The California legislature unanimously passed a bill Monday that would require prison time for anyone convicted of sexually assaulting someone who is unconscious or severely intoxicated.
Lawmakers introduced the proposed bill in June, two weeks after former Stanford University student-athlete Brock Turner was sentenced to six months in jail on three counts of sexual assault. Turner is scheduled to be released from Santa Clara County Jail on Friday, three months into his sentence.
“Rape is rape, and rapists like Brock Turner shouldn’t be let off with a slap on the wrist,” Assemblyman Evan Low, a Democrat from Campbell, California, said in a statement. “While we can’t go back and change what happened, we can make sure it never happens again.”
The bill, intended to close the loophole that helped Turner get a light sentence, reignited a longstanding debate over mandatory prison time.
Gov. Jerry Brown has not said whether he will sign the legislation, but it contradicts one of his own ballot measures. Proposition 57 seeks to allow those convicted of a nonviolent felony to be eligible for parole after serving the primary sentence for their primary offense, excluding any enhancements or consecutive sentencing. The proposition is a turnaround for Brown, who signed a bill mandating prison time for serious crimes when he first became governor in 1977.
“One of the key unintended consequences was the removal of incentives for inmates to improve themselves, to refrain from gang activity, using narcotics, otherwise misbehaving,” he said, discussing Proposition 57. “Nothing that would give them the reward of turning their life around.”
Under California law, sexual assault of an unconscious or severely intoxicated person is considered a nonviolent felony, but Turner’s sentencing sparked allegations that the judge was influenced by race and class bias. The judge, Aaron Persky, said “a prison sentence would have a severe impact” on Turner. Persky has since given up proceeding over criminal cases.
Yet to advocates of prison reform, the proposed legislation follows a familiar and sinister pattern.
“We share in the outrage at Mr. Turner’s actions, but worry that this law could cause more harm than good,” wrote Feministing.com editor Alexandra Brodsky and former Yale Law School classmate Claire Simonich in the New York Times. “History shows that this reform would not deter violence and most likely would perpetuate punitive racial and class disparities.”
The ACLU of California has also vocally opposed the bill. “The well-intentioned mandatory minimum sentence this bill creates will have negative impacts on communities of color and other unintended consequences,” said Natasha Minsker, director of the organization’s Center for Advocacy and Policy.
Nina Chaudhary, co-founder of the online activist group UltraViolet, a group that fights sexism, said the legislation would add to a problematic system. “While it is long past time that our justice system take the crime of rape seriously,” she said, “we need judges who focus on finding justice for rape survivors, not the rehashing of bad policies that rig the system against poor people and people of color.”
At New York magazine, Eric Levitz argued that the proposed legislation pits the progressives’ twin goals of gender equality and ending mass incarceration in opposition to each other. “To end mass incarceration, progressives will need to persuade their fellow citizens that we can reduce penalties for violent crime without reducing our concern for its victims,” he wrote. “The movement inspired by the Brock Turner case argued the opposite — it equated a judge’s decision to spare Turner a lengthy jail sentence with a callous indifference to the woman he victimized.”
Turner was convicted in March of three felony counts of sexual assault of an unconscious woman. The case attracted national attention after the victim’s court statement, which was reprinted in full by BuzzFeed, went viral.
“I told the probation officer I do not want Brock to rot away in prison. I did not say he does not deserve to be behind bars,” the woman who Turner assaulted said in a court statement. “The probation officer’s recommendation of a year or less in county jail is a soft time-out, a mockery of the seriousness of his assaults, and of the consequences of the pain I have been forced to endure.”
Easy solution: release the “whatever man” pot smokers from jail and fill their places with sexual offenders who are not man enough to resist their misogynist fantasies. That said, somebody who smokes god-given plants in order to chill is far less lethal than somebody who cannot control themselves and causes violent traumatic and debasing harm to another human being.
Oh hey I have a solution, just stop imprisoning people for victimless crimes. Problem solved.
Oh right, America is stupid. Oh well.
