Still. I don’t mind seeing the winners of our truly grotesque society being served a shit sandwich. And this particular sandwich is barely shitty. The problem I have with this specific punishment is that a low level asshole got the shit sandwich. I would prefer many more, higher and ever higher, elites get served this lunch.
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Or reality show star.
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As is often the case, Popehat nails it:
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Her actions hurt the chances for others with far less support and resources get into these schools. Her children had pretty every single god damn privilege and she STILL felt the need to cheat to give her already privileged children even more privilege.
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why not
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I’m not sure there’s any dissonance between recognizing on the one hand that Loughlin is a turd who did something wrong and should be held accountable, while also recognizing that prison as our one-size-fits-all approach is stupid, wasteful, and doesn’t really serve most of our purported goals for criminal justice.
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I agree completely. It was NOT good behavior. It was the opposite of that!
So, what’s the best way for society to respond? Should we imprison her? Or should we insist that she compensate for the damage she caused? One of those responses has a demonstrably positive impact.
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Given the rapid spread of Covid in prisons, this could end up being death sentences for both of them. Which seems like more of a justice blunder than yoga lessons.
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You’re disingenuously inflating prison reform, which disproportionately impacts working classes communities of color, with this particular sentence, which many view of her getting a slap on the wrist because she is wealthy and white. She got a light sentence AND was even able to pick where she spent her sentence, when people who have done far less damaging things (having some pot) end up serving hard time FOR LIFE. I’d prefer to see the person arrested for possession NOT arrested, and the person who is doing harm to our education system by cheating the process get some sort of appropriate sentence, which does include compensation.
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I’m in favour of short sentences and fines proportionate with people’s wealth and the crime. Loughlin should be funding student scholarships for years to come. The fines should have enabled some students who wouldn’t have otherwise had access to university to go.
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My object all sublime
I shall achieve in time –
To let the punishment fit the crime –
The punishment fit the crime!
And make each prisoner pent
Unwillingly represent
A source of innocent merriment –
Of innocent merriment!
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FWIW, the manufactured outrage that she got to “pick where she spent her sentence” is particularly misplaced and a good example of some shitty journalism (in this case, I think it is sourced back to US Weekly) performed by someone who doesn’t know how criminal justice works and doesn’t care to learn. That then gets amplified and repeated until it’s accepted as gospel.
She didn’t get to “pick where she spent her sentence,” she asked for a designation request, which is what literally EVERY single person being sentenced to prison in Federal court asks for. The vast majority ask for something close to their home, and unless there are specific security concerns, the judge usually signs off on the request. But the Bureau of Prisons, NOT the judge (and definitely not the defendant) make the ultimate decision based on capacity.
There are a lot of good reasons for prisoners to get some kind of say in where they serve their sentence, at least to the extent practicable. There is an enormous amount of data showing that cutting off a convict from seeing their friends and family during their sentence is counter-productive and leads to bad outcomes.
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The point is that punishment doesn’t work, it never has, no matter your life situation. Rehabilitation at least has a chance of reaching someone and making them think differently about their life. If our goal is to get people to stop screwing over other people then we have to go with the percentages and do what works most often. Punishment is about revenge, schadenfreude and vicarious masochism to allay our own anger and or guilt.
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I could use two months at her prison.
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That’ll teach her a lesson.
A ukulele lesson, I mean.
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I’m sorry you think I’m being disingenuous. We both want people to not get arrested for possession, but I also want us to rethink the very idea of incarceration, so that it moves away from the subjective concept of “punishment,” to the more measurable concepts of public safety and compensation.
To explain why I think wanting rich people to suffer more in prison because poor people do (and shouldn’t), I can only quote again the former prosecutor turned defense attorney Ken White who said, “If outrage over conditions at lower security facilities, or defendant choice at facilities, is successfully weaponized, what do you think the population that suffers will look like? Like Lori Laughlin?”
I think we should pay less attention to rich people who receive more humane sentences and more to the poor whose treatment is inexcusable; improving the conditions for the latter, instead of making them worse for both.
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Yeah, as implied above I would have been good with a serious fine or serious time in the slammer. She received neither.
At least her idiot daughters were kicked out of school. Although I’m sure they’ll land just fine.
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Unfortunately, it is far easier and far more common for our reaction to this kind of injustice to be a demand that penalties increase for people like Loughlin rather than we be less carceral overall.
Unsympathetic defendants are a wedge used by advocates of the prison industrial complex to further the upside-down nature of our system: it is better for a bunch of people to be punished more harshly than is smart or necessary or just to avoid the possibility of an unsympathetic defendant getting too lenient a sentence.
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Her sentence is just as representative of the unfairness of the system as someone going up for years for a drug charge. It’s not just that the poor are unfairly sentenced, it’s that wealthy whites disproportionately get off light and receive greater public support when they do get harsher sentences The two go hand in hand and that’s driving the anger at her sentence. This is especially true when white collar crimes are treated as being less destructive to the body politic, when they have larger reverberations that negatively impact more people in our society.
They are interconnected and need to be addressed together. Her getting off lightly goes hand in hand with harsher sentences for others.
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