{"id":75294,"date":"2016-06-20T12:00:13","date_gmt":"2016-06-20T11:00:13","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/?p=75294"},"modified":"2016-06-20T11:51:53","modified_gmt":"2016-06-20T10:51:53","slug":"the-confessions-of-brock-turner-and-a-culture-of-punishment","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/2016\/06\/the-confessions-of-brock-turner-and-a-culture-of-punishment\/","title":{"rendered":"The Confessions of Brock Turner and a Culture of Punishment"},"content":{"rendered":"

18 Jun 2016 – <\/em>The sentencing of a convicted sex offender has recently become a topic of much discussion in the U.S. media, with the focus on the perceived leniency of the punishment and the perpetrator\u2019s refusal to admit guilt.\u00a0 Generally not discussed are the deep assumptions that have elevated punishment to the first priority of the criminal justice system.<\/p>\n

In January 2015, Brock Turner, a first-year college student, sexually assaulted an unconscious woman (call her Jane Doe) behind an outdoor trash bin on the campus of Stanford University.\u00a0 Two graduate students interrupted the rape, chased down the fleeing perpetrator, and detained him until law officers arrived.\u00a0 In March 2016, a jury found Turner guilty of three felonies: assault with intent to rape an intoxicated woman, sexually penetrating an intoxicated person with a foreign object, and sexually penetrating an unconscious person with a foreign object.\u00a0 A probation officer recommended the convict serve a short stint in county jail rather than extended time in state prison.\u00a0 On June 2, the presiding judge handed down a jail sentence of six months, possibly reduced to three months for good behavior.\u00a0 Turner must also serve three years probation, participate in a rehabilitation program, and publicly register as a sex offender for the rest of his life.<\/p>\n

Two letters, written before the sentencing and made public afterwards, have sparked widespread interest in the case.\u00a0 The first is a 7,000-word statement that Jane Doe read to her attacker in court, describing the suffering he has caused her, by both the assault and his not-guilty plea, and expressing her discontent with the probation officer\u2019s mild recommendation.\u00a0 Her letter is eloquent, angry, enlightening, and heart-breaking; some pundits have suggested it be required reading for college students.\u00a0 The second is a 1,600-word appeal written by Turner\u2019s father to the judge, pointing out that the guilty verdicts had already \u201cbroken and shattered\u201d his son, and arguing that \u201cincarceration is not the appropriate punishment.\u201d<\/p>\n

Various media outlets have described the public (meaning mostly other media outlets) response to both the minimal sentence and the father\u2019s \u201ctone-deaf\u201d letter as \u201coutrage,\u201d even \u201cnationwide furor.\u201d\u00a0 Analysts were quick, and correct, to identify the privilege afforded the attacker, an outstanding male athlete at a major athletic institution, and the apparently indulgent and enabling attitude of the father, whose letter euphemized the rape as \u201c20 minutes of action.\u201d\u00a0 A college professor in Turner\u2019s hometown described the \u201cdark side\u201d of an otherwise \u201cidyllic\u201d community, noting \u201cthe conflation of achievement with being \u2018a good kid\u2019\u201d and \u201cthe tacit understanding that rules don\u2019t necessarily apply.\u201d\u00a0 Some observers denounced the role of race in determining the severity of punishment.\u00a0 In a similar case of a university athlete raping an unconscious woman on campus, Corey Batey was recently sentenced to 15 to 25 years in prison.\u00a0 The comparison\u2014Batey has dark skin, Turner is pale\u2014might be dismissed as anecdotal, except for extensive data showing that the legal system comes down much harder on convicts identified as non-white.<\/p>\n

Aaron Persky, the judge in the Turner case, has also come in for scrutiny.\u00a0 Like Turner, Persky was once an intercollegiate athlete at Stanford University.\u00a0 While campaigning for the judgeship, he described his work as a public prosecutor as focusing on \u201csexually violent predators, working to keep the most dangerous sex offenders in custody in mental hospitals.\u201d\u00a0 In announcing the jail sentence, Persky noted that Turner had no prior criminal record and was intoxicated during the rape, then concluded that \u201ca prison sentence would have a severe impact on him.\u00a0 I think he will not be a danger to others.\u201d\u00a0 The judge has since received numerous threatening phone calls and now faces a campaign to recall him from the bench.\u00a0 Prospective jurors have reportedly objected to serving in his courtroom.<\/p>\n

