Kevin Bollaert is one of these sleazy, cowardly types who saw a market in getting other sleazy, cowardly types to send in naked pictures of their ex-girlfriends, and then he made money both in running the porn site and in demanding that his victims pay him money to remove the pictures. It’s a brilliant racket if you’ve got no sense of decency at all. He was convicted of the crimes, and has now been sentenced: 18 years in jail.
Kevin Christopher Bollaert, a Web developer, posted the pictures and then charged women from $300 to $350 to have the pictures removed. He was convicted in February of multiple felony counts of identity theft and extortion.
Bollaert was ordered to pay $15,000 in restitution to his victims and a $10,000 fine. Bollaert will be allowed to serve the sentence in a county jail rather than state prison under the judge’s ruling.
He should have looked at the image of Justice: she’s a she. She also doesn’t believe in revenge.
I guess he didn’t manage to get rich enough to avoid prosecution, or too big to fail. (crocoduck tears)
18 years seems to me like revenge. I can’t imagine any other motive to keep a person incarcerated for that long, unless releasing him/her would mean a fair likelihood of that person repeating a major crime. And I’m not saying that what he did was not horribly wrong, but 18 years is a penalty motivated by revenge in my opinion.
But…they were only women! Besides, if they allowed their picture to be taken naked, what did they expect? (snark)
OlliP – what part of “convicted of multiple felony counts of identity theft and extortion” doesn’t make sense to you?
All jail time is a penalty – he had multiple penalties that all racked up together to equal 18 years.
His error was extorting money to take down the pictures. If he’d just left them up, and not gone into blackmail, he most likely would have gone scot free. There’s nothing like money to get the judicial gears grinding. People, not so much.
Are we sure it was 18 years and not 18 months? What makes wonder is that he will doing his time in the county jail rather than the state pen. County jails mostly hold those doing shorter sentences and aren’t equipped or staffed to house long term residents.
OlliP @ 2: I think his actions fall under the umbrella of “criminal activity” and outlawing those actions is the correct course of action. I support evidence-based methods of addressing such, with the goal of deterrence and rehabilitation, and 18 years behind bars might not be a good way of accomplishing that goal … but somehow I don’t think that’s your objection.
Bollaert was convicted of 21 counts of identity theft and six counts of exertion. He could have gotten up to 20 years. He will be eligible for parole.
He did not plead guilty. He went to trial with the defense that what he did was sleazy but not, you know, illegal.
Let’s keep in mind that in addition to posting pictures of women submitted by their exes as revenge, Bollaert posted identifying details of these women, and then charged them hundreds of dollars to take it down.
People complaining about how mean his sentence is need to stop playing games and just admit that either they don’t think what he did was that big a deal, or they have no idea what they’re talking about. There is zero reason for any decent human being to hand-wring over his sentence.
tomcoward @6
The Daily Heil and The Grauniad both say Bollaert got 18 years.
OlliP:
You don’t seem to understand the depth of what he did. From the LA Times article (linked in the OP):
This went well beyond posting photos. These women were basically hung out in front of a whole lot of sleazy assholes, now in a position to be stalked in a variety of ways.
The justice and prison system is screwed up, no doubt. But this is not the guy you want as your example.
Not really. He was convicted of 21 counts of identity theft and six counts of extortion. That works out to only 8 months per crime he was convicted of. 8 months for extortion seems pretty light to me.
Prison sentences in the US are very long compared to much of the rest of the world*. So 18 years seems normal to USians, and really incredibly harsh to many Europeans and Latin Americans.
* Except, as Marcus@1 pointed out, if you’re rich.
@numerobis, pretty sure that extortion is not one of those crimes that only wacky Americans get worked up about and Europeans have long handled with more civilized methods, like rehabilitation.
Revenge porn doesn’t pay
It kinda does, since there are plenty more sites like this turning a profit with no arrest. The problem is, too much awful shit plays plenty.
The number of victims of Kevin Bollaert was in the hundreds or thousands. It’s fortunate that no one actually was driven to suicide, assuming anyone wasn’t. With that many victims, I doubt if anyone knows how much damage he did.
According to Huffpo, the 18 years will be in state prison, which makes more sense than a county jail.
I would be more sympathetic if he plead guilty.
@ tomcoward, 6:
This is no longer true. Under California’s Realignment Plan, some non-violent offenses make a person “eligible” (really bad turn of phrase, but not enough coffee yet) for incarceration in county jails instead of the state prisons. Generally part of the larger plan to reduce prison overpopulation and recidivism, with the idea being that county jails — generally less brutal environments, though not always — are better places for the rehabilitation of people who aren’t physically violent.
