How would you reform the Criminal Court System to equalize sentencing?

ullere · 2012-10-28T19:30:34+00:00

Blind sentencing, would also remove racism, discrimination, and prejudice from the sentencing. This also would also remove bribery, intimidation, and corruption from the sentencing part of the legal system.

First judge is trial judge, he gives verdit.

Trial info is passed on randomly to another judge through a lottery system with all identifying details removed from the info, refer to the prisoner as a number or as a genderless term, like prisoner. Trial judge, defense attorny, and prosecutor may add any mitigating circumstances, such as drug addiction, mental health problems, seemed honest on the stand, sole carer of kids, etc. Basically whatever they feel is relevant.

Sentencing judge reads case info, then sentences according to current proceedures while blind to the persons identity.

Discrimination in sentencing almost solved in a post on reddit :)

Predictied Problems:

1 There will still be a disparity in conviction rates, this could be solved by having a written statement based evidence system, this however has loads of issues when it comes to facing your accuser. Would solve some issues and cause others.

2 Sentencing disparity would still continue in a smaller degree due to mitigating factors being allowed to be included on the trial info. The differences would be based on the differences between groups in society. For instance as women are more likely to be identified as a childs main carer they would perhaps get more leniency, however this same leniency would also apply to men when they are in the same position, thus is not based on discrimination. This could be corrected by removing the mitigation circumstances from the trial info, however this in my eyes would lead to a greater injustice of not being able to discern between degrees of punishment. If we took this route we may aswell just have precisely one mandatory sentence and do away with the whole suggestion.

3 Being released early on Good behaviour would still be affected by discrimination and bias.

Still this is my idea for correcting a large part of the justice gap and making a step towards reducing discrimination in the courts.

dumbguyscene28 · 2012-10-28T20:25:18+00:00

Get rid of the commercial prison industrial complex.

Bartab · 2012-10-28T18:53:42+00:00

I'd actually just remove sentencing ranges altogether.

Murder 1? 30 years.
With a gun? +5
Had an unhappy childhood? So what
Felt abused? Don't care
Have tits? Nobody cares

blackmanplayt1 · 2012-10-28T19:40:27+00:00

custody hearings, cps, divorce law need to be a lot more unbiased towards fathers. alimony and child support need to be fair.

paternity fraud needs to be punished and men should have the right to opt out of fatherhood in the same period of time that a woman has to decide if she is going to abort. a man should not be financially liable for a child they did not know about till after it was born.

he said she said cases should be a lot harder to prosecute

a judge making a judgement beyond a reasonable doubt vs two contradicting testimonies and no physical evidence (rape kit is negative, no physical injury, etc) is like playing god or pretending to be psychic. both testimonies will have considerable embellishments and down play negative aspects. lying is not sexed. both women and men do it and he said she said accusations should take this into account much heavier before they are brought to trial. as is the accusation alone is enough to qualify for an arrest, without further investigation into the context of the crime and not only is that wrong but often times it is a complete waste of time.

make the accused anonymous till proven guilty especially in cases of sexual assault/domestic abuse

ensure police take calls of domestic abuse, violence, property damage etc more seriously when coming from men, instead of what they do currently, often times outright dismissing them or handling them in way that is blatantly biased in favor of the women involved/

ensure that it is mandatory the accused are given a lawyer when brought in for questioning. there are too many innocent people out there that think because they are innocent they can speak to the police and get the situation all cleared up, then the police essentially manipulate them into "confessions" similarly to the way biased media will use sound bytes to make their arguments stronger.

this would save a lot of innocent guys who are too trusting or not good with women or who didn't lawyer up when dealing with the police from getting their lives destroyed

TracyMorganFreeman · 2012-10-28T23:55:03+00:00

Precisely define crimes instead of the wishy washy "what if this" or "because feelings". It only serves to manipulate juries and judges. With this would include removing "ranges" for punishments and then instead have modifiers/coefficients for things like eligibility for parole/use of a weapon.
Duluth model, VAWA in its current form, and primary aggressor policies are out. "Best interests of the child" in custody cases should be revisited; since what is usually in the best interests of the child is being raised by both parents voluntarily, this would suggest that joint legal/shared physical custody be the default unless it can be demonstrated that abuse is present or one or both parents is incapable or unwilling.
Remove Title IV-D, which incentivizes courts to separate families for a cut of that child support enforcement pie.
Reevaluate the definitions for violent crimes and mitigating circumstances, particularly rape. "Battered wife syndrome" should not be a valid excuse in my opinion for unprovoked murder.
Have consistency in culpability for one's actions when they are voluntarily intoxicated. Either one is responsible for their decisions while drunk or they are not.
Remove the incentives for police unions and prison employees-private or public-to gain from increased criminalization, leading their representatives to lobby for increase criminalization and therefore warrant increased funding.

By removing as much subjectivity to whether someone committed a crime or not as practicable and removing the perverse incentives for the industries involved, there would be no reason to exploit the perception of men as acceptable recipients of incarceration. You remove the fuel, the fire dwindles. When the reality of women as adult agents that are just as capable and held as responsible for their crimes as men are, the bias that men are the only violent ones or women are the only victims presumably would subside.

Edit: I commented on the family court system as well. Derp.

sumfacilispuella · 2012-10-28T20:27:49+00:00

First you have to do something about the prison for profit problem. It gives too big an incentive to sentence people for longer for bullshit things.

Nepene · 2012-10-28T23:59:11+00:00

I'd prefer if computers ran our justice system.

They could take all the evidence that was accepted by the court, take any mitigating factors, fairly convict people.

Of course gender aware trials are a goal of certain people. They want women to get off murder with a slap on the wrist so this will never happen.

rightsbot · 2012-10-28T18:46:19+00:00

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mikesteane · 2012-10-28T23:37:34+00:00

I would start by making judges serve the difference between the time they sentence a woman to and the time they would have given a man.

Pecanpig · 2012-10-29T00:07:58+00:00

Make things more, mechanical. You killed someone? 10 years, done, no exceptions in any way shape or form.

Be simple.

r_rships_account · 2012-10-29T07:30:48+00:00

All you need to (and indeed can) do is to provide, in the jurisdiction's sentencing legislation, that the sex of an offender is not to be taken into account when sentencing.

roadhand · 2012-10-29T09:13:11+00:00

Actually, by intent and design, justice was framed as a blind construct.

A good start would be to bring it back to this in execution.

DavidByron · 2012-10-28T23:10:51+00:00

Scrap the entire justice system and start with something designed to criminalize the anti-social actions of both men and women. The current system is designed to crimnalize only the male role, and that is exactly what it does, with a few women swept up if they happen to act "like men".

Title	How would you reform the Criminal Court System to equalize sentencing?
Author	[deleted]
Upvotes	20
Comments	30
Date	October 28, 2012 6:45 PM UTC (13 years ago)
Subreddit	Posted in /r/MensRights
Original Link	https://old.reddit.com/r/MensRights/comments/128a47/how_would_you_reform_the_criminal_court_system_to/
Archive Link	https://theredarchive.com/r/MensRights/how-would-you-reform-the-criminal-court-system-to.1010369 https://theredarchive.com/post/1010369

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