The \u201coutrage\u201d is worth examining.\u00a0 It\u2019s not about the rape itself, which, when originally reported, received minimal coverage.\u00a0 The rape epidemic in the U.S.A., never mind a single case, does not provoke \u201cnationwide furor.\u201d\u00a0 Rather, the public handwringing began over the relatively lenient sentence.\u00a0 If the online articles and comments are representative, many people believe that Turner\u2019s punishment is not harsh enough.\u00a0 Typically, this is not based on a belief that Turner will rape again and must be removed from society.\u00a0 There has been little discussion of what the punishment is supposed to accomplish.\u00a0 The prevailing, unexamined assumption is that the punishment must fit the crime, and the prevailing opinion is that a short jail term doesn\u2019t fit Turner\u2019s sexual assault on an unconscious woman.\u00a0 He needs to suffer more.<\/p>\n

What, precisely, is the appropriate punishment for such a horrific crime?\u00a0 The law says no more than fourteen years of incarceration in prison.\u00a0 The prosecutor recommended six years.\u00a0 The father insisted that social humiliation, self-hatred, and loss of athletic career are enough.\u00a0 Except for the occasional \u201crot in hell,\u201d the professional and amateur online commentariat doesn\u2019t seem to have an answer.\u00a0 And for good reason.\u00a0 Locking up a sex offender for six years rather than six months doesn\u2019t make the community significantly safer\u2014the recidivism rate for sex offenders is notably low.\u00a0 The threat of punishment, no matter how severe, may not stop a young man with a sense of entitlement and a skewed view of sexuality from raping; intoxicated or not, he probably won\u2019t pause to calculate the number of years he might spend in prison if he proceeds.\u00a0 The rape epidemic, on college campuses and off, cannot be ended solely by temporary quarantines, and the U.S. prison system is not noted for rehabilitation\u2014the man coming out may be a greater societal danger than the man who went in.\u00a0 If punishment through incarceration doesn\u2019t make society safer, who can discern the appropriate length of sentence?\u00a0 The number is arbitrary.<\/p>\n

One concern, widely expressed, is that the \u201cslap on the wrist\u201d for the perpetrator is \u201ca slap in the face\u201d of the victim, that the severity of her trauma, the extent of her violation, has not been fully acknowledged.\u00a0 The California attorney general, currently a candidate for the U.S. Senate, opined, \u201cThe concern I have in that case is that the victim\u2019s voice was not heard. \u00a0It was not respected. \u00a0She was not given dignity in the process.\u201d\u00a0 Another concern is that the light sentence sends the wrong \u201cmessage.\u201d\u00a0 A Stanford law professor, one of the organizers of the recall campaign, has interpreted the judge\u2019s decision as \u201csaying to women on college campuses that they don\u2019t deserve the full protection of the law in the state of California.\u201d\u00a0 Jane Doe\u2019s statement included both of these considerations:<\/p>\n

I told the probation officer I do not want Brock to rot away in prison. I did not
\nsay he does not deserve to be behind bars. The probation officer\u2019s recommendation
\nof a year or less in county jail is a soft timeout, a mockery of the seriousness of
\nhis assaults, an insult to me and all women.\u00a0 It gives the message that a stranger
\ncan be inside you without proper consent and he will receive less than what has
\nbeen defined as the minimum sentence. <\/em><\/p>\n

To her great credit, Jane Doe was not, in her anguish, demanding vengeance; she was worried about the signification of the judge\u2019s decision.\u00a0 \u201cThe seriousness of rape,\u201d she wrote, \u201chas to be communicated clearly, we should not create a culture that suggests we learn that rape is wrong through trial and error.\u201d<\/p>\n

The scandal of the six-month jail sentence raises this question: Why, in U.S. culture, do both the dignity of a rape victim and proper condemnation of rape hinge on the length of the rapist\u2019s time behind bars? \u00a0\u00a0To be more blunt, why the obsession with punishment?<\/p>\n

