DoJ report on Montana justice: Don't get raped in Missoula, even if you're only five years old

boing
41

Interesting! The latter seems very reasonable, then, given the former.

Where I live, harm done with a gun or a penis by a poor person is extremely harshly punished, and harm of any sort done by rich people when newspapermen aren’t paying attention is barely punished at all, and everything in between is highly variable over history. Currently, harm due to drunk driving is very harshly punished (assuming you aren’t rich, as I already mentioned. I think the rich can probably get away with drunkenly driving over paraplegic children holding adorable puppies, as long as the newspapers don’t find out). The only harsher punishments are those visited on children caught with weapons in schools, due to our insane “zero tolerance” policies.

I guess you can see why I have little love for law enforcement and little respect for legislators given how things work around here. Our legal system is deeply broken, and our school system even more so.

[quote=“Michael_R_Smith, post:28, topic:23349”]
Regardless of how you see the issue, DUI enforcement has taken a huge chunk out of road trauma over the last three decades or so.[/quote]

I honestly don’t know, but it seems to me it would be very hard to accurately quantify how much DUI enforcement has really done. Safer cars, safer road designs, improvements in the driver education process for teenagers, more license revocation for impaired elders, higher gas prices and a generally decreasing crime rate might well account for any changes in traffic fatalities in any specific area. I am certainly interested in any research in all these areas!

In another thread, people are arguing that “punishment doesn’t work” but in this thread the theme seems opposite - punishment is highly desirable, so very much so that we should not only punish harmful behavior but also potentially harmful risk-taking! The difference seems to be whether we are talking about spanking cute lovable children (where judicious punishment might conceivably be educational, in which case it would be better termed discipline) or imprisoning crusty cowpunching Montanans (who are perhaps deemed ineducable by city folks, or “deserving” of the abuse they would endure in prison). We are willing to pound hell out of them once they turn 18 I guess, but never before? I’m reminded of Heinlein’s famous puppy analogy.

I don’t have answers. Only questions. Thanks for providing another view!

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Admittedly, yes. But then again that’s how the bills get paid, and sometimes it leads to an interesting discussion.

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“You see, Birch, I’m presently incarcerated. Convicted of a crime I didn’t even commit! Attempted murder, now honestly, what is that? Do they give a Nobel Prize for attempted chemistry? Do they?”

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45

That is a darned good question. I was trying to explain a joke you made in another thread. What a total non-sequiter it is here!

How it got here, well, that must ultimately be my fault, but I still blame @codinghorror, because he wrote the software and it’s remarkably easy to accidentally do what I did here.

Thanks for asking!

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TL;DR don’t blame me I just work here man.

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Oh, yeah, I was totally scapegoating you. I am entirely sure I mucked it up.

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That warning doesn’t scale properly on mobile. I’ve had it pop up and most of it is off the left edge of the screen.

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It’s very hard to accurately judge these crimes when our justice system and media give violent forcible rape and possibly consensual statutory rape, the exact same label. When an 18 year old and a 16 year old having consensual sex is labelled “rape”, how can we know anything? This misuse of the word is an insult to victims.

From the article, I have no idea if this was actual forcible rape, or kids playing doctor. But use the rape word to get everyone whipped up into a frenzy.

50

Because one will be labeled “statutory rape” and have less punishment attached if found guilty than for “felony sexual assault” in the same district.

Violent and forcible are not used because rape/sexual assault is, by definition, violent and forcible. There’s no such thing as peaceful, unforced rape.

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Way to ignore the point.

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I call bullshit on this story. Extraordinary claims require at least SOME details. I find it very hard to believe a judge would say something like this, and I cite the following evidence:

  • A press that loves to use the word “rape” to get readers
  • A legal system that uses an over-broad definition of rape, and has arrested children for playing doctor
  • An unskeptical public that accepts extraordinary stories without batting an eye
  • And of course, Doctorow isn’t exactly known for his journalistic integrity.

If there are more details out there about this, feel free to correct me. But don’t correct me unless you have facts.

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