The Stanford rape case to me has brought up the question about how we as a society should respond to a young person doing something really stupid.
I mean lets say someone you love, is in college, has a few drinks and then gets in their car and drives away. In the process they cause an accident and kill someone. Or maybe its not drinking? Maybe they are texting on their phone and cause an accident?
What would you want to have happen to them?
Remember, this is someone dear to you whom you love. Maybe the person hasnt done a thing wrong in their lives. Has worked hard in school and so far has done everything right. Only problem is, they made a really stupid mistake that injured or killed other people. or in the Stanford case, got drunk and sexually assaulted someone.
What should we do to such persons? Does it really benefit society and provide justice to the victim to see them serving 20 years in prison?
Should we give young people a “Get out of jail free” card so to speak? Should a judge take into account the persons past and future potential?
Or should laws be open and shut, black and white, you do this - this is the punishment no matter what? Dont do the crime if you cant do the time.
I’d like to add that I know people who have worked in prisons and they say their are many such people, maybe as much as half the prison population, who really are not benefiting from being in prison and who could safely be released into society under probation.
It depends on the nature of the crime. Getting wasted and driving and having that lead to something tragic? Sure. They did something really stupid (drinking and driving) but didn’t intend to kill anyone. Sexually assaulting and battering an unconscious person? Nope.
These are all systemic errors that should not just be reduced to individuals. Drinking culture on college could be very different from what it is now. Texting in cars, too. Both would require cultural change . It can be done. Remember how everybody smoked?
I’m having a hard time imagining a world where the number of stupid things a person did in their life was limited to one. Most people do several stupid things a day, and the world goes on.
But even if we’re distorting the word “stupid” to mean “evil”, there’s a huge range of variation in how bad different deeds are. We should react differently to rape than to deliberately letting a door slam in someone’s face, even if the latter happens much more often and the former is only once in a lifetime.
Rape is generally not considered a stupid one off mistake. That said, I think what you really mean is should people get off scot free when they are caught committing a crime for the first time. The problem with that is that most times, the first arrest is not first crime, so unless you consider the stupid thing getting caught, I am not sure leniency I serious cases is the right move.
What you’re saying is that a criminal’s first offense shouldn’t have consequences. What about the victim? Should she be able to go on with her life as if nothing had happened, just because it was the rapist’s first “stupid mistake”? How can his crime have no consequences for him, yet possibly have life-long consequences for her?
Should leniency be delivered to someone unwilling to admit to the specifics of the crime, shows no remorse and forces victim to suffer further trauma, and the state considerable cost for a trial, when there are eye witnesses and forensic evidence?
No matter if this is their first offence, how sweet they may be, if they can’t do the above, they should not be presented with a pass.
If we offer young people one free pass at stupid, in life, idiotic life threatening and criminal brashness will swell to unknown proportions, in my opinion.
And in any case, sexual assault should never be treated with leniency, in my opinion. Never.
There are some options to expunge a criminal record either by completing treatment (usually for people who have emotional disorders, mental illness or substance abuse problems), or after X years have passed w/o further incident to have things cleared up.
Problem is in the age of the internet, your past follows you everywhere. Apply for a job? Maybe you said some unpopular things on a message forum 20 years ago. Maybe you were arrested for a crime you didn’t commit, never convicted, but the arrest still shows up in your background check.
I’m hoping that everyone gets so used to finding out that almost everyone is a fuckup on some level that it loses some of its stigma.
Killing someone whilst driving drunk (or while texting) is not an accident. It’s a criminal act. The consequences were entirely foreseeable.
They should be charged with manslaughter.
Sometimes it takes harsh consequences to break “stupid” habits. Community service isn’t harsh enough to make some hard heads see the error of their ways.
Punishment exists not just to teach stupid people not to make stupid mistakes. Punishment also exists to deter those who might be tempted to make stupid mistakes. We need to punish the person who drives drunk (whether they kill people or not) to make other people think twice about doing it. If everyone gets a “free pass” to fuck up, then expect more people to fuck up.
We could make it so that prison isn’t soul-destroying or life-ruining, so that if you do make a “stupid” mistake, it’s not the end of the world if get sentenced to prison. But the problem isn’t that we send people to prison over momentary acts of carelessness. The problem is that being a felon follows you for the rest of your life, preventing you from having a normal existence, and thus making it more likely you’ll make another “stupid” mistake. It would make more sense to fix this problem rather than giving everyone a free pass as long as they promise to do better.
I’ve been allowed to do lots of stupid things in my life. Each has had consequenses of it’s own, but that’s life. Courts give supervision for traffic violations, and probation for actual crimes.
Since were discussing this specific case, I would suggest that the rapist in question has also, like me, ALREADY been allowed to do stupid things in his life. This rape was more than stupid. Referring to this rape in such a flippant way is insulting to the victim.
When people talk about “rape culture,” one of the things they refer to is the attitude that raping an unconscious victim is an isolated mistake that the rapist deserves leniency for.
I know there are a lot of people who have problems with that phrase, so here you go.
If you get drunk and go driving and kill somebody, that person will be dead forever. Why should you be able to avoid any consequences? You may not have intended to kill anyone but you chose to start drinking - when you did that, you should have made sure you wouldn’t be driving later on.
As for rape, that’s not an accident. It’s a crime the rapist chose to commit.
They are. If you accidentally kill someone through sheer stupidity, you get charged with manslaughter instead of murder. However, it is impossible to accidentally rape an unconscious person by mistake. Rape is always a deliberate choice to commit an extremely violent act against someone else. The only exception is certain cases of statuatory rape-if someone lies to you about their age, and you are too stupid to realize this, you might commit accidentally commit a crime.
Most people who accidentally commit crimes are quite remorseful and even devastated by what they accidentally did.
:mad: