The Knesset of Israel, the attorney’s office, and the judges of the court are confused and don’t know what to do. On the one hand, they want to show that the worst criminals, people who hurt children, should be punished, on the other hand, they know that there is a very high price for every person who enters the system as a suspect and ends up a sex offender under supervision.
Since 1/7/2010, we hear from members of the Knesset who come and go that they want to make the punishment worse when it comes to harming children, (Expanding the applicability of the Law on the Protection of the Public from Sex Offenders for the offense of possession of pornographic material by minors) After all, everyone is tired of hearing about a man who hits a 4-year-old girl in her yard and ends up being sentenced to 9 months of community service. The task of changing laws is in the hands of the Knesset, and what they do in practice, studies, and discussions in the Knesset (and in the background treasury officials who price everything and warn against the expected expenditure) Then a conclusion is reached and a bill is submitted. Sound simple? So why does it take 12 years? The Knesset operates: a. something personal happens to one of her friends, b. which is very populist.
In 2020, about 10,000 cases were opened at Moked 105 that are related to child abuse via the Internet. Let’s say only half of those suspects will be sentenced to actual imprisonment considering a future dream that laws will be amended to match the reality of the year 2022, there is nowhere to put another 5,000 prisoners, the prisons are full to capacity. Building more prisons is out of the question for the state, and the cost of a prisoner to the state is approximately 126,000 NIS per year.
Let’s assume that the sentence of those 5,000 people will be a year in prison, net. The cost is NIS 630 million, without taking into account the cost of police stations, the state attorney’s office system that is spread throughout the country, and the criminal sections of the courts. In summary, you can easily double the cost to 1,260,000,000 NIS. That’s the cost to prosecute and ban 5,000 people a year, 13 every day. (Actually the number is about 260) For now we will settle for the lucky number 13.
The legislator realized that it was impossible to send everyone to prison and made sure that an “attempt” to commit an indecent act on a girl, for example, would result in a much reduced punishment than the actual indecent act! The punishments are usually community service, and thus the state saves hundreds of millions a year. In order to reduce the chance that a felon who has been caught 4 times will return to prison for the fifth time, the courts give a suspended sentence for a short period. There is no law that says a heavier punishment should be given to a person who repeatedly harms children. The court is obliged to be generous in passing the sentence in the absence of an obligation to behave otherwise.
If all the budgets were to go to real enforcement, and a minimum sentence were set for child rapists who offend repeatedly, there would not be a budget for the salary of MKs, and the multitude of expenditure items at their disposal, and therefore there would not be any real systemic change that would lead to the reduction of the phenomenon, these would only perpetuate for generations the The current situation, it’s all a matter of cost versus benefit, and from their point of view the 4-year-old girl will have sex once in… this is included in the budget.
Cost estimate update - determines what will happen to your children