Another interpretation is that California was facing bad PR and sanctions for failing to comply with federal rulings on overcrowding, so the solution was to throw a bunch of prisoners at the counties (who are not at this point subject to federal court orders) without adequate funding, thus able to claim prison population reduction and financial savings. This cynical viewpoint brought to you via my partner, who does a lot of civil rights/prison work.
In a few months he will protest against the lack of facilities in the county jail and he will be paroled.
Yeah, but he only victimized WOMEN…
If some of the readers were to more carefully examine the sentence time vs time actually spent in prison/jail for non-violent offences you will discover the ratio is most often well under 1.0. In other words, an 18 year sentence can easily turn into 8 or even fewer actual years of confinement, etc. Offences involving violence can even result in a ratio of under 0.5. Here are just a few examples:
http://www.greghillassociates.com/lawyer-attorney-1944051.html
http://www.iapsonline.com/sites/default/files/Prison%20Sentences%20and%20Time%20Served%20for%20Violence_0.PDF
http://minnesota.cbslocal.com/2014/04/21/good-question-how-much-of-a-prison-sentence-is-served-behind-bars/
I would have no tears for Bollaert even if he had been sentenced to 40 years. Some of his victims ended up homeless after pleading with him to remove their private information. Remember, he not only posted their photos, but also their addresses, phone numbers, where they worked, and anything else he could get to make their lives a living hell.
OlliP #2:
That;s how I feel about most prison sentences. I see very little real effort to rehabilitate and educate, and certainly nothing of the much-vaunted ‘deterrent’ effect, in any country’s prison-justice system. However, since the system we have is the system we have, eighteen years seems, to me, ‘reasonable’ if not lenient, by the existing terms of that system as it stands, when compared to the harm he’s caused.
Of course, if you want to make a constructive comment about prison reform and punishment versus rehabilitation, go right ahead. Why do I not think that’s what you have in mind, though?
some narr @ 7
I should clarify that I don’t have any sound reason for thinking it isn’t, but I am open to arguments that it isn’t.
Also I would like a world in which women aren’t shamed for being sexual or having bodies, and “revenge porn” loses its power — but doxxing people who don’t give you money will always have power, and will be wrong as long as private information exists or is considered to be something that should exist.
Daz @ 22: Agreed on all counts
Um, I don’t like the implication that the second poster is probably just a secret misogynist. I think this guy is the very definition of the word scum, and I think he absolutely deserves to go to jail for a long time, but I have a hard time thinking of *any* short of premeditated murder that deserves an 18 year prison sentence. I get that it’s fun to watch a creep and a misogynist be punished, largely because so many get away with it, but I agree that this is a wildly disproportionate sentance, and fuck the people making snide insinuations that I must feel that way because I’m secretly a self-hating woman.
I think part of the problem is that sentences in the US for major crimes are so high that we get a screwed up idea of what is ‘normal’ or ‘proportional.’ I mean, going into jail when you’re 22 and coming out when you’re 40… that’s an appropriate penalty for murder.
As a person involved in the porn business, my opinion is this: This guy could have gotten twice as long a sentence and I wouldn’t care one bit.
Bodily autonomy and privacy is the birthright of all women and men, or at least should be in the civilized world. Murder, rape and “revenge porn” are all crimes against that fundamental right, and should be punished with as much force as we will allow our judicial systems. Especially if it’s clearly such a premeditated and willfully wicked act as this one.
What I want to achieve with my work, the celebration of human beauty and lust in a way that leaves both producer and consumer happy, is diametrically opposed to everything misogynistic creeps like this asshole does and stands for. Clearly understanding and specificating the personal boundaries of everyone involved is alpha and omega for me and everyone I work with.
As long as “pornography” is associated with scum, it will attract scum and scare away decent people. There are so many wonderful people involved in this industry who are being ostracised due to the idea that everything you see on the Internet with the word “porn” in it is part of the same fucked-up family of exploitation and abuse. The phenomenon “revenge porn” is not helping things, at all.
So yeah. The world can do without shitstains. If we remove enough of them from civilization, maybe more women could actually feel safe in their own bodies, maybe more women could feel secure exploring their sexuality. And if that’s rough on the shitstains, well boo-fucking-hoo.
amblingon @ 24:
You seem to have done a lot of selective reading of the comments. What this man did went way beyond posting photos and extorting money. His sentence allows for less than a year served for each victim count. As for the implication of misogyny? Well, it’s pretty common, you know, and it’s not at all unusual for unconscious bias to seep into thoughts. We’re all swimming in a sea of sexism, and it takes work to be aware of one’s bayesian priors.
amblingon #24:
How about attempted murder? There was at least one attempted suicide, as a direct result of the crime he committed. In my eyes, that’s a totally foreseeable consequence of his decision to break the law in the way that he did. But frankly, even minus that, how many lives does a person have to ruin, or risk ruining, before we put their actions on a par with murder? Wherever that line is, I’d suggest in this case it was definitely crossed.
