Wow...Deep.

Uhhh, this wasn't someone "falling through the cracks." The system had this guy, and pushed him back out through the gaping hole in the system.

Those who commit these kinds of sexual assaults (both his first and most recent crimes) are beyond rehabilitation. A person can have legitimate reasons to perpetrate nearly any crime, except for those against children. Those are deep-seeded problems for which there are no cures, save incarceration or castration (which should be considered an alternative to life imprisonment). If you want to argue there should be less prosecution of lower crimes so there's more room/money to keep pieces of shit like this guy off the streets forever, then great. It it's some kind of "if only we had helped this man early" claptrap, I think you've totally missed the mark, and bought into the same failed thinking that got this fellow back into society.

Other countries (for example Sweden and Norway, I think) have criminal justice systems based on rehabilitation, but that allow for the possibility that rehabilitation is impossible. Their maximum sentences are under 20 years, but certain offenses can put the offender in psychiatric detention where release is conditional on the capacity for a life without reoffending. To me, that seems like a better system as a rule, and it still allows for particularly egregious offenders to be out of circulation for life.

Allowing a judge/jury to declare, at one point in time, that a person will forever be incapable of life among the general population seems like too big a power to give the justice system.

I don't see any moral difference between Brown and a vicious dog. If the dog's either organically vicious or vicious from mistreatment, the result is (sadly) the same - the dog is an irredeemable danger that must be permanently removed. If it's a dog, you put it down. If it's a person, you lock him up the rest of his life, and every few years you confirm he hasn't changed.

I don't have any problem with having the possibility of long prison terms, relative to European countries. I don't have a problem with the death penalty in principle, though it's beyond proven that we can't apply it in real life in an evenhanded way. The problem is when we take these worst-of-the-worst examples and use them to justify mandatory minimum sentences, remove all discretion from the criminal justice experts best situated to make sentencing decisions, and remove any possibility of re-assessment. When that happens, we're basically deciding as a society that we're going to throw another life away, regardless of mitigating factors that may exist (or exist later) in any criminal's case.

I think you should just give the boys' father a baseball bat and put him in a locked room with Mr. Brown. I'm sure he would solve the problem. I know I would if that were one of my children. Harsh? Probably, but not as harsh as what Mr. Brown has done, regardless of how he was raised. Right is right and wrong is wrong.

@Klug: As a religious person, I don't really feel that way (although I understand many others do).

I generally believe that God gives us free will and that it is up to us to live those values by our own choice. This man certainly seems incapable of doing that, and also incapable of abiding by any sort of social contract or set of mores. While I typically subscribe to the love-thy-enemy branch of Christianity, I am certainly also a moral relativist and near-Benthamite pragmatist. This man does evil things without regard to the hurt he inflicts upon others. I don't think it's worth the public money to try to kill him (far more expensive than life without parole), but he should most definitely be taken out of society to forbid him the opportunity to cause additional harm to others.

This is tough stuff. I'm reminded of the parents who have stood behind their serial killer children in court. While they can't support the actions of the kids, they still love the person in there. That doesn't go away, and I think it's a fascinating indicator of human nature.

All in all, I have found in my personal life extreme importance in discerning between pardoning and forgiving.

Colin's makes a great point: human life does not have intrinsic value. At some point, in a small number of individuals, the difference between animal and man is null. This qualifies as one of those cases.

The "social safety net" would only work in this case if it also incarcerated him in state mental health care. I couldn't believe he was drawing SSI and had a place to live in with those kinds of felony convictions and his continued disregard for any sort of standards. He even got a chance at subsidized rehab which he pissed away (and reportedly other patients at the center weren't told of the dangers he posed, even when they brought their children to visit). He was stealing a place from someone who needed it. To think of the people who wind up on the streets or have no income when he sucks off the system. It almost makes me sympathetic with the tea party.

An honest and compassionate perspective, Mirk.

Our thinking about dealing with criminality is completely backwards. Invest in people before things go horribly wrong, not after. We shouldn't be debating prison sentences, we should start with social services, community support, childhood guidance and family intervention when necessary. With few exceptions, crimes like this are preventable, but you we have to start much, much earlier.