That Shitty Rapist, Leftist Bloodlust, and a Failure of Imagination

By now you're likely aware of the case of Brock Turner, the asshole who raped an unconscious woman and blamed it on drinking and hookup culture and who received an incredibly slight punishment, largely because he's a rich white kid who's good at swimming. You're probably also aware of the ludicrous defenses offered on his behalf, such as this one from his father claiming he shouldn't be punished for "20 minutes of action" (as if the length of time it takes to commit a crime is a central concern) or this one from his childhood friend/member of a super shitty band claiming he's only being punished because of "pc culture" (as if stultifying liberal discourse is what caused him to rape someone). His statement, his father's statement, and his friend's statement are all...well, "infuriating" barely begins to cover it. Blood boiling? The purest possible distillation of rape culture? The stupidest things said in a long time? It's hard to accurately convey in words.

But what's got me most interested in following the fallout from this case and his incredibly lenient sentence is the reaction of progressive folks to this news, specifically two central arguments I keep seeing come up: 1) that his mugshot should be plastered everywhere, and 2) that his punishment should be significantly harsher.

In context, both of these arguments are very easy to understand -- there's obviously extreme amounts of rich white kid privilege playing into the fact that the photo used with nearly every story on the case for the first several days after the trial was of the perpetrator smiling broadly in a suit and tie instead of the much more traditional mug shot which usually accompanies such stories. And he very much did receive a sentence that is incredibly lenient for this kind of crime, especially one which had multiple witnesses; while I haven't read the actual sentencing decision, as I understand it he's sentenced to 6 months in county, with the likelihood of release at 3 on good behavior. That is pretty light for being convicted of three felonies. So the complaints, at least to me, seem to be pretty rightly justified.

But taken out of this specific context, you have a bunch of leftists calling for promoting and distributing the mugshot of someone, calling for a significantly harsher prison sentence for someone, and calling for using social media to brand a person as a criminal for life, to make sure this person is never able to go anywhere or do anything without everyone knowing of his criminal past. Heck, here's one fairly representative example which literally brands itself as calling for pitchforks.

This is a bit incongruous, as these are not usually things lefties call for. 

In fact, they are typically things lefties strongly oppose, and for good reason. For instance, here's a great piece written by my smart friend Sarah on the significant problems with mugshots floating around social media. I could link to about a billion pieces about how harsher punishments don't do much of anything to deter future crime, but I'm lazy and the point is pretty much self-explanatory to anyone who has watched our nation's "get tough on crime!" obsession for the past 50 or 60 years have basically no effect on crime rates in either direction (turns out the factors which lead to crime are a wee bit more complicated than such approaches imply).

The reaction to this story reminds me quite a bit of the reaction of much of the left to those assholes who took over a bird-watching sanctuary out in Oregon; leftists are usually pretty big fans of people who try to challenge state power through collective action, resisting police intrusions into their social movements, and attempting to replace hierarchical government with a more collectivist orientation. And yet here we had so many on the left asking on a daily basis why the cops were being cautious with them and attempting to negotiate rather than just shooting them all like the dogs they are. Again, if you didn't pay attention the the specifics of the case, these folks (and I'm just as guilty of it as anyone else) sounded much more like law-and-order conservatives in the 1950s than progressive radicals in the 21st century.

While pondering why this is, I remembered this little bit from my prelim exams way back in the day. Since no one other than my PhD committee ever read it (and to be frank, I'm not entirely certain they gave it much of a read, either), I figured this is a good excuse to expose my hard work for the world to see. Here's a little bit where I'm talking about the work of prominent criminology scholars Jonathan Simon and Marie Gottschalk:

Simon (2007) argues that much of this is due to the fact that since the early 1960s crime has become the model problem through which other problems are defined and acted upon. This “governing through crime” means that not only is crime a dominant strategic issue for multiple actors and institutions (as well as a fail-safe electoral strategy), but that the metaphor of crime prevention can be extended to a number of non-criminal problems as a clear moral narrative. Given the righteous anger provoked by the category criminal, the crime metaphor serves as a powerful archetype for drawing stark moral divisions in a number of contentious cultural battles.           Gottschalk (2006) extends this concept historically as well as broadening the view of what caused this shift to the carceral state. She argues that unlike other great shifts in the governing philosophy of the United States, such as the New Deal or the Great Society plans, the carceral state was never presented as a set of policies up for public debate, but rather was a “largely invisible feature of American political development” (19) that came about in unplanned spurts and starts. Although she identifies the carceral state as a top-down elite-led process, she notes that while the public hasn’t necessarily always supported tough-on-crime measures, rhetoric of supporting victims by punishing criminals has found favor with not only conservatives but also women’s groups seeking the recognition and punishment of domestic abuse, LGBT groups supporting the advent of hate crime laws, and other progressive social movements.

It's that last bit that sticks out to me when thinking about this case and others like it that makes me feel like ultimately the problem is a lack of imagination; that is, we don't really have any other way to conceive of how to deal with the Oregon militia idiots or that asshole rapist other than the state coming down on them with full force and administering brutally-harsh punishment.

Because really, the way the Oregon people were treated (cautious discussions with the police rather than police coming in guns a-blazing, ask-questions-later style) and the way the asshole rapist is being treated (thinking about what purpose a harsh punishment really serves, and bearing in mind the ramifications punishment itself has) are much more in line with how I wish all criminal suspects and those convicted of crimes were dealt with. Obviously much of the outrage is that such considerate action only happens when the accused/convicted are privileged white guys, but again, stripped of the exact particulars, isn't this how most progressives and radicals want criminal cases to be handled?

And this is why I pin what appears to be a fairly contradictory reaction from the left on a lack of imagination -- all Americans of all political orientations have become so conditioned to see a harsh state response as the only meaningful reaction to crime that even those of us who oppose such harsh penal measures can't seem to come up with any other way to deal with this stuff. As such, we end up with the bizarre spectacle of radical leftists demanding to know why the state is not locking someone up and throwing away the key.

This is the sort of perniciousness Gottschalk and Simon identify in the carceral state -- even those of us who strongly oppose it are quite easily sucked into its regressive viewpoint of harsh, reactionary punishments when we feel so deeply offended by someone's behavior, as we do with this asshole rapist. But if we truly want to dismantle mass incarceration and the many problems which go along with it, we can't keep pointing to it as the solution to our problems when it suits us. Much easier said than done, yes, but a move away from mass incarceration will never happen as long as its harshest critics are willing to ditch their insightful criticisms when it suits them...