As to the ‘penalty,’ therein lies the major problem with the system we have and the function (that of ‘punishment’ or the exactment of a ‘penalty’) which it is seen and too-often portrayed as having in most places (not just the US). The question should be about (1) whether people are being adequately protected from a person who is dangerous to their well-being (They are: at least for the duration of his incarceration) and (2) is any effort being made to make sure that on his release—whether he’s in for 18 months or 18 years—he will no longer pose a danger (rehabilitation, in other words).
The second part is where we fail. And we do so because we see incarceration as primarily a punishment (‘they get what they deserve’), not as a method of rehabilitation. Eighteen years would indeed be too long, if we could be sure that he had been rehabilitated (was no longer a danger to others) after a shorter time; but if he is released in eighteen years whilst still a very real and obvious danger to others, merely because he’s been ‘punished enough,’ then the state will have failed in its duty to protect its citizens.
18 years seems to me like revenge.
Given the appalling damage done to his victims’ lives (effectively more than 18 years lost to many of those women), I’d say 18 years is too lenient for this hateful little sleazeball.
And no, rehabilitation should NOT be an option here. This was not a crime resulting from immaturity or a mental-health problem, like drug-addiction or spousal abuse — this was a calculated business decision by a fully-responsible adult. He knew full well what he was doing the whole time, and what the likely consequences would have been. His practice of extorting money from his victims are, in themselves, proof of his understanding of the consequences of his actions.
So 18 years seems normal to USians, and really incredibly harsh to many Europeans and Latin Americans.
In this particular case, fuck the Europeans and Latin Americans — especially if they’re the same people who pompously look down their noses at us brutish Americans who still want to punish Roman Polanski for drugging, raping and sodomizing a teenage girl.
As a European (Hey, I’m two things! Minimum!), I fully agree with Raging Bee.
This is a matter of deterrence, not rehabilitation. This is a matter of scaring the creeps who are capable of doing something like this. This is a matter of putting a big fat threat in the “risk” column of their risk/reward calculation. Wanting to take away that threat is the same as wanting to take away power from the women who are the victims of this crime, now and in the future.
You can’t cure misogyny, anyway. This person isn’t sick, or immature, or mentally deficient. He’s just an asshole. If he had been a scared asshole rather than an asshole who felt safe doing this, both he and the women he victimized could have lived out their lives in peace. So really, assholes all over California should celebrate this sentence. An asshole who’s scared of ending up in jail is an asshole less likely to go to jail. Every asshole wins. Except this asshole. But fuck this asshole.
I’m always in favor of rehabilitation, when it’s possible. It should be the first priority of the penal system, though by no means the only one (deterrence second, protecting society third). I am extremely reluctant to write someone off as definitively beyond the reach of rehabilitation.
That said, I wonder if the people who are complaining about the harshness of the 18-year sentence are overlooking that this guy did this to a large number of people; he was convicted of more than 20 counts, which is by no means all of the people he did this to.
(And I’m fairly sure at least part of the thought process of at least some of the doubters is )
Pink @30: I totally agree. It’s hard enough to even identify people who do this sort of thing on the Internet, let alone lock them up; so every such perp we do manage to convict should get the harshest sentence available, just to show others like them that, no, the Internet is not as safe a place to commit crimes and destroy people’s lives as they’d originally thought it was.
These are not psychopaths or socially disadvantaged people acting on bad information or broken thought-processes; they are people who have shown themselves perfectly capable of doing business on the Internet and understanding and managing the consequences of their actions. These are the kind of people who can think rationally about their actions, and who can therefore be deterred by the real prospect of punishment.
Hershele Ostropoler #31:
Agreed. I’d go one further: I think for particularly heinous crimes (though where I’d draw that line isn’t, I admit, fully worked out), sentences should be that the person should be incarcerated for such-and-such number of years at a minimum*, with a need to show the person to be no longer a danger to society before they can be released thereafter.
(Which, under any present system I know of, is pie in the sky at present. It’s too open to abuse for starters, and there would need to be genuine efforts made to rehabilitate.)
*I just typed minimumimum. Can I vote such mistakes be called ‘Oggisms’?
I’m glad to see he actually got a punishment with some teeth to it. His fellow asshole in revenge porn exploitation (Hunter Moore) got off quite lightly in comparison.
