I suppose conservatives are generally more in favor of harsher punishment, but I'm a liberal, for the death penalty and about an inch away from being okay with flogging. I think liberals are just idealists who often wish to avoid some of the necessary and terrible things we do to each other. Very often unrealistic expectations but no less noble. Killing off these sex offenders may be all well and good for everyone else. However, If these people were actually just insane and did not care about consequences then we'd just be constantly killing off a portion of our population and of course always after the they commit the crime. I don't want to wait for the crime to be committed. I want someone much smarter than I to think of a way to stop these people before they commit the crime. Wasn't this article about drugs? =)

I think a lot of crimes are committed with the idea that they won't get caught so punishment isn't really a deterrent. People commit homicide every day and our penalty for that is as severe as you can get these days. We could make every felony a life sentence and I don't believe it would lessen crime at all. It would just fill our jails. What I think we need to do is figure out a way to get these people to stop committing sex offenses besides locking them up with a bunch of other criminals and then letting them go. In my area there are hundreds of registered sex offenders and dateline's "to catch a predator" caught 23 people in one day in my area trying to get with the same 13 year old girl. To me this is a serious problem and there's really nothing actually being done about it. Public flogging anyone? Maybe posting these people's pictures all over the major net sites might help...but that's also immoral in someways.

What gets me on this is that there's obvious prostitution ads in my local newspaper. And there's even publications that consist of nothing but "escort services" that are sold in vending machines across the country just like newspapers.

You could just stay away from the Erotic section of craigs list. It's not like they are advertising their amazing $500 sex skills during The Simpsons.

Exactly. Any problem in society we just make it illegal and take offenders temporarily out of society by throwing them in jail. This may work on an individual level and only sometimes, but as a whole with our current methods crime will persist for all time. I think we just need to step outside the box and realize that if we fix other aspects of our society like poverty and depression we may be more effective at preventing crime from happening.

When will people learn that you are never ever ever going to stop two people from exchanging money for sex. Sure there's a possible risk involved in these transactions, but making it illegal doesn't just magically remove this risk. People are going to do what they want no matter what. Making anything illegal in no way makes us any safer. Does stealing and killing being illegal do anything for its prevention?