I don’t apologize being brash in my comment. The fair way of dealing with the likes of Brock Turner is group justice. I’m willing to join a volunteer group of people who are willing to locate Turner, drag the dirty little bastard into a back alley and kick the living shit out of guy. Too bad I’m too far away to help initiate such a righteous activity.
So crimes against women are lower priority? What a shocker.
Let’s pass the Equal Rights Amendment and recognize women are people.
That would do more for women than this piecemeal approach based on revenge
Maybe if they let all the poor people incarcerated for drug possession, sale and use out on the streets, they would have room for the actual criminals.
Nevada has a low rate of rape and sexual assault. They also have legalized prostitution. I wonder if there is a relationship between the two?
Also, I think the notion that increasing the penalty for sexual assault will not deter the crime is ridiculous. If that were true, then we should eliminate all laws.
Oops! Civilization would end the very next day.
Privileged rapists like Brock are always going to be able to skate. If a law is passed that convicted rapists must spend time in prison, what does that mean? Will spending a month in jail suffice? Or is this going to turn into one of those mandatory-minimums that take discretion out of a judge’s hands?
That time when the architechts of the carceral state realized the ridiculousness of their contruction, and the Gollum tuned bck into dirt.
Please explain why this bill would be a turn-around from Proposition 57. By what definition is sexual assault not a violent crime?
Oh, I know: by the definition of the patriarchal society [sic]. Well, I am full-bore with the hard core feminists on this one.
Jeff,
“Violent” is defined by the OED as “Using or involving physical force….” Sexually assaulting an unconscious or incapacitated person does not necessarily involve the use of force, as the victim is not putting up resistance. Therefore, such an act is by definition not a crime of violence.
While it is apparent that your desire to call such acts “violent” stems from a good place (the desire to treat such occurrences seriously), calling nonviolent acts violent can lead to some pretty outrageous outcomes. For example, in some states statutory rape is considered a violent crime. In thoe circumstances, a 16-year-old and a 15-year-old having consensual sex can lead to the 16-year old having to register as a sex offender, perhaps for the rest of his life.
The way to avoid such outrageous outcomes is to avoid politicizing words with a clear English meaning. Once a word starts being interpreted in a non-literal way, it is virtually impossible to walk things back, even when the unintended negative consequences of the doublespeak are clearly greater than the intended outcome.
So, if a man is raped while unconscious this is not violent?
“While it is long past time that our justice system take the crime of rape seriously,” she said, “we need judges who focus on finding justice for rape survivors, not the rehashing of bad policies that rig the system against poor people and people of color.”
So, as usual, the interests of men (albeit poor and of color) take precedent over the interests of women and children? This is classic culture of rape, culture of misogyny. Victim assistance is not justice. No justice for victims as long as men escape accountability.
Whendovescry
Yeah, that blonde, blue-eyed thing would explain the hue and cry over Bill Cosby and Woody Allen. And the reality is, most blacks who aren’t former All American football players — as is your example of a black men getting a break on a sexual assault charge — would have gone down the hole into the prison-industrial complex. Ditto for lower-class white males.
In the case of Brock Turner, both class and race were in play.
That all said, the screaming for Turner’s head made me very uncomfortable. Teen boys are morons, and medical science shows that that part of the brain which controls judgment is not fullt mature until about the early 20s. An ocean of alcohol does further impair judgment. Destroying his life for being totally wasted, 18, and possibly not realizing the woman he was with could not give consent, would not be right or just.
HOWEVER, the break Turner got is not available to the overwhelming majority of “just regular guys,” especially if they’re black.
“Yeah, that blonde, blue-eyed thing would explain the hue and cry over Bill Cosby and Woody Allen”
I’m sorry do those all strike you as comparable figures, arguably the two most famous comedians in American history and a college swimmer? Usually you have to win at least a dozen Olympic medals before anyone notices a swimmer. The media hype surrounding is case is insane. It definitely surpasses the amount of coverage that Derrick Rose is getting for his gang rape trial. (and I know you’re not the biggest sports fan, but that’s a recent NBA MVP)
Agreed young men are hormone-fuelled idiots and you add alcohol to the mix and bad things often happen. Which is why judges don’t (and shouldn’t) usually throw them in jail for the rest of their lives for the mistakes they make in those circumstances.
