
Women Aren’t Always Sentenced by the Book. Maybe Men Shouldn’t Be, Either - cctt23
https://fivethirtyeight.com/features/women-arent-always-sentenced-by-the-book-maybe-men-shouldnt-be-either/
======
AIX2ESXI
Eh, I say throw the book at all criminals regardless of gender. I'm a big
proponent of putting females on the front lines of war too if the U.S. truly
stands for equality. Having grown up as a ward of the court, I have seen
judges sentence women to lighter sentences since they view these women as
their daughters or mothers that made a one time mistake, in contrast to the
men who judges deem useless and dangerous criminals to society and get the
book thrown at them.

Just look at the epidemic of U.S. female teachers who sexually abuse their
students and get slapped on the wrist compared to the harsher sentences of the
men who do abuse their female students

Anyhow, I truly believe the industrial prison complex is too successful for
the U.S. to change any aspect it. If anything, we will reignite the drug war
and start using social media to lock up more men and the occasional woman.
This feeds the narrative that our society does not care about men and that the
government is always looking to take care of women at the expense of men and
our taxes. As a young man it is hard to see it any other way and has
radicalized me towards the manopshere, redpill and mgotw online communities
and philosophy.

Then again, I wonder if this the outcome that social engineers are pushing our
society towards to? I feel no desire to love, cherish or protect any women in
my life after seeing how they can get away with things that I cannot as a man
and how society caters to their every whim. / End rant.

~~~
mcv
There are absolutely crimes and criminals that should be punished more
severely, but there's also a place for compassion in the justice system. Many
men did make a one-time mistake (or sometimes not even that) and get harshly
punished for it. At the same time, there are also men who get a slap on the
wrist for crimes that are usually punished more severely. Usually men who are
rich, white and/or well connected.

There's way to much bias based on irrelevant circumstances in the US justice
system. Black men in particular need a bit more mercy, rich white people need
more accountability, women need to be taken more seriously in both directions.

First an foremost, though, the US prison-industrial complex needs to end.
Profiting from imprisonment creates perverse incentives. The goal of the
prison system needs to be rehabilitation, not corporate profit at the
expensive of the people.

~~~
Geeek
White women, rich or not, tend to most often get a slap on the wrist.

------
TheCoelacanth
Instead of not sentencing people by the book, we need to make the book
drastically less harsh for almost every crime. The US's number of people
incarcerated is many times higher than comparably developed countries. Our
sentencing guidelines are simply too high across the board.

~~~
grasshopperpurp
And the entire approach is backwards and leads to recidivism, rather than
rehabilitation.

------
moate
In b4 "Men's Rights"...

One thesis you could take is that the US, with the largest incarcerated
population in the history of the world _, could stand to be a little bit less
harsh in their sentencing.

_[http://www.prisonstudies.org/highest-to-lowest/prison-
popula...](http://www.prisonstudies.org/highest-to-lowest/prison-population-
total?field_region_taxonomy_tid=All)

~~~
Geeek
Men’s rights are human rights. There’s no reason that in areas where men fare
worse we should not have its gendered nature pointed out.

~~~
moate
Oh sure, but if we're going to get at the big problems in the US criminal
justice system, I think there's dozens of broad, general problems (living
conditions, privatization of a "public good" service, general focus on
punishment vs behavioral reform, etc) that would do better at addressing the
issues for the most people involved.

Also, as I was previously trying to state, I feel that we should address this
issue by generally changing/lowering sentences. If we can be compassionate
towards woman convicts, why not men?

------
r00fus
Buried Lede: "But people of different races and genders still fare differently
under the guidelines. Race looms large, according to a November 2017 report
from the sentencing commission. It found that black men in federal court are
sentenced to 19.1 percent more time, on average, than white men who, at least
on paper, committed the same crimes and have similar criminal histories."

~~~
belorn
Compared to the statement "sentences for men are on average 63 percent longer
than sentences for women", I think one number is a bit bigger than the other.

