It’s really disturbing to know how much our criminal justice system favors white college men, constantly waving their sentences for light community service, despite having confessed to multiple accounts of rape and sexual assault, with the addition of concrete evidence to support such charges and allegations. Judges are increasingly willing to let these boys walk away because of their supposed promising futures or athletic potential, completely disregarding the lives and futures of the victims of these criminals.
Yet, instead of holding these boys properly accountable for their actions, we, as a society and a judicial system, are much more willing to blame the victims for their particular clothing choices or the amount of alcohol they might have consumed. And the perpetual excuse for these young rapists tends to be the common phrases “Boys will be boys” or “Everyone make mistakes when they’re young”, which only encourages and enforces the idea that men have no control over their own actions when it comes to sexual misconduct.
Judges only ever provide this excuse when it comes to college men, or men in general, who have been convicted of rape or sexual assault. Someone can go to jail for 13 years for having small amounts of marijuana on their person, but a rapist of multiple offenses gets to just pick up some garbage in the park for six months and call it a day. What kind of a lesson does this teach other boys growing up? That it’s technically a crime to commit rape or sexual assault but you probably won’t be appropriately punished for it? That it’s not a big deal, just make sure you play a sport so people are more sympathetic towards you and your future?
This does nothing to further prevent these behaviors and violations from happening again. Instead, it dismisses rape as a drunken and juvenile mistake rather than a serious criminal offense. Throwing a rock through someone’s window is a stupid mistake; rape is a crime. A rapist or sexual assault offender should not be allowed to walk free because he might have good potential career-wise or simply because his athleticism brings in more money to his university. In other words, the punishment should definitely fit the crime. If there are people serving long sentences for possession of marijuana, a drug that is medically legal in over half the country and recreationally legal in a few states already, someone who is convicted of rape should definitely have a longer sentence.