Deeply embedded in Western thought is belief in a supreme deity who punishes but also redeems.\u00a0 The path to human salvation after wrongdoing includes confession and repentance, followed by punishment and, if the deity wills it, forgiveness.\u00a0 Christianity teaches that humans are by nature sinful but have been redeemed by the suffering\/punishment of Christ.\u00a0 One essential point is that, after a violation, harmony must be restored between God and the sinner.\u00a0 With secularization, the state has replaced the deity.\u00a0 Sin is called \u201ccrime,\u201d and the criminal owes a debt not to the victim but to \u201csociety,\u201d as represented by the state; the relationship between victimizer and victim is secondary.\u00a0 The state determines and administers the debt (punishment) and has the power to forgive (pardon).\u00a0 Once the debt is paid, the conflict is considered resolved, civic integrity restored.\u00a0 To that, add the logic of capitalism, which demands a balance sheet.\u00a0 For there to be justice, a sinner must pay full price for his sins.<\/p>\n

So Brock Turner must be punished by the state\u2014even if that punishment is not a proven deterrent, brings little promise of rehabilitation, and comes at great expense to taxpayers.\u00a0 (Paying his debt to the state puts the state in debt?)\u00a0 Since he caused suffering, he must suffer for it, and justice isn\u2019t served until his suffering matches or exceeds the suffering he caused.\u00a0 The ledger must be balanced.\u00a0 This mindset prevails: Turner\u2019s father argues that his son has already suffered enough and, if allowed to educate \u201cother college age students\u201d in the error of his ways, could \u201cgive back to society in a net positive way.\u201d\u00a0 The public is \u201coutraged\u201d because Turner, presumably, won\u2019t suffer anywhere close to the amount of suffering he caused Jane Doe.\u00a0 The insufficient punishment is deemed an insult to the victim (and potential victims), as it devalues her suffering.\u00a0 Torment is the coin of the realm.<\/p>\n

Western cosmology also values admission of guilt.\u00a0 Individual salvation requires repentance, which first requires confession of sin.\u00a0 \u201cSorry\u201d goes a long way.\u00a0 In the U.S.A., this can be observed in the commercial media\u2019s treatment of public figures caught in marital infidelities or legal transgressions.\u00a0 Rather than denials and justifications, the transgressors are best served by tearful confessions and humble requests for forgiveness\u2014televised, naturally.\u00a0 Then, after a period of exile (punishment), they can return to the public arena\u2014as \u201cexpert\u201d commentator or \u201celder statesman\u201d\u2014with image somewhat rehabilitated.\u00a0 Confession + contrition + suffering = atonement.\u00a0 In this simple equation, no matter the arbitrary value of atonement, less confession and\/or less contrition means greater suffering is required.<\/p>\n

Additional factors include the role of material wealth and perceived race in determining the goodness and worth of an individual .\u00a0 Western cosmology emphasizes verticality, with some humans closer to divine status, being \u201cchosen\u201d or \u201csaved,\u201d while others are \u201cdamned\u201d or \u201cfallen from grace.\u201d\u00a0 Historically, the politically dominant group in the U.S.A. has insisted on wealth and whiteness as evidence of God\u2019s favor.\u00a0 Chosenness, in secular terms, is elite status.\u00a0 Elites have greater social value, deserve privilege, and, hence, their losses hurt more.\u00a0 To see these assumptions at work, compare the (wealthy white) media coverage of murder in a wealthy white community and murder in a poor black community.\u00a0 The latter often goes unreported.\u00a0 Those toward the bottom of the hierarchy are presumed to have lower ambitions and less appreciation for life.\u00a0 It follows that, with less wealth, comfort, and humanity to lose, poorer and\/or darker convicts require relatively longer incarceration (loss of freedom) to reach sufficient deprivation.\u00a0 To simplify a rather complicated calculus, consider: confession + contrition + suffering = atonement, where suffering = loss x social status.\u00a0 (Gender complicates matters even more, due to the complexity of the patriarchal view of female suffering.)\u00a0 This thinking contributes to racial disparities in sentencing today, as does the notion that those with darker skin are more savage\u2014inherently violent, less rational.\u00a0 Defenders of the enslavement of blacks in the early U.S.A. argued that bondage helped<\/em> blacks while protecting whites from black savagery\u2014and such assumptions still persist.\u00a0 Black and poor and convicted of violent crime\u2014from the perspective of the dominant group, there may be no punishment severe enough to bring redemption: confession + contrition + suffering \u2013 inherent debasement < atonement.\u00a0 Fallen from grace, indeed.<\/p>\n