@ Raging Bee:
Could you please clarify how spousal abuse is potentially related to mental health problems? This might be misreading on my part (i.e. intended attribution to immaturity, where of course rehabilitation is appropriate). However, while spousal abuse may be correlated with mental health problems, mental health problems do not cause spousal abuse.
Again, please clarify.
Although there may be a moral point to be made by counting up the sentence as time per victim, it doesn’t really wash as a legal point. AFIK, in all but the most exceptional circumstances sentences for multiple offences tend to run “concurrently”.
@Dr Marcus Hill Ph.D. (arguing from his own authority) #36:
I think that depends on what you mean by “most exceptional”. Accoring to the California Rules of Court, Rule 4.425, consecutive sentences can be imposed if:
In addition,
PatrickG: I was attributing spousal abuse to immaturity, bad or no role models, or other fucked-up circumstances that might suggest a program of rehabilitation would help the perpetrator to make better choices in the future. Sorry for any confusion.
Raging Bee #28
While I’m two minds about the sentence (it’s certainly true that standards of sentencing are wildly different in the US to what they are in Europe, and that this difference would obviously skew the perspective of members of the two different cultures), I do disagree with this statement. His actions came about as a result of his attitude towards women which has been ingrained in him by his upbringing and cultural surroundings. That attitude can be changed, which is a much better method of ensuring he doesn’t commit the same or other, similar crimes rooted in the same attitude upon release. Rehabilitation is always better for society as a whole.
Demands for greater sentences are always rooted in revenge; the idea that someone ought to be punished for their actions. I’m not saying he doesn’t deserve to be punished; I can think of few crimes more deserving. But that’s not going to help any of his victims, and it is therefore surely more sensible to focus on ensuring that he does not victimize anyone else. It is also perfectly possible to rehabilitate and punish at the same time, which is the way any decent prison system should work, for any crime. Lock him up; that’s the punishment. Just work on changing his attitude while he’s in there.
@Thumper: Who Presents Boxes Which Are Not Opened #39:
What is up with all the mollycoddling of misogynist criminals around here? Why are you so desperate to find an explanation for his behavior that isn’t the rather simple “he’s an asshole who made the choice to victimize women and thus he now faces the consequences of that choice”? You can’t just wave a magic rehabilitation-wand in his general direction and uncover the nice guy underneath. That’s not how it works.
I hate to sound like a broken record, but haven’t you ever heard of a little thing called “deterrence”?
Pink Jenkin@40,
haven’t you ever heard of a little thing called “deterrence”?
Do you have any evidence that it works?
@Nick Gotts #41:
Of course deterrence fucking works. This isn’t exactly a crime of passion we’re talking about here, or a crime committed under the influence of mind-altering drugs. It’s goddamn extortion. It’s en economic crime. Why on Earth wouldn’t deterrence work?
Or is this one of those things were you signal rationality and skepticism by needlessly questioning the obvious, making other people waste time on Google to find a dozen studies proving that water is wet? Sorry, but I actually have a day job.
But what exactly is the point here, anyway? Why are you so intent on looking out for the interests of criminal misogynists by taking away women’s power to deter their own victimization using the threat of punishment? Can you really not see the difference in power between a woman saying “Take down that shit, please.” and a woman saying “Take down that shit, or I’ll make sure you spent the next decade in prison.”? What’s your angle here?
And that’s just proven re-offences.
[Source]
We have to keep in mind that there’s a vast difference between “crime” in general and the kinds of economic crimes that require forethought and tenacity and which presents plenty of opportunities to quit spread out over long periods of time. This guy doesn’t (as far as we know) suffer from bad impulse control, substance dependency, anger management issues or all the other problems that can lead to incarceration for people who wouldn’t do the kinds of things he did.
This asshole did what he did because he thought he would get away with it. The state has given his victims and potential victims the power to make sure he and his fellow misogynists have a harder time getting away with it. What exactly is the problem here?
Pink Jenkin #44:
And, going by the figures on re-offenders, there’s a damn good chance that when he comes out, he will still think he will be able to get away with it, and no effort will have been made to teach him why he shouldn’t do it.
The problem would be that the system presently in use does not appear to work. It doesn’t protect potential victims to any great degree.
So that’s a “No, I don’t have any evidence”, then. The rest of your post is simply distraction from that fact. My “angle” is that if you are going to use “deterrence” as a justification for imprisonment (there are others – notably rehabilitation, making the victim(s) feel better, and prevention – simply keeping the criminal from committing any crime that requires not being in prison), you should have some evidence that deterrence actually works – and works for the kind of crime under consideration.
