And why does she assume that? Does she think there is no rape in prison unless someone like the defendant is sent there or does she think it’s common and would probably happen to the defendant? Test your logic my friend.
My point is that you do not know, she did not say, and neither you nor Cory can state with any actual certainty the answer to the very question you just asked. If you think for some reason that it’s probably the latter, then by all means say so. Do not abuse logic by trying to state it as a fact implicit in her opinion to this defendant.
It’s unusual for a judge or other legal or judicial authority to acknowledge prison rape. However, shooting the messenger who explains that this is why she is being lenient on this defendant accomplishes nothing.
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This expectation that prison rape is ubiquitous and unmanageable plays into two different problems.
Either the expectation is false, and it’s an authoritarian punishment fantasy that reveals a lot about the people who believe and perpetuate the myth.
OR
The expectation is substantially fact-based, and our prisons are, in fact, places we send people to be tortured.
edit: omitted word
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It’s really quite simple. Avoid prison sentences for anyone who is not a physical danger to others. Everyone else gets to make resitution to society through fines and service. The benefit would be immense…especially in the elimination of the “prison industry” and the creation of a much, much smaller system of facilities designed to keep the truly dangerous apart from the rest of us.
Why have so many offenses been declared felonies…and why have we let ourselves be bullied into mandatory miniimum sentencing? We all know why…and who has inflicted all this on the nation. It’s high time to undo the damage done…and tell those responsible to put their vile sanctimony and venal motivations up into a dark place that suits their black-hearted souls.
That’s just for starters…
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@ anotherone and popobawa4u
So stating the obvious = you agree with it? Really? That’s what you guys believe? If I warn someone not to walk around downtown Detroit at 1:00 in the morning while flashing a hand full of Benjamin’s, I am condoning that something bad should happen to them?
Everyone is different and some people can handle themselves on the inside a hell of a lot better than others. She saw this particular guy as looking far too young, naive, and pretty for prison, so she took pity on him and should be applauded for trying to scare him away from crime before he gets his ass hammered in. Learn to read the article before commenting on it.
No one is shooting the messenger here but really, it does accomplish something. A public discussion on prison rape and the complicit judges who sentence people to a punishment which they know to be a violation of human rights has resulted from lambasting this judge.
Furthermore, I can’t see this as anything other than the implicit acknowledgement of the situation. I fail to see anything in support of your claim that logic is being abused here other than the idea that this judge might think rape isn’t common in the very prisons to which she sentences those found guilty. It would take some impressive mental gymnastics to imagine a scenario where this judge believes rape is not common in prison given her statements.
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She would then be making a conscious decision to commit some prisoners for rape and others not. The empty spaces in the prisons known for rape would need to be filled by the prisoners sentenced by her fellow judges.
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If you warn one person not to do so, while routinely, as part of your daily activities, you use the full force of the law to compel countless others to do that exact thing, you are indeed not not condoning it. (double negative intended)
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On that we agree, but stating as fact that she believes something she may not was unnecessary to have this discussion. Cory could easily have framed it accurately and still accomplished that laudable goal. Moreover, reaching for a headline lacking in veracity undercuts the rest of the article. Contrary to the comment by @clifyt, the whole post is not a complete fabrication, merely the headline and the assumption that led to it. Although, as with you, I believe it’s an honest error on Cory’s part because he isn’t the sort of person to intentionally libel people, regardless of his opinion of them, which is one reason I have a great deal of respect for him, enough so that I’m wiling to politely call him on his error.
I don’t think it’s implicit at all. I think she explicitly acknowledges the situation. That’s why its so unusual.
It’s not a claim, it’s an observation that a false inference was drawn. The failure of logic speaks for itself. I no more need to claim it’s so than I need to claim 2+2=4. It simply is so.
There’s a third possibility, that she doesn’t consider those she does sentence to prison to be as at risk of being victimized (or, in her crude language, becoming someone’s bitch). Again, she might be wrong, and she might still be doing, as you put it, mental gymnastics to think that, or she might well believe she is and has sentenced people to rape, but you have no way of knowing which of those three things she actually believes, and therefore saying you do is illogical. There’s no plainer way to put it than that. Sorry.
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I disagree. Her fellow judges can (and should) also avoid problem prisons.
And what do you do with people who refuse, or are unable to pay fines?
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Good answer, I like that, although I am not sure zero tolerance for rape will be effective.
Are there no prisons? And the Union workhouses, are they still in operation?
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Yea, I’ve never really understood why rape jokes are considered in bad taste and never funny… unless they’re prison rape jokes.
Boggles the mind as you say.
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Ahh, but we’re talking about a system where we don’t put people in prison if they’re not a physical danger to others.
This strikes me as the most logical explanation. A probationary sentence is usually reserved for young, first time offenders. She was probably exaggerating the likelihood of rape in prison, which befalls maybe 4 percent of prisoners (Prison rape in the United States - Wikipedia), in order to make him think twice in the future before committing another crime.
Glad you’re here on the thread to give professional testimony!
I’m not saying it doesn’t happen – and even if “only” occasionally the situation is still very bad and needs to be fixed – just that she embellished to the point where it no longer seemed rational and objective but more like something she learned from watching too much TV.
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+1 for the Dickens reference.
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You’re apparently missing that she’s a judge and therefore sentencing people to prison. For your analogy to work, you’d have to super-glue a wad of bills to someone’s hand and shove them out of your car into the streets of Detroit ad 1:00am for the analogy to work.
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If it walks like a duck, quacks like a duck, but we can’t prove it knows it’s a duck since we can’t read its mind, then it would be illogical to call it a duck? Is that it?
sorry, that was flippant. I’ll try to be more reasonable. Your position is that she may not know or believe that prison rape is very common in the US. I should have never used the word beleive. That rape takes place every day in US prisons is something within the realm of common knowledge. I know it, you know it, heck, it’s a punchline in sitcoms all the time. In order for us to say she doesn’t know this is to place this judge outside the realm of common knowledge and would force us to say she lives in a bubble. That, to me anyway, it beyond the bounds of reason.
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