Jane Doe\u2019s letter follows the general formula.\u00a0 Again to her credit, she wanted rehabilitation, for victim and<\/em> victimizer; she assumed Turner was redeemable.\u00a0 The starting point for her was time and space for healing.\u00a0 The starting point for him would be facing up to his crime.\u00a0 She wrote that \u201cwhat I truly wanted was for Brock to get it, to understand and admit to his wrongdoing.\u00a0 Unfortunately, after reading the defendant\u2019s report, I am severely disappointed and feel that he has failed to exhibit sincere remorse or responsibility for his conduct.\u201d\u00a0 So, the ledger must be balanced.\u00a0 \u201cHad Brock admitted guilt and remorse and offered to settle early on, I would have considered a lighter sentence, respecting his honesty, grateful to be able to move our lives forward.\u201d\u00a0 More confession and repentance by the rapist (and no perceived inherent debasement) would mean less punishment required.\u00a0 Judge Persky mostly adhered to the same formula, stating that he found Turner sufficiently remorseful (contrition) and believed Turner\u2019s positive character references (no inherent debasement).\u00a0 However, regarding confession, Persky didn\u2019t think the defendant\u2019s \u201clack of complete acquiescence to the verdict should count against him\u201d \u2014a key difference.<\/p>\n

In fact, in his own letter to the judge, Turner did confess guilt and express remorse:\u00a0 \u201cI am the sole proprietor of what happened on the night that these people\u2019s lives were changed forever.\u00a0 I would give anything to change what happened that night.\u00a0 I can never forgive myself for imposing trauma and pain.\u201d\u00a0 But he was only confessing to \u201cdrinking and making poor decisions while doing so.\u201d\u00a0 This was the second source of the online commentariat\u2019s \u201coutrage\u201d\u2014that Turner and his father blamed the reprehensible assault solely on what the father\u2019s letter characterized as a campus culture of \u201calcohol consumption and sexual promiscuity.\u201d\u00a0 Neither father nor son could admit that Jane Doe had been raped.\u00a0 The son told his probation officer, \u201cBeing drunk, I just couldn\u2019t make the best decisions, and neither could she.\u201d\u00a0 He did acknowledge causing Jane Doe \u201cemotional and physical stress that is completely unwarranted and unfair\u201d\u2014almost a textbook definition of violence.\u00a0 The father, though, insisted that the son had \u201cnever been violent to anyone including his actions on the night of Jan 17th 2015.\u201d\u00a0 Denial and cognitive dissonance were hard at work, which magnified Jane Doe\u2019s misery.\u00a0 She wrote, \u201cInstead [Brock] took the risk of going to trial, added insult to injury and forced me to relive the hurt as details about my personal life and sexual assault were brutally dissected before the public.\u201d<\/p>\n

Why, after being caught in the act, did Turner \u201crisk\u201d going to trial with a not-guilty plea?\u00a0 Why, instead of throwing himself upon the mercy of the state (grace of the deity), did he, in Jane Doe\u2019s words, hire \u201ca powerful attorney, expert witnesses, private investigators who were going to try and find details about my personal life to use against me, find loopholes in my story to invalidate me and my sister, in order to show that this sexual assault was in fact a misunderstanding\u201d?\u00a0 Economic privilege surely played a role, as Turner wasn\u2019t stuck with an overworked public defender pressuring him to accept a plea bargain.\u00a0 In a sad irony, Turner could also benefit from the fact that his victim had been unconscious and couldn\u2019t fully recall the circumstances of the assault.\u00a0 Jane Doe explained, \u201cThen he learned I could not remember.\u00a0 So one year later, as predicted, a new dialogue emerged.\u00a0 Brock had a strange new story\u2026there was suddenly consent\u2026he remembered, oh yeah, by the way she actually said yes, to everything, so.\u201d<\/p>\n

