This judge wasn’t THE “one guy” in this debacle. He rubber stamped the county probation department’s recommendation. If county probation department recommend the same sentences as the DA was asking for, it’s very unlikely/harder for judge to justify lighter sentencing. Voters in Santa Clara County can demand Santa…

I actually find people pretending that this has anything to do with minorities getting overly harsh sentences both ludicrous and offensive.

It isn’t just rapists (ie, what one is accused of). POC, the poor, men in custody cases, and women all receive bias at the hands of judges. We give complete judicial discretion but no oversight. Even when someone complains, it’s other judges watching the henhouse. I’m not at all for mandatory sentences, but maybe…

Except no one is encouraging maximum sentences and ruthless prosecution across the board. People want judges to stop handing out lenient sentences to rapists because they don’t want to ruin their futures, because they consistently show more empathy and sympathy for those rapists than they do for their victims. Rapists…

We should start by taking holistic sentencing analyses of crimes that don’t have a victim. I don’t think anyone thinks the system is currently too tough on rapists. It’s too tough on recreational marijuana users.

The other thing causing outrage is that the case being sentenced right before this one was a domestic violence case where Persky sentenced the abuser to a literal weekend in jail

Besides allowing time for reform, a convict’s complete refusal to acknowledge what he did let alone show remorse- this is supposed to be considered in his sentencing. Instead of considering this grounds for a harsher sentence, the judge basically takes the word of the probation officer, who believes Turner’s version…

To be fair, I think there is a recognizable gap between 3 months and an ‘arbitrary, lengthy term of incarceration”. If the kid got 3 years, I doubt people would be as outraged. I also don’t think it would have been as big of a problem if the rapist seemed even remotely remorseful for his actions.

And as the Nate Parker/Jean Celestin rape case has shown, a slap on the wrist punishment for rape doesn’t necessarily stop someone from having a successful career. So it’s not like someone’s future will suffer much even with a rape conviction.

This culture of mass incarceration has so shaped our minds that when a judge, like Judge Persky in this case, undertakes a holistic sentencing analysis that accounts for both the victim and the convicted, we still insist on arbitrary, lengthy terms of incarceration as the response to crime.