Mona scores extra points, wins the game, by noting the discrimination that low-status white males endure at the hands of phony progressive feminists.
I think your obvious pro-rape bias makes you a horrible referee.
The topic is about sexual assault and rape, not misanthropic feminazis.
So it’s OK for a sexual predator to ruin a woman’s life, but not OK to ruin a sexual predator’s life with a fair conviction and prison sentence?
How is this not a double standard?
Welcome to America the Vengeful, where we are more concerned about how we punish offenders than we are about ways in which we might reduce the occurrence of offenses.
I’m pretty sure that no punishment doled out to the Brock Turners of America, harsh or otherwise, is going to prevent any young women from being assaulted. On the other hand, it seems quite likely that educational and cultural changes might do so.
But we always focus on punishment. We’re obsessed with it.
So we shouldn’t punish cops who shoot people who rather obviously pose no threat? Should we not have prosecuted the bankers? I’m guessing you won’t be saying this, but who knows, maybe this thirst for vengeance would be part of the sick obsession to which I have succumbed….
Notice how the rich and powerful are literally more likely to get away with rape than the not-rich and not-powerful? So yeah, as regards some things, I’m all for more punishment — because I have no other remedy for keeping the rich and/or powerful from running over the rest of us.
Go review “straw man” and “non sequitur, Vic.
You might want to add “off topic,” also.
Read your first sentence, Doug. You make a general statement criticizing concentrating on punishment. Then you say that punishment could not have an effect on future behavior of others. My comment makes an opposing argument. The last sentence of my comment sums up my counter-points regarding your statements about punishment.
Disagree with it if you want, but it’s none of the things you said it was.
I’m completely in agreement with you Vic. The theory of punishment as deterrence may be of questionable universality, but it certainly is applicable when applied to the privileged. Put a few of these well to do white male assholes in jail, and their brethren will quickly take notice. It would also help promote the now discredited notion that there is equal justice under law in this country.
Could not and did not say it better than that, 24b4Jeff. High fives.
Somebody explain how ANY kind of rape ever got listed as a non-violent felony?
Also: why not change that classification, and thereby keep consistent with the movement to reduce the number of people going to prison for non-violent offenses?
Problem solved (?….I’m counting on the legal eagles around here to explain why this would or wouldn’t work)
Violence against women is not a violent felony because it would mean that men would be punished more harshly, god forbid. This is rape culture, misogynist culture, plain and simple. See how the injustices of the justice system are a prioritized when it’s men vs women. No wonder a woman is raped in the US every TWO MINUTES.
You’re right about the rape culture. A female friend visiting with friends in Germany about 30 years ago was going out for beer late one night. She asked if someone would go with her, and the Germans asked why. She soon realized that it was safe for women to walk the streets alone at night there, unlike here.
Mandatory sentencing is very bad, you take the judge’s decision making out of the picture and leave someone stuck with a sentence they may not deserve.
An example of this, was a trial I witnessed in South Port LA where a judge sentenced a black man to 7 years in prison for less than a gram of marijuana.
It happened to be the 2nd time he was caught with the same amount.
That was due to mandatory sentencing, I ask you did that man deserve that?
Regardless of the circumstance in this case, mandatory sentencing is poison.
The problems with your example are, in the first place, that possession of marijuana should not be a crime, and in the second place, that the man would not have been on trial had he been white. Suppose, instead, it had been a white man, and the offense had been armed robbery. Argue against mandatory sentencing in that case, please.
“Under California law, sexual assault of an unconscious or severely intoxicated person is considered a nonviolent felony”
Strange, rape seems violent to me.
To me this is not clear cut. It is a classic he said, she said situation; the question being did the female give consent? How can anyone who was not there know for sure that the female didn’t give consent before she passed out?
