Again, @Hanna, you keep conflating actions where the consequences are not intended, and actions where they are. A person trying heroin does not intend to become a junkie; a person raping does intend to rape. That’s not an error in judgment (mistake); it’s a deliberate choice.
Cobrat there will be so much scrutiny and requirements on him the rest of his life, I think re- offending is not real high on the probability list. If I were in his shoes I would be looking for a farm in the middle of nowhere Midwest and grow hops for the rest of my life.
I imagine he will work for family or a friend of family. I’ve had patients jailed a month for drug related incidents, and they can’t find jobs. Since this was a crime against a person, Brock will seriously have problems.
Boy, you’re going to carry that weight,
Carry that weight a long time
Accidents are just that-- unintentional. They don’t call them “purposes”. What he did was purposeful. The mistake was in making the decision he did, but he made that choice.
I am more optimistic about Brock Turner’s prospects. I believe he will find a way to complete his education and so long as he acquires meaningful skills I think he will find employment.
He will not be hired by the more prestigious employers that Stanford grads normally gravitate to and he is out of luck for any position that requires security clearance. But with a decent skill set I think he could look to contract or project work involving things like coding or research/analysis. Or after getting a degree he could look to the many companies that have programs to hire those who have prior convictions. Ericsson and The Marketing Group come to mind but this list has some additional suggestions with varying success outcomes: http://www.sexoffenderjobs.com/companies-that-have-hired-felons-and-sex-offenders/. He need not retreat to some “farm.” His best chance would be to look in his own hometown or state where he has friends, family and supporters. Hiding in shame is rarely the answer to much of anything.
Richard Branson is a huge advocate of hiring those with convictions on their records and has requested that the directors of his companies worldwide look at the issue. I think in Australia 10% of his workforce has prior convictions. Of course his group of companies may be more suited to this as they focus on travel, entertainment and hospitality. Not sure that programs like this would be suitable for all industries.
That is interesting HarvestMoon. I think he will finish his degree somehow. He had the smarts to get into a college many dream of. It would be a shame to see that go unfilled over the coming decades.
It’s worthwhile to consider what language we use when discussing people of in different situations. “Mistake” is a word that we tend to use for sympathetic offenders, to minimize their offenses. It was a “mistake” for Turner to rape an unconscious woman, some say, but we don’t hear that it was a “mistake” for a poor black kid to agree to participate in an armed robbery.
I don’t know. I might say it was a mistake (for a poor black kid to participate in a robbery). Seems appropriate if you interpret the word mistake to be an action that is misguided or wrong. But I thought we’d laid this one to rest…
@cobrat, I don’t understand what you are asking. Has he been charged in Ohio with something?
“we don’t hear that it was a “mistake” for a poor black kid to agree to participate in an armed robbery.”
That’s true, but you sure would if you were talking to me. It’s not about minimizing; it’s about recognizing that many kids make idiotic choices and do bad things, and that someone’s criminal actions are not the sum total of their humanity.
As Fang Jr. said to me when we were discussing this, “If you want to reduce sentences, you have to reduce sentences.” A lot of us want to dismantle the carceral state. We think too many people are in prison for too long. And if we think that, we need to realize that we are going to have to give shorter sentences to people who commit serious crimes.
The coverage of Turner hasn’t done a good job comparing his sentence to the sentences meted out to other first-time offenders convicted of serious crimes. I’ve read that in Persky’s courtroom, many first-time offenders who committed serious crimes get similarly short sentences, whatever their color. I’d like to see more data on this. None of the coverage I’ve seen puts his sentence in the context of what armed robbers, car thieves and guys who beat people up get.
According to a front page story in the New York Times yesterday, sentencing has much more to do with where the crime was committed than the nature of the offense.
@Hanna wrote:
“That’s true, but you sure would if you were talking to me. It’s not about minimizing; it’s about recognizing that many kids make idiotic choices and do bad things, and that someone’s criminal actions are not the sum total of their humanity.”
