Psychopaths need to be put on a leash

Serious crimes are committed at times with no witnesses. Crimes are sometimes not even reported. Socio-economic factors, such as poverty, might lead to victims having a distrust of police hence more reason not to report crime. Unreported crime means minor crimes committed by young people go unpunished leading to more serious crimes in adulthood. This was the case with the killers of Anita Cobby.

The humane way to protect ourselves

Chemical lobotomies performed on a dangerous brain should not be an option. There is something horrible in deliberately damaging a brain and removing its 'humanness'.

As a diagnosed psychopath is subconsciously waiting for his victim, he could be kept under 24-hour electronic surveillance and be restricted to the one city or town for the rest of his life. Civil libertarians would object but how likely to object would be the family of 20 year-old Janine Balding who was pulled into a car in broad daylight outside of a major railway station, repeatedly raped, bludgeoned and then drowned? If her killers were under unobtrusive surveillance, Balding would still be alive.

The technology of electronic surveillance is rapidly improving. The ABC recently ran a feature titled: The brain on trial. This program looked at the feasibility of brain scans becoming hard evidence in court. We may be on the way to stopping exceptionally bad brains from directing hands to perform exceptionally bad deeds.

But, expecting that one in every 100 of the population be under surveillance in the near future is expecting far too much. What we must do is have those convicted of torturing animals under permanent surveillance. Isn't removing the possibility of a child stepping off a school bus and stepping straight into a hell worth that one sacrifice of our civil liberties?