Just because they were discovered having sex besides a dumpster and the female was passed out drunk, doesn’t mean that the female gave consent and then revoked it after sobering up?
There’s only 2 people who know the truth and they have different stories, therefore without more solid evidence the judge should be cautious when sentencing
You are describing the difficulties of proving the assertion, which have nothing whatsoever to do with establishing a penalty for those found guilty of it.
With so much possible uncertainty, is it not more logical to focus efforts and resources on education and prevention rather than punishment? This gets around the toxic societal stigma about reporting as well.
And again, due to much possibly uncertainty you increase the risk of harming additional innocent people (the falsely accused/misunderstandings/regret) with your quest for punishment.
Stop the source, stop the problem. The source isn’t the rapist, it’s an ideology of entitlement, power, control. And this ideology extends far beyond just rape of other human beings.
But of course this isn’t logical and anyone who supports it is a filthy rape apologist (am i doing it right?).
“The source isn’t the rapist, it’s an ideology of entitlement, power, control. And this ideology extends far beyond just rape of other human beings.”
This kind of regressive yet phonily complex-sounding thinking makes me want to whip out all kinds of anti-intellectual-sounding epithets. Instead I’ll just keep it straightforward:
No, rape is people not caring about how other people feel. It’s people making a choice to use other people for their short term pleasure. People do these things, not ideas. It would be weird if the most base behavior needed a fancy ideological explanation, but it doesn’t.
I guess I must just be sexually repressed, or something, but to me copulating with an unconscious person does not qualify as having sex. That’s in the first place. And in the second place, a person on the verge of losing consciousness is certainly in no condition to make an informed decision. For that reason, their subsequent revocation – as you put it – must certainly take precedence over the claim that he gave consent before passing out. It’s called diminished capacity, I believe.
Right. The guy ran when he was approached by strangers. He knew was doing something wrong. I can’t believe the defenses I’m seeing.
Well tell your cellmate to knock off with the bitch slapping then. Not that you, yes you, Charlie, dont deserve it.
But not all rapes-and especially drunken college kids groping genitals is coercive. None of us know now, or will ever know how many consent statements were made by the drunken moron who got ‘raped’ there.
This push to continue the sick notion that women are not responsible for their own behavior, deviance, or consequences is where the slippery slope o surveillance society began: rape shield laws, secret testimony, and unaccountable victims.
Sure, Charlie-you might not want to hear that your daughter likes it in he ass while wearing a horsebit, but rape shield laws should’nt prevent the public from knowing what SHE did to get herself in that situation; and cry rape when it’s found out, and she jumps on the social shame bandwagon of unnacountability for HER actions.
My wife was abused in a “family” setting before we were married and it took a long time for her to feel safe in our relationship. But I’d like to cast a different perspective on the subject. Firstly, LIFE IS MESSY. I feel luck to be alive. I smoke pot and without it I’m not sure how I could have survived nonhodgkin lymphoma CANCER. If I were “caught” I would have gone to jail and died there under the “mandatory minimum” wrong headed ignorance from those hate filled people who make the “rules of law” that are little more than mob rule . When they do this they are saying Justice is for just for us. All seem to be good if you’re rich and clever enough. Me, I’m looking over my shoulder every minute awaiting to be busted & death. So, NO I DO NOT BELIEVE THAT “MINIMUMS” ARE THE ANSWER TO ANYTHING! That’s what courts are for & police training within their local communities, one on one, could go a long way. Please, leave the “the star troopers gear” in the corner. One size does not fit all circumstances in both court system or shoe size no matter what the charges are. Are there vicious predators? Absolutely! But not everyone is a vicious predator. And believe me rape goes on all the time in prison. The young, the poor, the disabled and stupid are the most likely to be the victims there. But who is keeping accurate prison records? NOBODY! Retribution, Hell of a note ain’t it. If you haven’t been there it’s mighty difficult to know the desperation that goes on within those walls. Love & peace everyone
Rape is not easy to understand. I mean, as a guy I know I could get raped, in theory, but it doesn’t seem like it would be worse than getting my teeth knocked out on a curb, or being shot in the knee, or in fact being shot in any part of the body short of a faint graze, since even the “harmless” leg shots and flesh wounds still kill pretty often. Of course, there’s a risk of HIV, probably much higher than the 0.1% for a voluntary anal liason due to tearing and abuse, but I feel like that could and should be billed separately in the rare cases where someone has the bad luck to be infected. A person who knows he is negative for STDs really *isn’t* committing as much of a crime when he rapes someone, and the sentence should reflect that difference.
Now in the Brock Turner case, of course, the sentence was vastly lighter than even a tooth-smashing, which I have the impression that authorities often don’t take very seriously. But then again, the Dickless Wonder wasn’t really a proper rapist; he was using his fingers. In objective terms, if you ignore *who* he was and *what* his motivation was, it wasn’t really that different from something a gynecologist might do. From a websearch it looks like parents often have to do some swabbing and wiping around the vagina too, since accidents happen where babies and poo are involved and they can get a discharge. So why should the woman suffer a lifelong trauma? Some freak shoved his finger in her vagina, but it’s over now.
So while I’m all for bashing Brock Turner all over the media, I don’t want to write the prisons a blank check for this stuff. The nature of the act, the transmission of disease, the damage done matter. Some things are worse than others. You have to keep some deterrence in reserve if you want the next freak to stop with a finger. But also… at some point we’re going to have to try to understand rape. How can rape be more traumatic than fighting in a war or giving birth to a child? If we can learn this and explain this to the college kids, maybe we cut the prison time down to zero because they don’t do it.
It appears California is trying to add another law where the accused can’t defend themselves absent coraborating third party eye witness testimony. What a joke!!!!!
There is no contradiction. End mandatory minimums for nonviolent crimes, get rid of three strikes laws or require that it not be applied to nonviolent crimes. Rape is a violent crime and deserves mandatory long-range prison time.
Isn’t the solution pretty simple. Re-classify sexual assaults and rape as violent crimes as they clearly are. Forcing yourself upon anyone in anyway is a violence to that person.
Now people in California will need to be completely sober to have sex and a government bureaucrat, a prosecutor, will determine when someone is intoxicated. I can see this law taken to extreme rediculousness, way beyond the intent of the legislature. As with drug crimes, the criminal justice system will use this law to do more harm to the citizenry that the perpetrators it arrests and convicts.
It is shocking , in 21st century America, that judges still have the power of discretionary sentencing. Humans are far from perfect and I had thought we had eliminated individual human judgment from our lives. The political process, because it involves such a great number of people, produces much better outcomes and is far more democratic. All sentences should therefore be incorporated into legislation, and the role of the judge (or the computers who eventually replace them) should be to determine which mandatory sentence (or sentences if there is overlapping legislation) applies.
Human beings flatter themselves that their crimes are unique and should be considered on their individual merits to determine the appropriate punishment. This sounds reasonable, but it is a slippery slope, as we have seen in numerous cases.
“I told the probation officer I do not want Brock to rot away in prison. I did not say he does not deserve to be behind bars,” the woman who Turner assaulted said in a court statement.
That says a lot to me. Maybe she is accepting her role in the event? Maybe she expressed to this guy that she wanted something similar to the events the third parties saw? It’s happened to me with a Stanford graduate student. A beautiful woman told me she would suck my …. or f… me or both or anything I wanted if I would give her a ride home from the get together we both were at. She was impaired by what I don’t know exactly because she consumed what she brought. On the way to her residence she couldn’t keep her hands off of my crotch. She insisted I go inside her residence with her but I refused. I saw a setup. I was terrified she was going to falsely claim I did something she didn’t want. But this was after I left her to go back during quiet reflection of the events. If I had consumed a few beers or cocktails I might have taken her up on the offers? It wouldn’t have been wrong of me, she pushed herself on me. This wasn’t the only time I have experienced this type of scenario. I’m telling the story because it’s connected to Stanford.