That is very true, but the key word there is what is the sum of their humanity, and the what and why they did factor into that. Take the case of the movie that is out now (whose title is totally escaping me and I am too lazy to look it up) where a pair of brothers rob banks to try and save their mom’s place from foreclosure. They are committing an illegal act, one where people could get hurt, yet they also show a human side. Someone who takes the law in their own hands when someone they love is hurt or killed is committing a crime, but we can understand the pain of the loved one and why they would do it, had their loved one not been harmed it is likely they never would commit a crime. The person who kills their spouse because they are dying and in pain and want to die but aren’t being allowed to is doing so out of love, even though in our society that is a criminal act and we can have compassion on them
But then take other cases, the drunk driver who hits someone, then flees the scene leaving the person to die, you can understand why he would do that (the panic, knowing as a DUI he was in deep doo doo), but few people would see that person as much of a human being, for running away and leaving the poor victim to die alone. It would be very hard to see the humanity in what Brock Turner did, he sought out the girl (perfectly normal), but then when he found her in a comatose state, he raped her, pure and simple, I don’t give a crap what people call it, he knowingly took advantage of someone who was unable to protect herself and say no…at least with case in Massachusetts, the kid recognized he did something wrong and tried to apologize, Turner and his family turned this into him as the victim of a ‘youthful mistake’ while totally forgetting about the victim, writing it off as ‘one of those things’, has issued no statement, nothing, to say that he was sorry the victim had to go through what she did. What really bothers me is I have heard people talking about Turner, how they expect he will turn things around and become useful (and I am not talking about anyone on this thread, this is the outside world) and in effect are saying he will do so because he is underneath it all this good person…based on what? That he was a blond haired kid who was at an elite school as an athlete? To be honest, how the heck do they know that, up until this point what did this kid do that shows his fundamental humanity, his goodness, whatever, that makes them believe he will ‘turn it around’, when he to this point hasn’t acknowledged what he did or shown sympathy for the girl, everything coming out of his corner is whining about the effect on his life, not showing caring for anyone but himself…I knew a couple of people I knew in high school who made some wrong decisions in life and paid for it, but I had respect for them, they admitted their wrongdoing and attempted to make up for it, but the first step was admitting they did wrong,something Turner and his supporters spend a lot of time pretending he didn’t do.
On a different note, my wife was showing me something on Facebook on a news feed, that showed these guys protesting outside the Turner home. Seeing guys with signs protesting what Turner did and the sentence he got gave me a bit of hope, not many years ago guys likely would be saying Turner got a bad rap, indicates some of them get it.
Is he even in Ohio? I thought he had to serve probation in California.
I have deleted every reference to guns in the posts, usually deleting the entire post. I know that will make some of you angry, but you all just proved what we have been saying for awhile now, which is that the merest mention of guns, no matter how seemingly peripheral, derails the thread into some form of debate/commentary on people and guns, which decidedly is not the topic of this thread. I am happy to leave a reasonable mention of guns in IF it doesn’t cause this derailing, but I have yet to see such an occurrence.
I haven’t read through this entire thread, so I’m not sure if this has already been discussed but I do want to state that women do need to be more accountable for their actions too. Of course, no one has the right to impose themselves on anyone without consent, but when do women become more proactive and not place themselves in situations where they become vulnerable? Where is the common sense? I’m tired of woman feeling like they are always a victim purely because they are female. If we, women, want equal rights than we have to make good choices too. We can’t get rip roaring drunk, and expect the rest of the world to behave in a proper manner. It would be great if they did, but thats not reality. Of course, I am not saying that someones poor judgement is an excuse for someone else to take advantage, but it does take two.
It actually only takes one @Dungareedoll . One rapist. While I don’t condone getting “rip roaring drink” , it happens everyday and doesn’t result in rape. A rapist causes rape. Does alcohol impair people’s judgement? Yes, it does. Does it cause someone else to rape another? No, it doesn’t. Rape is about violence, not about sex. Would you give the same advice to someone who was robbed, shot or stabbed?
IMO, it is two separate issues. It took several animated discussions with my D for me to get to this point. Yes, the reality for women more than men is that they open themselves up to additional risks when they get so drunk they lose their sense of judgement, and/or control, and/or memory. The other reality is that the assaulter is the only criminal in the scenario. An analogy would be someone that for no particularly good reason goes into a part of town that is very high in violent crime. If they then get mugged or worse, it is certainly true they committed no crime and the legal blame goes entirely to the criminal. But there is also no question they showed extremely poor judgement by deciding to take their nightly walk in that part of town just because it was “their right”, without taking additional precautions such as bodyguards.
Let’s say everyone reading this agrees that is reasonable (I can wish, can’t I). The other reality is that no matter how reasonable it is, in the real world as soon as someone tries to bring up the personal responsibility issue in the same discussion as a case where someone got drunk-raped, they will be crucified for trying to blame the victim, no matter how much they are not. Because the real mistake they are making, IMO, is that they are bringing up a true but separate issue into a case where the only focus should be on the crime. I am not saying @Dungareedoll is wrong, I am saying that her point is a topic that has to be addressed frequently, forcefully, and completely separately from the discussion of the rape/assault that took place.
If we can keep those two important issues as separate, but recognize them both as valid, I think more progress gets made.
Fallenchemist you are always right on target. I actually began to write a very similar analogy but walked away from the computer to attend to something else. When I came back you had already posted your thoughts. I reviewed this thread and agree that this is not the place to have this particular discussion.