probation as very tall men.

Tall men make about 50% more income than very short men as well, but that's another story.

Isn't 6'3" a less common height than 5'5" in the entire population? I don't see anything about height itself indicating a likelyhood or not of going to prison.
 
  • #24
stickythighs said:
What are you smoking?
Where one person might hang for murder, another may go free because of a skin condition.
 
  • #25
stickythighs said:
Since the average American man is 5'10", there are about equal numbers of men in Florida 5'5" and shorter as there are men 6'3" and taller.
Not true. The distribution of heights is not Gaussian. It's almost Boltzmannian, and 5 inches is way bigger than the standard deviation - so a Gaussian approximation could be quite off when you go that far away from the mean. And it is...

http://www.solvedating.com/american-singles-mheight.gif

There were 11,838 men 5'5" and shorter in the Florida Department of Corrections who were incarcerated or on parole or probation.

There were 7,761 men 6'3" or taller who in the Florida Department of Corrections records who were incarcerated or on parole or probation.
From the picture above, about 7% of men are shorter than 65" but only about 5% or less (by extrapolating an inch) are taller than 75".

That makes the likelihood for incarceration about even for short and tall people.
 
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  • #26
jimmysnyder said:
Where one person might hang for murder, another may go free because of a skin condition.

If you are referring to racism, that is not a 'skin condition'. Nor is it a physical or mental capability.
 
  • #27
DieCommie said:
If you are referring to racism, that is not a 'skin condition'. Nor is it a physical or mental capability.
They walked because the judge considered their enhanced capability to get a sunburn while standing on the scaffold.
 
  • #28
OAQfirst said:
Isn't 6'3" a less common height than 5'5" in the entire population? I don't see anything about height itself indicating a likelyhood or not of going to prison.

Yes; women tend to be shorter than men, and women average around 5'5", making 6'3" a drastically less common height than 5'5" in the entire population.

However, for men only, 6'3" and 5'5" would both be five inches from the average. Therefore, for men, there would be equal numbers of men 6'3" and 5'5".
 
  • #29
stickythighs said:
However, for men only, 6'3" and 5'5" would both be five inches from the average. Therefore, for men, there would be equal numbers of men 6'3" and 5'5".

Read Gokul's post: he explains why you cannot use a gaussian distribution.
 
  • #30
Gokul43201 said:
From the picture above, about 7% of men are shorter than 65" but only about 5% or less (by extrapolating an inch) are taller than 75".

That makes the likelihood for incarceration about even for short and tall people.

Gokul,

Rounding my figures off to 11.8 and 7.76, and assuming that your figures of 7% and 5% are true, 11.8 to 7.76 is still a much higher ratio than 7 to 5. Even if your figures are correct, in Florida short men are still more likely to be incarcerated or on probation or parole than tall men.
 
  • #31
Gokul,

Most studies assert that the average American man is 5'10". Your graph puts the average American man at 5'9", and it extrapolates accordingly. That could skew the results towards taller men being less represented on the graph than they really are.
 
  • #32
mgb_phys said:
Interesting - I'm guessing that in florida the main non-white population is central/south american and that they are on average shorter than the white population?

It would be worth seeing if it was exactly the opposite in, say Chicago.

Why do you think it might be exactly the opposite (rathen than tall people and short people having equal likelihood of going to prison) in Chicago? This case of Thompson not going to prison because he is short is an extremely isolated case. It only happened once. The statistic effect would be negligible even if it happened in Chicago.
 
  • #33
The point isn't this odd case, it is the suggestion that tall people are imprisoned less frequently.
I was suggesting that in the US, it is that white people are imprisoned less frequently and in Florida white people are on average taller than the hispanic/latino minority - whereas in Chicago they are probably shorter than the african-american minority.
 
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  • #34
stickythighs said:
Gokul,

Most studies assert that the average American man is 5'10". Your graph puts the average American man at 5'9", and it extrapolates accordingly.
Actually, from the graph I linked you can only tell that the median height is 5'9" (closer to 5'9.3"), but not the mean height. For a non-symmetric unimodal distribution, with mean > mode (true of Maxwellian distributions), you also have mean > median*. So, if the median is 5' 9.3", the mean could very well be pretty close to 5' 10"

*From: mean - mode \approx 3(mean -median)
 
  • #35
Gokul,

Please address this, the most important of my responses to you:

Rounding my figures off to 11.8 and 7.76, and assuming that your figures of 7% and 5% are true, 11.8 to 7.76 is still a much higher ratio than 7 to 5. Even if your figures are correct, in Florida short men are still more likely to be incarcerated or on probation or parole than tall men.
 
  • #36
stickythighs said:
Gokul,

Please address this, the most important of my responses to you:

Rounding my figures off to 11.8 and 7.76, and assuming that your figures of 7% and 5% are true, 11.8 to 7.76 is still a much higher ratio than 7 to 5. Even if your figures are correct, in Florida short men are still more likely to be incarcerated or on probation or parole than tall men.
I got the 7% and 5% numbers from the picture I linked. You can make your own estimate. I was just eyeballing it. Even if I was right, but only rounding off to the nearest integer, those numbers could be 7.49% and 4.51% which reverses the conclusion, even if only by a little bit.