People need to assume the risk of their own actions. Legislating stupidity is purely political because a free society guarantees the freedom to be stupid. California representatives do nothing unless its political. The “domestic violence” laws are a perfect example. If a person touches another and it is perceived it was done while that person was angry, that person has committed an act of domestic violence.
If anyone wants to see how to become an authoritarian state, look at California!
Well that’s about the creepiest post I’ve ever read on the Intercept. Ugh.
Really? Even creepier than one of Stan’s posts about Targeted Individuals or Mani’s stalking posts?
C’mon, you’ve been around a while. I’d lay money you could come up with something better. ;)
yep, it’s Phil Ferro and Wnt chiming in with the signals for the classic rapey mindset so far. I’m sure more well-known creeps will drop by to share their appalling worldviews regarding women, men, and sex.
When your gut instinct is to say those wascally wimmin are always trying to bring a man down, you just might be a rape apologist.
excellent post, crimelord, makes me think of a bitter, drunk Elmer Fudd ranting down at the local hunter’s tavern after watching too much Sean Hannity.
” On the way to her residence she couldn’t keep her hands off of my crotch.”
Poster has described being sexually assaulted. Maybe you are the rape apologist.
“Under California law, sexual assault of an unconscious or severely intoxicated person is considered a nonviolent felony …”
Nonviolent? You can bet a bunch of men wrote that statute. The people opposed to the elimination of this ridiculous loophole are full of it.
As Photosymbiosis points out below, the immoral and illegitimate incarceration of Black and Brown people is allowed by anti-drug laws. Raping someone is a violent crime.
Furthermore, the reason that moral people are outraged about the ridiculously lenient sentence is not the sentence per se, it’s because this asshole judge gave a much harsher sentence recently to a non-white person for virtually the same crime.
I agree that mandatory sentences suck, that drugs and other vicitimless crimes should be legal, that non-white people should get the same treatment as rich white people & vice versa, and that we should change our prison system to prioritize rehabilitation. But allowing a privileged white guy to get away with a prison sentence for rape that would be given to a non-white person for something like shoplifting it outrageous and totally unacceptable, and this new law eliminates this problem.
ITA
Of course legalising prostitution cant possibly help, is an anti-american thing, against the DOI, against the constitution, against the Bible, and even tho many other developed nations allow it, they remain US allies. The inability of government elected nincoms to solve problems is only matched by their ability to create problems.
The only change would be that wealthy privileged rapists like Brock Turner would serve the same prison terms for their violent crimes that any other person would serve. This is a central feature of the U.S. criminal justice system: it’s not at all impartial, it’s a two-tier system, as Judge Aaron Persky demonstrated:
https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2016/jun/27/stanford-sexual-assault-trial-judge-persky
Another aspect of this case was that universities try to downplay or ignore rape on their campuses because it’s bad for their public image and affects their finances, particularly when the offender is a student, not an outsider. So maybe mandatory minimums are needed in these cases.
A bigger problem with this discussion is that violent crime is NOT the reason the prisons are packed with minorities and poor people – drug crime is. Getting rid of drug criminalization would have a far larger reductive effect. Those who commit serious crimes of violence against others – murder, rape, assault – should be the primary targets of the criminal justice system; property crimes like theft and fraud should come next, and who cares if people want to use drugs and alcohol? It’s a public health issue, not a criminal one.
If the issue is prison reform, drug law-baced incarceration has to be part of the discussion. I’d rather see a lot more rapists in prison and all the drug-crime charged people walking free, personally.
Enforcing unemployment aids and abbets drug sales. Drugs are often taken for recreation and stress relief. People who are denied employment and opportunity are provided the opportunity for sales income to pay bills to eat and engage in some affordable stress relief that is a whole lot cheaper than the wallstreet expense of Ditsey Land for a thousand smackers. Obviously this is not the most desirable scenario for humans but it is a wallstreet and ABA bonansa for the justice empire which now rivals the military weapons empire. And perhaps the reason that the US does not have the 1850 style of slavery is because it’s just too damn unprofitable.
