This didn’t need to happen.

A level 3 sex offender was busted Thursday night by the State Police for allegedly having sex with a 13-year-old girl in a Greenport motel.

According to the writeup, this disgrace of a human being was convicted of possessing child porn–a felony–and he was back on the streets four months later. You could spend more time inside if you were caught with bootleg copies of “Twilight” or a few gallons unpasteurized milk. And that wasn’t the pig’s first conviction.

Stroming has a lengthy criminal history, having previously served time for a burglary conviction out of Kings County in 1991 and two arson convictions, one in 1988 out of Orange County and the other out of Dutchess County in 1984.

We are told the state is doing everything in its power to prevent these attacks on the innocent, yet here we have a repeat convict, despite being convicted of child pornography and given the highest rating for potential recidivism, raping a 13 year-old girl. Faced with this, and countless other stories, are we expected to think that state government is doing an ample job keeping us safe?

The social contract makes the key assumption that human beings are going to behave rationally. To quote Epicurian thought on the concept, laid out in Principle Doctrines:

Those animals which are incapable of making binding agreements with one another not to inflict nor suffer harm are without either justice or injustice; and likewise for those peoples who either could not or would not form binding agreements not to inflict nor suffer harm.

As such, there exists a type of crimes which would demonstrate an incapability of respecting critical social norms, in this case, that children are not to be viewed in a sexual manner. Suspects of these crimes are entitled to due process, just like any other innocent party, but upon sentencing, we need to throw out the old play book, so to speak, as they have lost their entitlement to justice. In determining the treatment of a convicted child predator, it should be considered that an absolute rejection of the social contract has taken place, for it stands apart from all other crimes which, despite their severity, are present in the state of nature from which civilization and government seek to protect us. To covet your neighbors goods and steal them is a natural action. To become enraged and attack another person is a natural action. But to have sexual designs on a child departs from anything of which man could be expected to do in absence of government and the rule of law, and as such, it needs to be treated more seriously.

The problem begins in the court room. We need stronger sentencing guidelines, if not mandatory sentences altogether. It’s a simple mathematical fact that the longer these creatures are kept out of the general population, the safer our children are. If the suspect in the case above had remained locked away, there would be one fewer victim. Specific training for judges and town justices about sentencing those criminals who reject critical social norms would be another potential solution, with the goal being the elimination about any qualms about imparting “excessive” sentences on the guilty.

There exists great room for discussion about medical treatments for the condition that leads these monsters to behave as they do, and whether rehabilitation is an option. But in the absence of such treatment, there is no denying that the incarceration of this special class of criminal falls demands unique considerations, and we should have no qualms with calling for child predators spending the rest of their natural lives isolated from the rest of us. If people convicted of sex crimes again children are unable to respect such a basic premises of our society, then our society should not be forced to include them, as we are forced when they are released from our prisons. Until our criminal justice system is changed accordingly, we can’t be surprised when more children fall victim to this same problem.