Should professional sports players be banned for life if they are convicted of rape?

[ZombieHorde]

Poll question: Should professional sports players be banned for life if they are convicted of rape?

By "banned" I mean no longer allowed to play sports on a professional level, such as MLB.

This poll is about your own opinion, as opposed to any current policy.

[trumad]

1. I think a regular citizen should be banned from life if convicted of rape.

[Laelth]

2. They're private employees working for private employers.

The teams are privately owned. The government has no power to tell a private employer who they can and can not hire.

I.e. ... the question you pose strikes me as irrelevant. "We the People" can not control the employment decisions of sports team owners. So why bother asking us what we think team owners ought to do. They're not listening to us.

:dem:

-Laelth

[ZombieHorde]

6. People have changed company policy through boycotts or even the threat of boycotts.

Of course I do not believe people would actually boycott professional sports for any reason whatsoever.

"The government has no power to tell a private employer who they can and can not hire."

There are some cases where the government can tell a private employer who they can and can not hire. I have had to get permission from the U.S. Government to work at a few privately owned businesses.

[Laelth]

10. How about this as a poll question?

If you owned a major national sports franchise, would you refuse to hire someone who had been convicted of rape?

Asking that question, instead, would have avoided my objection.

:dem:

-Laelth

[ZombieHorde]

11. I might make that poll.

I could also make a "Would you hire Vick?" poll. That could be interesting. Polls are fun.

[Greyhound]

25. These so-called privately owned teams operate under specific government exclusions from

anti-monopoly laws, that gives the government all the right in the world to tell them who they can and cannot hire.

[Laelth]

30. That's news to me.

I just think it's dangerous to fantasize about a totalitarian state where the government controls all hiring and firing decisions of private enterprise.

It's one thing for the government to make decisions about whom it will choose to allow to be a government employee. It's another thing altogether for the government to control the hiring and firing of private enterprise. Some control is useful (anti-discrimination laws, for example), but this poll makes me uncomfortable in the sense that it presumes the government ought to have a lot more control over private business. It seems a lot of people on DU are willing to give the state a lot more power in this area. That's disappointing.

:dem:

-Laelth

[Greyhound]

34. It is true, check it out for yourself. Professional sports is another representation of

why it was such a bad idea for the federal government to get into the business of deciding who the winners and the losers are. I think it started with the railroads and it's just become worse and worse since then. The irony is that you believe that now the government (the people) has no right to interfere in what they created.

We've come too far down the road of granting and enforcing the authority of a selected minority to go back.

[Laelth]

35. Interesting. I'll have to look into that. Thanks. n/t

:dem:

-Laelth

[jody]

3. Anyone convicted should serve several decades without parole. When released, if they can compete, go

for it.

[surrealAmerican]

27. I agree.

They should be serving a long enough sentence that the original question need not be asked.

[Zavulon]

4. ANYONE convicted of rape should either spend life on prison or be executed, depending on the laws

of the state where the offense occurred. I see no reason whatsoever to cut any slack to scum like that.

[flvegan]

5. Yes. But, they should be in prison so long that it would go without question

that they'd never be able to compete.

[Obamanaut]

7. Should be allowed to play on the prison team for life. nt

[FreakinDJ]

8. Is this 1 of those "Feminist Fight" threads ?

Because Innocents project found over 30% of Rape convictions were Wrongful Convictions

Here is yet another example

http://www.cnn.com/video/#/video/us/2009/08/07/dnt.tx.man.freed.kiah?iref=mpvideosview

[ZombieHorde]

9. No. I am just fascinated by sports fans. nt

[Kceres]

12. Yes. And also pros convicted of dog fighting. n/t

[OutNow]

13. Nonsense

Should a mechanic be banned for life from his profession if convicted of rape?

Should an electrical engineer be banned for life from his profession if convicted of rape?

Should a shoe salesman be banned for life from his profession if convicted of rape?

See how silly your question is?

[ZombieHorde]

16. Your argument is not against the question.

Your argument is against a "Yes" vote.

So to answer your question, no, I do not see how sill my question is.

