Thoughts = crimes?

Can you be punished for being a sexual sadist without ever having acted upon it? Apparently, yes, at least in Canada. The Star reports the sentencing of an 18 year old who shared his sadistic sexual fantasies with a classmate, then spent the next 77 days in pre-sentence custody and years of probation for it:

This sadist is a handsome, strapping young man, in his neat navy trousers and cardigan, nicely groomed. The observer imagines a teenage girl would be quite chuffed to receive a Facebook overture from so pleasant-seeming a boy. Except this sadist wrote: “I wanna cut ur stomach open and stick my d—k in it.’’

From her end of the online chat, the girl responded blandly: “OK.’’

Sadist: “Break ur legs and (obscenity deleted) on ur face.’’

Girl: “k calm down.’’

That, De Filippis concluded, constituted the bodily harm threat, rejecting the defence’s argument that the Facebook conversation utterances were merely desires, not intended action.

And the girl (eventually) felt threatened, so pretty much that in itself is a crime?  

“I find that the defendant is a sadist,’’ the judge wrote. “The Facebook conversation reflects his need to cause bodily harm as a source of sexual gratification. He described the violent nature of the acts contemplated and sought the complainant’s submission to his desire. He also said he did not care if she consented.

Well, which is it? That he sought her submission or suggested he didn't care if she wanted it or not? And isn't playing at lack of consent one of the key elements of BDSM? Is there any way to criminally sentence this guy without criminalizing a host of other sexual "deviants"?

“I have no doubt these words were meant to be taken seriously and that they intimidated the complainant. Indeed, I am confident he derived pleasure from the threats themselves.’’

This is a crime in Canada? To proposition someone and have them be intimidated by it? What if someone propositioned the girl for "normal" sex, which she declined? Also a crime? Makes you want to be careful about who you reveal your fantasies to, right?

At that point, the boy says, “I don’t wanna hurt u so bye,” as if warning her off. Yet she won’t let him get away. “Stop — I do have feelings for you … but u can’t force me into s—t … . I’m not like that. I don’t want to lose what we have but if u can’t respect me then … maybe we should just stay friends.’’

***

“If I hurt u, but not badly, are u okay with that?’’ he asks. “Like if cut u? ... Bruise u … I want to cut u.’’

***

“No u can kiss me and u can only slap my a--.’’

It was entirely a “reciprocal’’ conversation, court heard, and the girl laughed when the youth said he’d masturbated over a picture of her.

Close enough to a crime in the eyes of Canada. He gets probation, including a prohibition on certain internet and mobile phone use and restrictions about what he is allowed to read or view (including no "smut"). But also, 50 Shades of Grey is popular and mainstream enough to be made into a movie... 

In related "shoot first and ask questions later" news, the NY Times reports that a security guard at the Western Wall in Jerusalem recently shot and killed a Jewish man. For what offense? The man had his hand in his pocket allegedly shouted “Allahu akbar,” or “God is great.” The guard shot him multiple times, "apparently suspecting him of being a Palestinian militant about to carry out an attack." Sound like Trayvon Martin? Or how about drone attacks murdering innocent people for saying a few magic words like "jihad" in a mobile phone conversation? People tend to have a quick trigger finger for those whom they believe to be a threat, even if they've done nothing wrong. 

In still more Philip K. Dick's Minority Report related news, a recent study suggests that we can identify criminals likely to be recidivists via their brain scans. Wouldn't that be so great to be able to identify evil-doers before they can even get around to committing evil? And yet people are decrying the violations to their own civil liberties from government monitoring (NSA), for similar prophylactic measures. But if people have nothing to hide, they have nothing to worry about, right? As long as you manage to avoid being labeled something evil like sadist or sociopath (or shouting common religious phrases in public or wearing a hoodie at night or having opposing political beliefs as the party in power, or saying "that's the bomb!" in Afghanistan or standing next to someone that did), you're safe, right? Because we basically have a foolproof method of identifying bad people and punishing them.

I feel like this is somehow relevant:

Identifying sociopaths (and then what?)

This was an interesting post from author of Liars and Outliers, Bruce Schneier, about the identification of sociopaths. He first quotes Scott Adams (Dilbert comic author) predicting the future identification of "sociopaths and terrorists":

My hypothesis is that science will someday be able to identify sociopaths and terrorists by their patterns of Facebook and Internet use. I'll bet normal people interact with Facebook in ways that sociopaths and terrorists couldn't duplicate.

Anyone can post fake photos and acquire lots of friends who are actually acquaintances. But I'll bet there are so many patterns and tendencies of "normal" use on Facebook that a terrorist wouldn't be able to successfully fake it.

Adams says that the reason that it would work is the same reason that fraud detection programs work: "[C]rooks don't know there is a normal pattern and so they don't know when they violate it. I think the same would be true for Facebook. There must be dozens of normal Facebook patterns that sociopaths and terrorists wouldn't know about, and therefore couldn't fake." This does not seem implausible, and is one of several reasons why I think that remaining completely anonymous and undetectable is not going to work for the rising generation of sociopaths.

Schneier has another criticism:

Okay, but so what? Imagine you had such an amazingly accurate test...then what? Do we investigate those who test positive, even though there's no suspicion that they've actually done anything? Do we follow them around? Subject them to additional screening at airports? Throw them in jail because we know the streets will be safer because of it? Do we want to live in a Minority Report world? 

The problem isn't just that such a system is wrong, it's that the mathematics of testing makes this sort of thing pretty ineffective in practice. It's called the "base rate fallacy." Suppose you have a test that's 90% accurate in identifying both sociopaths and non-sociopaths. If you assume that 4% of people are sociopaths, then the chance of someone who tests positive actually being a sociopath is 26%. (For every thousand people tested, 90% of the 40 sociopaths will test positive, but so will 10% of the 960 non-sociopaths.) You have postulate a test with an amazing 99% accuracy -- only a 1% false positive rate -- even to have an 80% chance of someone testing positive actually being a sociopath.

He ends with this thought: "Many authors have written stories about thoughtcrime. Who has written about genecrime?"

The comments are also really worth reading for their intelligence and insight. For instance, there was this comment:

First you'll need a useful definition of "sociopath" that is not, for practical purposes, equivalent to "non-conformist" or "adherent to a religion not on the approved list", etc. 

Followed by this comment:

You may underestimate the ability to create tautological tests. If you define a sociopath as someone who fails the sociopathy test, then the sociopathy test is 100% accurate in identifying sociopaths. 

That's all well and good, until people begin to think that an attribute thus defined is useful for anything.