I'd say cutting their dick off. That would certainly be a deterrent. For the second offense (assuming they use a coke bottle or whatever) cut both their arms and both their legs off. I bet that would be worse than dying. Maybe also take their eyes and one kidney one lung and part of their liver to use for transplants to make them do some good for the harm they did. Maybe for the first offense also take one cornea some skin and some bone marrow.  After they are fucked up let them decide if they want to live the rest of their life like that or be executed. Do it in a way they can use whatever organs are left.

I think someone has been watching The Running Man a few too many times.

In a perfect world, the best "punishment" would be rehabilitation of sorts.  What ever would work best for that particular person to stop them from repeat offending. 

Of course, this isn't a perfect world and a rehabilitative judgement is the most expensive and hardest to perform course of action.  The cheaper way in which society chooses more often than not is a form of punishment that will scare people away from doing those acts rather than treating the problem in the first place.

Five years to life depending on the circumstances which is pretty much what typical sentences are in the UK

An no the victim should NOT be involved in sentencing. Civilized society moves away from mob rule and the criminal justice system must be rational and calm something no victim can be.

I also believe technically all criminal prosecutions are the state versus the defendant not the victim versus the defendendant. The victim is a witness/evidence

I would argue that the mob mentality sends a stronger deterring message to potential rapists.  If you rape somebody, she will decide your fate.  Knowing that such a violated woman might not have much sympathy, would be an excellent deterrent to potential rapists.

I'd also argue that the woman's sense of loss, outrage and violation, being the direct result of the rape, have not been proven trivial to dispensing justice.  For all you know, the outrage of the family is a better solution than any court.  How do you know that what "civilized people do" is necessarily the better choice?

American doesn't currently think the victim should be the judge.  Are you sure that's the best system of justice?  Why?

Altemeyer is one of the foremost sociologists in the world, and he spent well over thirty years identifying, studying, and quantifying the authoritarian personality.  This book is a presentation of his findings.

If you want to know how authoritarianism rears its head in politics, check out this book:

The criminal justice system does not merely exist as a deterrant  and for more emotional spur of the moment crimes it has almost no role in this

Among its many roles are

deterence

punishment

rehabiliation

reperations/aid  to the victim if possible

but the one thing is definitely does not involve is a victim or families revenge, I leave that to nations like Saudia Arabia and other backwards cultures

Why do you single out such barbaric punishment for rape? I'm not arguing that it is any less of a crime than it is presently regarded, but I'm just wondering why you don't throw in the other stock atrocities that are normally applied to excite emotive responses - you know, child abuse and so on? Why ask about rape specifically?

Through my work in the past I have acquired some insight into both perspectives on this question - the victim's and the perpetrator's - and one thing I can say with certainty is that it is by no means as simple a scenario as questions like yours seem to imply. Rape convictions, especially, can often hinge on very subjective testimony and the reality is at odds very much with how the crime is presented dramatically or even by the media when reporting instances of the issue.

The perpetration of a crime most often proves a disaster for all the people concerned, and whatever society does in the prosecution of the accused in rape cases must include a lot of follow-up in terms of counselling, rehabilitation and supervision. This is true in all cases of crime that involve potential destruction of the victim's quality of life due to physical or mental scarring. In rape cases it is required even more since the conviction, and even severe punishment, rarely provides any decent measure of closure. In cases where a person has been convicted on very subjective and circumstantial evidence, the same can most definitely said for both parties. The question you phrase neatly ignores this whole aspect to dealing with crime and concentrates instead on physical punishment based on two false assumptions - that all crimes labelled as rape are equal, and that all accused therefore merit equal lack of consideration as humans when convicted.

Deterrence as a concept is all very well, but strict adherence to it as the primary function of sentencing leads those adherents into barbarity as vicious and ultimately destructive as the crimes themselves. You would seem to be one of those people based on your closing remarks in your first post, skepticdude, and I'm just wondering if your impatience with society for not matching your particularly vicious line in retribution has led you to phrase your "question" in a manner designed to elicit similar vindictiveness in others?

There is a very good reason why the victim does not decide the punishment. If you do not understand the complexity of the question you raised, that's fine. But don't compound the crime of ignorance by then insisting that all objectivity be abandoned.

Apply that lack of reasoning to areas outside of rape convictions and what type of society do you think you'll end up in?

But I'm still interested in knowing what prompted you to raise the question, and phrase it in the way you did? Why "rape"? What exactly is your agenda here? If it's a "punishment fitting the crime" thing you've opened the debate with just about as narrow and subjective a treatment of the topic as you can get. Why? Are you afraid no one will agree with you so you've tried to play a trump card first?

Crappy card by the way. Common sense beats it on almost every point.

I believe my solution to dealing with a rape convict is commeasurate with that crime.

