Can paedophiles change their spots?

Let's start with the last one first. Are paedophiles sad, mad or bad?

A recent case in the Upper Tribunal concerned a man

"who is now 75 years of age, [and] is detained in a hospital... He suffers from a mental illness in the form of a persistent delusional disorder, which has caused him to be a life-long paedophile attracted to boys aged between approximately 9 and 13 years and strongly misogynistic."

He has been detained since an offence committed when he was over 60. He surely fits the definition of someone who cannot change their spots, and society needs protecting from him. But note the language of a life-long mental illness. If someone is ill and cannot change, they might deserve some measure of compassion even while we need to protect the public from them.

The difficulty is, what if there are others who choose paedophile criminality? Those are the people society might legitimately attack as bad rather than sad or mad. But I am afraid the moment you attack them as bad - "they can help it" - you create the corollary - "therefore, they can change". The moment you say, they cannot change, you are also saying, they cannot help it, therefore, it is not their fault and the vindictive vendettas against them are not appropriate.

Now, let's take another case:

"At the time the offences were committed he was 18 years of age... His computer was seized and on it were 7 video clips of children performing sexual acts upon each other and 63 photographs. All fit into category 1 or 2 of the SAP sentencing code, category 1 being "Images depicting nudity or erotic posing, with no sexual activity" category 2 being "Sexual activity between children, or solo masturbation by a child"."

Are we to assume that that 18 year old, now labelled as a sex offender, is equally unable to change his spots, and will inevitably still be furtively pursuing images of children aged between 12 and 14 when he, too, is in his 70s? Or might it be worth reminding ourselves of the dangers of reading the word "paedophile" and attaching to it a stereotypical image of a predatory older man who cannot change his spots? Can we really safely say that in this person, society has successfully identified upon entry to adulthood someone with a lifelong predilection for children rather than with a predilection for people a few years younger than himself? Or is it too soon to say?

After those two examples, which more closely approximates to the Supreme Court ruling? Answer, the second. The offences were sickening, the first being the rape by an 11-year-old of a 6-year-old. It seems to me more nearly to fit the case that, like the 18 year old, we cannot yet know he will have a predilection for offending, let alone with children when he is in his 70s; it is simply right that he has an opportunity to persuade us that he has changed. And the Supreme Court decision is in fact very narrow. There is nothing wrong with an indefinite requirement (= potentially for life), only with the absence of a review mechanism (= inevitably for life).

And so on to human rights and democracy. Daily Mail readers might be forgiven (after all, they know no better...) for thinking that the human right to challenge the lawfulness of your detention is a human right to be freed. It is not. Or that the human right to seek to persuade an appropriate body that you have reformed is a right to be removed from the sex offenders register. It is not. As these cases show, human rights involve balancing exercises, one right against another, one person's rights against anothers. What they do not allow however, is a "lock them up and throwaway the key" mentality, that we should both condemn as culpable and also preclude any possibility of redemption.

And democracy? It is a fundamental principle of democracy that while the majority rule, the rights of minorities are protected (Alexis de Tocqueville, 'Tyranny of the Majority'). Judges play an important role in respect of the latter thread of true democracy, and elected politicians are well out of order whenever they insist their democratic mandate should override the rights of minorities. That way lies tyranny.

Judges may be unelected. So are editors of tabloid newspapers. Both, dare I say it, play an important role in holding the elected legislature to account. And I for my part, having so publicly departed from the majority view of the Daily Mail and the Prime Minister, am glad it is my human right in a democratic society to do so.