There seems to exist three major influences that "dictate" the outcome of a
case. Gender and race of the accused, and the blood sugar level on the judge
and jury. If you build a prediction model where only those variables are known
then you would likely get quite scary accurate results.

------
chapill
Accepting what the submission implies at face value[1]: Even if you lighten
sentences on men, it doesn't change that courts favor women. When men are
pitted against women in court, such as divorce proceedings, the root problem
will remain.

[1]If you disagree with the notion that courts favor women, and you flag me
instead of the article, you're doing it wrong. I'm pointing out flaws in
submission's logic, not arguing whether or not it is correct.

~~~
moate
Well short of gutting the entire "common law" system and switching an entire
legal system over to codified law it seems difficult to address the root
issue.

Also, this is specifically talking about sentencing which therefor relates to
criminal law. You want to get into a myriad of issues relating to Civil law
and it's flaws, that's a whole other can of worms.

~~~
CryptoPunk
The issue can be addressed in the law schools, where pretty radicalism and
misandrist forms of feminism are respectable mainstream positions for many
students and faculty to hold.

The nightmarish campus rape policies aren't created in a vacuum:

[https://www.theatlantic.com/education/archive/2017/09/the-
un...](https://www.theatlantic.com/education/archive/2017/09/the-
uncomfortable-truth-about-campus-rape-policy/538974/)

They're a result of a generation of activist law school graduates. Once you
give an ideology carte blanche, people will abuse it.

------
hprotagonist
_I don 't know how to communicate this, or even if it is possible. But the
question of justice has concerned me greatly of late.

And I say to any creature who may be listening, there can be no justice so
long as laws are absolute. Even life itself is an exercise in exceptions._

Jean-Luc Picard

------
na85
I don't normally complain about submissions but I believe that this is
inappropriate/off topic for HN

~~~
CryoLogic
Please provide reasoning as to why if you are going to claim that this article
is not appropriate for HN.

I did not see anything in it that would be a red flag.

~~~
na85
It's pure politics.

------
ExcelSaga
If you actually read the article and the many citations, it’s a strong data-
based approach. If you only read the title or skim, or just react emotionally
then it could hit you the wrong way. All of which is to say that this is an
important issue, it’s presented well and with sensitivity, and it’s just the
kind of thought-provoking article called for in the guidelines.

That it’s already flagged off the front page is a credit to no one.

A selection of some of the embedded links from the piece:

[https://www.ussc.gov/sites/default/files/pdf/amendment-
proce...](https://www.ussc.gov/sites/default/files/pdf/amendment-
process/reader-friendly-amendments/20161219_rf_proposed.pdf)

[https://www.ussc.gov/research/research-reports/criminal-
hist...](https://www.ussc.gov/research/research-reports/criminal-history-and-
recidivism-federal-offenders)

[https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3793850/](https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3793850/)

[https://academic.oup.com/aler/article/17/1/127/212179](https://academic.oup.com/aler/article/17/1/127/212179)

[https://www.ussc.gov/sites/default/files/pdf/research-and-
pu...](https://www.ussc.gov/sites/default/files/pdf/research-and-
publications/research-publications/2017/20171114_Demographics.pdf)

~~~
forgottenpass
_If you actually read the article and the many citations, it’s a strong data-
based approach._

As a review of the federal sentencing guidelines status quo, sure. As a source
of proposed remedies, no.

I didn't go into the article looking for an argument that there were problems
with that system and the application of it. I had prior knowledge there, and
fleshing it out further wasn't my only reason to read this.

I went into the article looking for the proposed remedies (and a ounce of hope
that they wouldn't be as hollow as the headline suggested). If they had
limited the scope of the article to the problem they wish to describe, I'd
agree with you. But the headline and the "lol, trump" paragraphs aim the
article higher. Those aspects don't stick to the tough data-driven no-nonsense
image fivethrityeight tries to convey.

Lies, damn lies and statistics.

