My list represents a set of perfectly true facts. If anger is an engine, the risk is always that even with good intentions it will power bad outcomes-especially when that anger feels justified by facts. We know what lies down that road because we’ve tried it: Stricter sentencing guidelines, for instance, always hit minorities and disadvantaged people first and hardest. They tend asymptotically toward specific arguments, and the implication of mine gave me pause. The trouble with the anger that a thread like mine provokes-which is ostensibly just pointing out the ways we fail to punish rape-is that it twists all too easily into a call for more punishment. It’s a list that leaves most people who read it terribly angry, including me. You tack one story like this onto the other, you thread them, and suddenly you have a string of anecdotes that, without much system or method, seems to describe an America disinclined to punish sexual assault. Then you read about the high school girl who reported her rape immediately, to no avail-police never even spoke to the alleged attackers. Then you read about the Texas doctor who went free after assaulting a patient while she was sedated. Twitter makes it easy: You stumble across a case where a man in Anchorage, Alaska, spent no time behind bars for strangling to unconsciousness a woman he masturbated on. I started compiling a list of sexual assailants who got no prison time almost by accident. Trump Didn’t Only Get Bad Legal News With the Looming Indictment. Why Some of Black Chicago’s Leaders Are Endorsing the White, Tough-on-Crime Guy for Mayor Trump, Taking Aim at DeSantis, Denounces Florida as Crime-Ridden Backwater Dump
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