Most of us have seen the rat-in-a-cage picture of drug addiction – the rat keeps hitting the heroin button.
But that was some ancient study; other people put rats in huge cages with other rats to socialize with, lots of toys to play with, areas to explore – basically rat heaven – and the rats didn’t hit the heroin button:
http://all-that-is-interesting.com/what-causes-an-addiction
So if that model is right, yup, bored unemployed people in crappy situtations are also far more likely to end up as drug/alcohol addicts.
That’s going to be pretty dire when the majority of the work force is replaced by automation in the next few decades. It will become necessary for the state to ensure that the unemployed aren’t in a crappy situation.
In any case, you all are missing something, the conviction rate of privileged folks will simply drop to nothing vs the rare it is now or at the very least a plea copped to a lesser charge.
On the contrary, what it will change is that there will less plea bargaining, more trials and thus a greater chance that the culprit could get off altogether.
“The only change would be that wealthy privileged rapists like Brock Turner would serve the same prison terms for their violent crimes that any other person would serve. ”
Nonsense. There are plenty of instances of judges giving a break to young black men accused of sexual crimes. You just don’t hear about it from the progressive press because they need a blond blue-eyed 80s movie villain to really stoke their audiences hatred to irrational levels. The author dances around it, but what was unusual about this case wasn’t the sentence, it was the defendant. Here’s a much more prominent athlete getting a lighter sentence (despite priors) that aroused no consternation on the internet.
http://www.espn.com/college-football/story/_/id/13485476/sam-ukwuachu-baylor-bears-sentenced-180-days-jail-10-years-probation-sexual-assault-case
The real problem is, we traumatize the victims of rape, often causing additional harms, with the way we treat the act.
Rape is simply an assault, but because of culture, we add extra meaning to this particular variation of assault. This simply further enhances the victimization and sense of violation.
This is not to try to minimize rape, but to simply be rational about it.
This is total bullshit, Eman.
Two guys go into a bar, and drink too much, and one punches the other guy.
Two guys go into a bar, and drink too much, and one rapes the other guy.
I assure you the two situations do not get viewed in similar ways: by perp, by victim, by onlookers, by law enforcement, by society.
And you knew that already, but you want to play games with your “Rape is simply assault” nonsense.
What if he punched him 100 times? What if punched till brain damage? Its almost like there might be degrees of assault, what a concept.
Now what you’ve failed to address, is WHY we have such a negative evaluation of rape. Why we treat it as one of the worst things that could happen to you. Your only response on this front, was a relative non-answer, and the same one I provided: culture.
If you think about it, there’s countless things, far more traumatizing than rape, many of which we brush off entirely. Who’s playing the real games?
Eman, I’m not going to keep wasting time talking to you.
Playing games? Your insinuation is disgusting. Rape is traumatizing. If it wasn’t men wouldn’t use it as a weapon of war.
I’m appalled by the way your headline treats this. Raping an unconscious person may be less violent because the victim isn’t fighting back, but it’s not the kind of “non-violent felony” that California’s legislature is trying to reduce prison time for (unlike sale of politically incorrect drugs or non-violent thefts.) And it’s only going to lead to “mass incarceration” if there’s a massive amount of that kind of rape going on (in which case jail is still appropriate), unlike the various “quality of life crimes” that are used to arrest poor and minority people.
In US culture, “punishment” is all too often a euphemism for “revenge”: we’re going to make you suffer. Sometimes it’s dressed up in the dubious guise of “deterrence” — dubious because harsher punishments typically haven’t proven to be effective deterrents. Revenge is pointless and morally bankrupt, and often at odds with the pragmatic goals of protection and rehabilitation.
As long as the revenge culture holds sway, you’ll only make limited headway on rape, violence, drugs, etc., etc..
““The probation officer’s recommendation of a year or less in county jail is a soft time-out”
A soft time-out?!? No amount of time in jail or prison is “a soft time-out.” Anyone who does think that should spend 24 hours in their local jail and they’ll immediately change their opinion.