As of now, the error bars on the percentages are large enough that they include the exact ratio of 11.8/7.76 quite readily.
 
  • #37
Gokul43201 said:
As of now, the error bars on the percentages are large enough that they include the exact ratio of 11.8/7.76 quite readily.

No they don't.
 
  • #38
mgb_phys said:
The point isn't this odd case, it is the suggestion that tall people are imprisoned less frequently.
I was suggesting that in the US, it is that white people are imprisoned less frequently and in Florida white people are on average taller than the hispanic/latino minority - whereas in Chicago they are probably shorter than the african-american minority.

No; the disparity has little or nothing to do with race.

There were 7,117 white men 5'5" or shorter under the supervision of the Florida criminal justice system.

There were 4,680 white men 6'3" or taller under the supervision of the Florida criminal justice system.
 
  • #39
That's interesting. As I said in your other thread, you would expect the opposite correlation for violent crimes.

Maybe these were the only ones the police caught - a correlation between prisoners and 100m sprint times :-)
 
  • #40
I wonder what his defense was?

"Your Honor, If my client is sent to prison, he'll be preyed upon sexually by men that are larger and stronger than he is."

Sounds like justice to me.
 
  • #41
Artman said:
Sounds like justice to me.

Really? Dehumanising and abusing people is justice is it? :rolleyes:

Its no wonder we never get anywhere with the criminal justice system if politicians have to appease the ignorant masses.
 
  • #42
mgb_phys said:
That's interesting. As I said in your other thread, you would expect the opposite correlation for violent crimes.

Maybe these were the only ones the police caught - a correlation between prisoners and 100m sprint times :-)

Probably most people under the supervision of the criminal justice system are not incarcerated, on probation, or on parole for violent crimes.

I have been mugged before. Earlier this year five guys beat me up and robbed me in Springfield, Missouri. They were all taller than me, but almost all guys are taller than me. I am only 5'1".

There's a darn good way to get to the bottom of this. I'll do a search for violent crimes on the Florida criminal justice database.
 
  • #43
mgb_phys said:
That's interesting. As I said in your other thread, you would expect the opposite correlation for violent crimes.

There were 1070 white men 5'5" or shorter under the jurisdiction of the Florida criminal justice system for assault and battery.

There were 554 white men 6'3" or taller under the jurisdiction of the Florida criminal justice system for assault and battery.


There were 170 white men 5'5" or shorter under the jurisdiction of the Florida criminal justice system for robbery.

There were 117 white men 6'3" or taller under the jurisdiction of the Florida criminal justice system for robbery.
------------

5'5" and shorter white men are almost twice as likely to be arrested for assault and battery than 6'3" and taller men.

5'5" and shorter white men are 50% more likely to be arrested for robbery than 6'3" and taller men.

The statistics still hold even for violent crime. Weird.
 
  • #44
wolram said:
Child molesters deserve nothing less than the black hole of calcutta.

Child molesters SHOULD be sodomized...
 
  • #45
Are you applying for the job?
 
  • #46
stickythighs said:
5'5" and shorter white men are almost twice as likely to be arrested for assault and battery than 6'3" and taller men.

5'5" and shorter white men are 50% more likely to be arrested for robbery than 6'3" and taller men.
In 2004, there were 9.3 million blacks living in poverty and 16.8 million whites. Whites were 80% more likely to be living in poverty than blacks. Weird.
 
  • #47
jimmysnyder said:
In 2004, there were 9.3 million blacks living in poverty and 16.8 million whites. Whites were 80% more likely to be living in poverty than blacks. Weird.

Your statistics of 9.3 million blacks living in poverty and 16.8 million whites living in poverty might be true, but whites are not 80% more likely to be living in poverty than blacks. Blacks are more likely to live in poverty than whites. Whites comprise about 70% of the American population. Blacks comprise about 12% of the American population. That is why there are more whites living in poverty than blacks, even though blacks are more likely to live in poverty than whites.


I did not just make up my statistics. If you don't believe any of the figures that I've quoted about the height of people under the supervision of the Florida criminal justice system, check it out yourself at the following link:

http://www.dc.state.fl.us/ActiveOffenders/search.asp
 
  • #48
jimmysnyder said:
In 2004, there were 9.3 million blacks living in poverty and 16.8 million whites. Whites were 80% more likely to be living in poverty than blacks. Weird.
US population 2006, total 300M
White: 74% or 221.3 million
Black or African American: 13.4% or 40.9 million

So the same statistic says roughly 1/4 blacks live in poverty and 1/13 whites.
 
  • #49
mgb_phys said:
US population 2006, total 300M
White: 74% or 221.3 million
Black or African American: 13.4% or 40.9 million

So the same statistic says roughly 1/4 blacks live in poverty and 1/13 whites.

Yep; that's why I said the following: "Blacks are more likely to live in poverty than whites."
 
  • #50
stickythighs said:
Yep; that's why I said the following
Sorry, your post wasn't there when I wrote my reply - I was commenting on jimmysnyder's answer.
The forum sw sometimes does that if two replies are within a minute of each other.

Edit sorry jimmy, just realized that was exactly the point you were trying to make - you have to look behind the simple stats.
 

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