Thoughts on this article?

Oncefa2 · 2019-11-04T10:49:30+00:00

I agree with this quote

Legal scholar Dan Markel and his co-authors wrote in a 2009 book that family ties should be considered only with great caution to ensure equal treatment and to avoid continuing patriarchal norms or creating a “class of persons who are immune from incarceration” and therefore desirable hires for criminal outfits.

Those extenuating circumstances of social disadvantage can be factored in, but they should be applied equally across the board. And gender in and of itself should not be considered a "social disadvantage".

Moreover, this article seems to be talking more about circumstances that affect women more. But that gives me pause and makes me wonder - could male criminal behavior not be explained by circumstances that tend to affect men more?

Haloisi · 2019-11-04T09:09:59+00:00

Instead, as the University of Michigan study said, “Policymakers could equally sensibly ask: Why not treat men like women are treated?”

But that kind of change is unlikely under the Trump administration.

Apparently they are riding on the concept that locking up women should be avoided (I personally agree) and maybe they also think locking up men should be avoided. But the last part is politically hard, so let's just do the first part. To be honest I'm happy we are trying to make the world a better place for people, but I am also a bit tired that "well, it's too complicated to also advocate (this) for men" gets a free pass.

In my opinion rules should be gender neutral and fair. Which means circumstances matter, but I don't want to see sexist assumptions coded in law.

Aaod · 2019-11-04T18:11:04+00:00

Official federal sentencing guidelines don’t distinguish between female and male offenders. They often downplay or outright disregard circumstances that are common among women, such as the role of an offender as the sole caretaker for children or an offender having been coerced into committing a crime. But judges commonly compensate ad hoc, which has led to women on the whole receiving much shorter sentences than men when facing the same punishments.

Can't the same arguments be made that men commit crimes to provide for their family due to the gender role shoved on them are less guilty as well? Either both genders are held less accountable for these things or neither should be.

Also largely excluded from the guidelines is any consideration of how a defendant got into crime in the first place. Yet research on incarcerated women shows that abusive relationships can put them on the wrong side of the law. Most women who assault their intimate partners have also been victimized by those partners, and they often cite self-defense as a motive. Researchers have also turned up many cases of incarcerated women who reported being forced into committing a crime by threats of violence.

A broader history of victimization is also common among female offenders. When researchers interviewed 125 women awaiting release from North Carolina prisons, they found that almost two-thirds had experienced childhood physical or sexual abuse and more than a quarter had been sexually victimized in the year before they went to prison. (Most studies do not draw explicit comparisons with men, but a survey of about 7,500 state prisoners conducted in 2005 found that while men and women had similar rates of childhood physical abuse, women had far higher rates of childhood sexual abuse.)

And men can't make the same arguments? Do men not have histories of being abused? Could they not be defending themselves in cases of reciprocal domestic violence?

As usual this article treats women like less capable of agency children which is disgusting even before you look at how they completely ignore men.

mrsuperguy · 2019-11-04T11:45:12+00:00

So I absolutely think that personal circumstances should factor in to the decision to charge someone and their sentence upon a conviction. But while these circumstances may affect women more than men, this is no reason at all to make it specific to them.

And more broardly, I think that in any context where there are rules being set for people to follow, it's just not possible to to be exhaustive when making those rules and to perfectly include everything that is unacceptable and nothing that is acceptable. And even if you could, it would be an incredibly difficult rule set to follow and interpret when punishing someone. For this reason, in any such context discretion is incredibly important on the part of those charged with enforcing the rules. And the article says that judges have been using their discretion to take into account factors they consider to be mitigatign which I fully support. That said, it's also important that the people in the community can trust the enforcers of the rules that they will be fair and reasonable in their judgment and it's the responsibility of the people to hold those enforcers to account when they are unfair.

“I still remember that being a deeply painful time for me, exacerbated by feeling less than valued as a mother and human being because the system seemed (to think) the only recourse was to incarcerate and separate me from my children,”

This quote from james gets at one of the reasons I don't support punitive punishment in criminal justice.

“For the majority of women that land on a prison bunk, there’s a common thread to what makes that happen,”

Is this not true of men that are sent to prison as well?

With regards to the bit about drug offenses; I would like to see all acts but the distribution and sale of dangerous drugs (shit like heroin or fentanyl not weed), driving under the influence and selling drugs without some sort of lisence be made legal. An from what I know of America's prison system, this would mean a very large swath of inmates would be set free. And as for "role adjustments" being made depending on where you are in the hierarchy of a drug organisation I think this is another example where judicial discretion is important.

and women appear to be particularly affected. Among federal prisoners in 2004, a higher share of men than women reported being the parents of minor children, but almost 80 percent of the mothers reported that they lived with their children just before incarceration, compared with half of the fathers.

I find these numbers to be much more compelling evidence for a case that there needs to be more room made for judicial discretion in general rather than just for female offenders. Because it's still apparantly the case that half of male inmates lived with their young children before going to prison. That's a lot! So it doesn't really matter to me that this applies to a way bigger proportion of female inmates as well. Because my mind is made up that the system seems to have failed all of these people in some way or another.

Anyway, it's just a thought. Y'all have a good night.

Melthengylf · 2019-11-04T20:55:32+00:00

Men shouldn't be sentenced by the book either.

SchalaZeal01 · 2019-11-05T15:54:56+00:00

More than 56 percent of the women in federal prison are there for drug offenses, compared with about 47 percent of men. In drug cases involving multiple people, each defendant can be held responsible for the full weight of the drugs involved, even if he or she were far down on the organizational chart. That approach is hard on women, who are often low-level players in such operations, experts said.

They think what? That 47% of the men in prison are The Don? All of them? They're also low level players. Lots of people = common = low level.

heimdahl81 · 2019-11-07T04:15:23+00:00

It all comes down to the problem of bias of the judge, jury, and prosecutors. I wish we could develop a system where justice was truly blind where decisions about guilt and punishment were made without the courts knowing the defendant's race, sex, sexuality, or religion.

Title	Thoughts on this article?
Author	Strikester101
Upvotes	5
Comments	18
Date	November 4, 2019 4:49 AM UTC (6 years ago)
Subreddit	Posted in /r/LeftWingMaleAdvocates
Original Link	https://old.reddit.com/r/LeftWingMaleAdvocates/comments/drcra5/thoughts_on_this_article/
Archive Link	https://theredarchive.com/r/LeftWingMaleAdvocates/thoughts-on-this-article.1064416 https://theredarchive.com/post/1064416

Comments