I am willing to talk about child abuse too.  Humans are still animals, and as such, we don't simply shrug off physical beatings, but we learn to mend our ways after we learn to associate unbearable pain with our stupid choices, just like any dog might be expected to.  If you bust the knees of a child abuser with a baseball bat, you cannot argue it wouldn't be effective, because our current justice system hasn't tried that yet.  But I do know that people normally don't engage in behavior that they are sure will end up getting their knees busted with a baseball bat.  Would you?

Of course, we need to define "abuse".  Can you be guilty of physically abusing kids even if you leave no marks?  Yes.  Physical abuse occurs at several levels, and the lessor abuse should not be equted with the greater.  The dad who smacks his kid's face is not as bad as the dad who knocks the kid's teeth out.

I agree.  But I already addressed the possible "conviction of possibly innocent people" objection: namely, no law system can be free of the prospect of condemning innocent people.  As such, the possibility of condemning innocent people should either be lodged against all possible legal systems, or else discounted entirely.  I disagree with your implied notion that we should go easy on rapists because they might be innocent.  You'd paralyse the legal system using that sort of logic. You have to allow some imperfections because absolute proof is never possible.

If you are talking about the convict, I say he gets one appeal, if he loses it, shoot him.

What you are proposing is making the harshness of the punishment upon conviction, take into account how convincing the evidence was against him.  That's a jury's job.  If they are worried that it's a "he said/she said" affair that cannot be resolved without divine intervention, they have the duty to declare not guilty, or else agreed to be deadlocked.  Nothing can be done about juries who know their verdict is unjust, but agree to set it forth in court anyway.

So?

Yes, I have a viewpoint.  Yes, I come up with ways to make my viewpoint more attractive to others.  I chose the emotionally charged subject of rape, because it was the one violent act that I found most repulsive to me, personally.  I personally believe that people who rape others are thus not fit to live.  Yes, there is potential for false testimony to place an innocent person in jail.  But I disagree that the possibility of the convict's innocence warrants treating them less harshly just in case they turn out to be innocent.  That concern could be exploited by criminals by simply doing a better job of destroying the evidence of their crimes.  If we worked and fellowshipped more in small social groups within our neighborhoods, the jury might get the upperhand on whose testimony is more likely true, and whether the victim is likely telling the truth.

I greatly fear being falsely accused of rape.  I have very little social life, so I don't know anybody that could be a character reference for me should that day come.  The woman is far more likely to have supportive connections who will vouch for her honesty in the courtroom, and the jury would no doubt go into herd-mentality mode, and figure I must have done it because I don't have any friends, so I'm the loner type that is more likely to exploit a woman.

The bright side to this problem is that our current judicial system seems to have this one down pretty good.  You cannot convict a man of rape with nothing more than the alleged victim's testimony alone.  There must be evidence to support the charge.  If it was date rape, then even a dummy jury would realize that the mere presence of a condom at her house filled with semen and his admission that they had sex, doesn't make the sex rape.  In my personal estimation, convicting an innocent man of rape is far worse than letting a real rapist slip through the cracks of justice.  The lucky rapist may strike again, emboldened by his win in court, and next time he will leave incriminating evidence.  But the man without a history of rape should not be convicted on testimony alone, so I prefer to insist that the requirement of evidence for a rape case be higher than it might have to be for other non-violent cases.

I appreciate your input, it made me think.

You appear to be huffing and puffing more than saying what's really on your mind, so far.  I've already argued that nothing can be done about juries that convict upon weaker evidence than you'd have convicted him. If they convict, he's a criminal unless the judges over his appeal decide that the case was too weak to warrant conviction.

A society that let's the victim decide the convict's fate?  One thing I haven't brought up is the moral value of letting the victim decide.  If she gave false testimony and got an innocent man convicted, giving her the ability to choose his fate is a last check on her moral conscience.  It's really no different than the luck the suspect has concerning the moral conscience of the jury that got selected for his case.

To promote objective discussion of a rather emotionally charged topic.  To see if anybody can refute my case that rapists deserve death.

The fact that you choose to initiate the designation of "rape" as a "trump card" indicates that you yourself agree with me that rape is an unspeakably horrible evil to happen to somebody. Yes, I played the trump card first, you got a better card.

And I didn't play my trump card.  That one is called "child molestation".  You aint' seen nuthin' yet.

Proposing arguments for better solutions to the rape problem than what we currently have, is a "crappy card"?  Are you happy with the current consequences American courts impose on rape convicts?  I'm not.  Prison time, in my opinion, is not commeasurate with the victim's suffering during the act of rape.  My hatred of rape thus means I also don't think the convicts deserve to live and thus eat up tax money.  That act of brutality against another human, forfeits the attackers right to life, and if I can find enough people to agree with me, there might be a change in the law someday.  May the best debator win.

Unfortunately, not everybody agrees with you on what exactly constitutes "common sense", and I'd argue neither do  rape victims.  Hence, your preaching to the choir doesn't have the stifling effect you apparantly intended, thus we all continue to debate and disagree.