[The rest of SM's comment was lost; I have no idea what happened. Sorry, Sailorman - maybe you could repost it? --Amp]

The length of the sentence should be linked to the severity of the crime and the danger the criminal poses to the public upon release.

If it was a year sentence and had a 90% conviction rate, many women would not balk at accusing somene they merely hated, someone who cheated on them, or to get out of some sort of shame when caught.

If it was execution, many of those same false accusers wouldn’t have the heart to do it.

Another issue that impacts rape trials is that most if not all people who have been rape victims or know someone very well who was a rape victim will not be selected to sit on the jury of a rape trial.

Seriously? I guess I shouldn’t be all that surprised, but I kinda doubt they require that jurists have never been the victims of theft in a robbery trial, etc. It makes me wonder where they draw the line in terms of how different crimes are treated and if anyone has ever bothered to apply probablity to the equation. As in: this percentage of people will be victims of this kind of crime in their lifetime, so statisticly we’ll have (blank) out of (blank) potential jurorists who have been victims of this type of crime, so, for practical reasons, we will not allow challenges/only allow certain challenges/allow all challenges based on the potential juror having been a victim of this crime. But then, I from what I hear, the jury selection process is all screwy anyway.

One more thought: do they require potential jurists to answer the rape question in the courtroom, under oath, in front of other people? Or is part of a questionaire? ‘Cause the first would be seriously messed up.

the conservative call for harsher punishments is a typical version of their illusion that merely having fair laws is enough for to create social justice. when my (one) very conservative friend suggested that affirmative action would be unnecessary if there were simply laws against discrimination, he thought that a minority victim of discrimination could simply bring charges, as if the criminal justice system is fair to minorities. Black people have been given no reason to trust the courts as a practical solution to everyday racism (even conservatives probably agree with that, to some extent). and thus it should be no surprise that women can’t trust the courts as a practical solution to sexism, including its most extreme and violent forms.

That is, if you are a inclined to rape and see a system that has severe penalties for rape which aren’t applied evenly, or all that often, and you feel that you hae a good chance of getting away with it even if you’re caught, you are more likely to rape. If, OTOH, you have a system where you are extremely highly likely to be punished you are less likely even if the punishment is not potentially as severe. (This also tends to create a system where rape is more likely to be found out than in a system where the victim often suffers more shame than rage.)