The amendments to POSCO Act by introducing death penalty as a possible punishment for the rape of a girl below 12 years is a perfect example of lawmaking that is as thick on rhetoric as it is on empirical evidence. Reactionary reforms are often the easier ways adopted by any government, when it wants to perpetrate an image that they really care about protection of citizens. Though child sexual violence is one of the relatively better documented areas in criminal justice, it appears that little of that research is reflected in the imagination and passing of these amendments. The argument is attractive because it appeals to our intuition that fear of the harshest punishment will prevent individuals from committing child rape. But social, economic, cultural, psychological and other factors in each of our lives interact in far more complex ways than just that simple equation. Also, multiple studies on the working of special courts under the POCSO Act conducted by National Law ...