I contend that the culture of punishment also played a role in Turner\u2019s refusal to take full responsibility for his actions.\u00a0 Being neither dark-skinned nor poor, Turner could assume that the cards weren\u2019t all stacked against him, that his privileged social status might prove a mitigating factor.\u00a0 Certainly, his parents understood this.\u00a0 Like, her husband, Turner\u2019s mother wrote a letter to Judge Persky, insisting that her son\u2019s shattered dreams of even higher status\u2014through athletic glory, Stanford degree, and medical career\u2014were loss enough.\u00a0 Judge Persky appears to have accepted this logic, referring to the \u201cadverse collateral consequences\u201d Turner faced.\u00a0 Even the prosecution, which cited the predatory nature of the crime, recommended a sentence far below maximum.\u00a0 Still, the likely sentence, even with the appropriate confession and contrition, even without racial stigma, was severe enough to deter Turner from admitting to sexual assault.\u00a0 This was the \u201crisk\u201d he faced.\u00a0 Truth or dare?\u00a0 Might as well skirt the truth, plead not guilty, and take his chances with a jury\u2014no matter the cost to the victim.\u00a0 In other words, a defendant with proficient legal defense may be incentivized to deny guilt.<\/p>\n

To understand the influence of the culture of punishment, imagine a culture obsessed with rehabilitation instead.\u00a0 Imagine heated debate over how much and what type of therapy, rather than punishment, the rapist should undergo.\u00a0 Imagine public \u201coutrage\u201d because the criminal is not being afforded sufficient psychiatric care and social reeducation.\u00a0 It seems worth noting that sexual offender registration does not allow for full forgiveness and restoration, no matter the degree of confession, contrition, and atonement.\u00a0 For the rest of his life, even with no further criminal convictions, Turner will have to announce himself as a sex offender.\u00a0 There is no evidence that such practices make society safer, but they do keep the offender isolated and alienated, not fully restored into society.\u00a0 So, continuing the thought experiment, imagine widespread discussion over how to evaluate the convict\u2019s fitness for returning to society.\u00a0 Imagine a criminal justice system\u2014restorative not retributive justice\u2014where the prevailing imperative is not to punish bad people but to help all people become less violent.\u00a0 In such a society, punishment may still have a place, but not as the primary solution\u2014to the great relief of poor and dark-skinned convicts especially\u2014and the dignity of victims wouldn\u2019t hang precariously on the resources of a defendant, the impulses of a jury, or the whims of a judge.\u00a0 As a bonus, imagine how such a society, with its emphasis on rehabilitation, not punishment, might promote fewer violent crimes as redress is not equated with inflicting torment on others.<\/p>\n

Here\u2019s my speculation:\u00a0 If Brock Turner had believed that the state\u2019s primary concern for him was rehabilitation and restoration rather than imposition of suffering, he would have been more likely to confess fully and accept the shame of knowing that he had consciously committed rape.\u00a0 In turn, Jane Doe would have been less likely to suffer through what she called \u201crevictimization\u201d in the legal proceedings.\u00a0 If these assumptions are correct, then another sad irony follows: The online clamor over Turner\u2019s insufficient punishment, often including professions of concern for Jane Doe, is indicative of a punishment culture that actually contributed to greater torment for Jane Doe.\u00a0\u00a0 \u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0<\/em><\/p>\n

__________________________________<\/p>\n

Timothy Braatz is a playwright, novelist, and professor of history and peace studies at Saddleback College in Mission Viejo, California.\u00a0 His most recent nonfiction book is <\/em>Peace Lessons.<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

18 Jun 2016 – The sentencing of a convicted sex offender has recently become a topic of much discussion in the U.S. media, with the focus on the perceived leniency of the punishment and the perpetrator\u2019s refusal to admit guilt. Generally not discussed are the deep assumptions that have elevated punishment to the first priority of the criminal justice system.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[65],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-75294","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-anglo-america"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/75294","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=75294"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/75294\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=75294"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=75294"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=75294"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}