Obviously you need to look at several factors, such as maturity, malice, history, etc. You aren’t going to treat a 12 year old rapist the same as a 16 year old rapist or a 30 year old rapist. It is a balance between enfranchising and protecting victims as well as rehabilitating an aggressor for an eventual return to society and providing some deterrence for potential rapists. But you bring up a good point as far as this being a social problem as well as a problem with individual aggressors. The entire rape culture must play a part as far as sentencing and rehabilitation. We are really caught between two ethical theories here: that the punishment and rehabilitation of the aggressor must treat the aggressor as the ends, not just a means to an end (not just a cog in the vast ‘system’) and the requirement of our society to crush rape culture so that future generations aren’t victimized. You pointed out that you “don’t know what the answer is” and I think that only means you have to be flexible as far as balancing punishment and rehabilitation. Both must serve a part, but in a way that they don’t counteract each other. It doesn’t need to be a 100 year sentence, but a 1 or 2 year sentence (or 30 day sentence such as in the Montana case) is simply unacceptable.