[Greyhound]

26. Two faults in your logic;

None of those businesses operate with special government dispensations excluding them from obeying the law.

None of those (almost certainly) men, upon release from prison, will find it possible to get a job in their old fields. Ex-cons are openly, and with great approval from society at large, discriminated against for the rest of their lives.

[Iggo]

14. Nope.

[paulsby]

15. no

once they serve their time, i am against further punishing them. otoh, i am still kind of ambiguous on voting rights for convicted felons.

[mitchum]

17. No, but I doubt that a rapist is a great shill for shoes, sports drinks, etc...

Isn't that really what most pro jocks really are? Shills for products?
Why should anyone care about which brand of oats that a racehorse allegedly prefers?

[Dramarama]

18. Big Ben?

[ZombieHorde]

22. I don't get it. nt

[XemaSab]

19. If I did jail time for a felony, I wouldn't be hired by most employers

Why should I be hired to play sports? :shrug:

[juno jones]

20. There's always some guy that hasn't raped somebody

or hosted dogfights or killed somebody who could use a break. If a sports figure/celebrity pulls some stupid stunt like that and gets caught, I really can't see giving them any more consideration. There's someone to take their place.

[Donald Ian Rankin]

21. No. What is needed to stop rape is more convictions.

The big problem with the legal punishment of rape is not that those who do get convicted aren't imprisoned for long enough (some certainly aren't, but I believe most are, although I'm not 100% sure), it is that very few rapists get convicted.

A 25 year sentence that you don't have to serve is no more effective a deterrent than a 5 year service you don't have to serve.

I'm not sure there is much that can be done to increase the rate of rape convictions - more specially-trained officers, restrictions on publicising rape cases, PR encouraging women to come forward? - but it's there, and not with the sentencing of those few rapists who get convicted, that the problem lies.

Of course, "convict more" and "lock them up longer" are not mutually exclusive, but I think that at the moment it's the former that mostly needs working on.

[Brooklyns_Finest]

23. No

I hate the fact that convicted felons who have served their time have very little chance of getting any job once released. I firmly believe that once you have paid your debt to society, you should be allowed to live free without any restrictions. The only exception I would make is with child molestors since their recidivism rates are so high.

FOr the guy who said that we should execute people who rape, well, we used to do that in the past. It was an easy way to get rid of black men in this country, whether or not they really raped anyone.

I think the poster who coined this the "Feminist Fight Thread" was correct. I am not even sure why this post was created. I think it has something to do with Mike Vick, because to the best of my knowledge, the last athlete that went to jail for rape and then went back to his sport once released was Mike Tyson. That was like 20 years ago!

[ZombieHorde]

24. "I think it has something to do with Mike Vick, because to the best of my knowledge,"

Vick inspired this poll, but the poll is actually about sports fans.

Who are you willing to cheer for? Who do you want our role models to be?

[Greyhound]

28. Yes.

[Strong Atheist]

29. YES. DUH! nt.

[JerseygirlCT]

31. I think they should be serving a very long sentence - long enough

perhaps that practically speaking, your question is moot.

But I think the question of what their employer chooses to do should be a bit separated from what the legal system does. I would hope that the sport would decide that fans won't want to see the player play any longer, and for business reasons, might not want to continue employing him. But I don't know that the sports organization is where we ought to see the legal consequences played out.

[ShadowLiberal]

32. Depends on the situation

Some kinds of rape that you can be convicted for border on insane, remember the case of that black guy in the south (I forget his name & state) who had sex with a girl a few years younger then him when he old enough to consent to sex and she wasn't by state law and he got convicted of rape and told he had to register as a sex offender & go to jail for I forget how many years? I can't remember their ages, but they both went to same high school, so they couldn't have been too far apart. His conviction was only overturned years later after fighting his way to the state supreme court.

It's quite possible to be convicted of rape in similar situations (based on how the law is still written anyway, and assuming you find a jury willing to do it) in some states.

[ZombieHorde]

33. I agree there are situations that are not actually rape even though they are labeled rape. nt