@Daz: Keeper of the Hairy-Eared Dwarf Lemur of Atheism #45:
Are you just going to ignore what I wrote about the “vast difference between ‘crime’ in general and the kinds of economic crimes that require forethought and tenacity and which presents plenty of opportunities to quit spread out over long periods of time”?
I will ask you the same question I asked Nick Gotts: Can you really not see the difference in power between a woman saying “Take down that shit, please.” and a woman saying “Take down that shit, or I’ll make sure you spent the next decade in prison.”?
I’m somewhat wary of men attempting to take away power from women, especially when it comes to these issues.
Pink Jenkin@47,
The scumbag in this case would have known perfectly well that what he was doing was criminal, and that he could be jailed for it. This evidently did not deter him. He thought he could get away with it because he thought he had enough of a hold on his victims that they would not report him.
On another point, I’m by no means sure the sentence is excessive, simply to keep this vile individual out of circulation for a long time. If it were shown that deterrence is not effective in such cases, would you then favour a shorter sentence? Because if so, you do need evidence that it is; and if not, your mention of deterrence was irrelevant.
Pink Jenkin #47:
Of course I can. But did you notice where it was pointed out that the system of throwing people into prison doesn’t, as it presently stands, appear to deter people from doing the same things when they get out?
I’m wary of continuing to use a system which does not work, and thus does nothing to protect potential future victims. I also fail to see how using such a system is in any way empowering in anything but the short term.
And, as regards that short term, you might note that I am not advocating that criminals shouldn’t be imprisoned; just for better and more effective use of the prison system. Who, exactly, do you see me as dis-empowering?
@Daz: Nick Gotts #46:
When someone questions well-known facts, you kind of have to wonder if their angle is something else rather than “just asking questions”. When it comes down to protecting misogynists by taking away power from women … yeah.
But hey, sure, I can use Google. Here. And here. Now wasn’t that exciting.
Of course, that’s not even considering the difference between profit-motivated crimes committed during long periods of time and crimes arising from poor impulse control, etcetera. Which any Psychology 101 student can tell you makes a huge difference. I’m sure wasting more time on Google would turn up more studies that would somehow fail to reach your skepticism threshold.
@Daz: Nick Gotts #48:
Have you even read the article?
This is also the first high-profile case with such a long sentence that I know of, at least in California.
Of course I don’t think deterrence is the only reason for incarceration. It’s just a reason many people seem to forget in their eagerness to protect criminal misogynists.
@Daz: Keeper of the Hairy-Eared Dwarf Lemur of Atheism #49:
First of all, yes it totally does. See links in previous post. I’m not even a fan of harsher sentences in general, but you can’t deny reality just because it conflicts with your ideology.
Second of all, deterrence is not only for past offenders. It’s also for potential offenders. It’s impossible to know how many women will avoid becoming the victims of this crime due to assholes reading about this sentence and remembering it whenever they feel the urge to do something similar.
For the third time, I will ask: Can you really not see the difference in power between a woman saying “Take down that shit, please.” and a woman saying “Take down that shit, or I’ll make sure you spent the next decade in prison.”?
Ugh, simple html is beyond me when I’m in a hurry. Sorry about that.
Oh for fuck’s sake:
From your first link, so much for that evidence.
Did you even read what you found?
As for the second, the situation studied was very specific and unusual. Assuming that the behaviour of prisoners who’ve been granted an unexpected clemency will be the same as those who’ve served their whole sentence is unwarranted without further study. It’s interesting but hardly definitive proof.
First off this:
Pink Jenkin #50:
Neither Nick nor myself has argued that people should not be imprisoned for such crimes. We are not, therefore, trying to take away anyone’s power to have people who have preyed upon them imprisoned.
Pink Jenkin #51:
You pointed to studies. I pointed to actual figures which show that roughly 50% of people released from prison are proven to re-offend.
And again: we are not trying to stop people being sent to prison for such crimes. In fact, if you’ve read the thread, you will have seen that my advocacy for rehabilitation-focused imprisonment includes a statement that those who have committed particularly heinous crimes, and who cannot be rehabilitated, should not be released. Not because I want extra-long punishments or revenge, but because if that’s the only way for society to be protected, I see it as a regrettable necessity. But it does depend on the existence honest and thorough attempts to rehabilitate. (see below)
I don’t even understand what purpose this question serves, since neither I nor Nick are proposing that any victim should have this power taken away from them.
When you’re done arguing with that straw-Daz you’re busy hacking away at, here’s my position:
(i) Lock them up. This stops them committing any further crime in the short term.
(ii) Do your best to teach them that, if they didn’t already know it, what they did was wrong, and why it was wrong. If they already know that, then they need to be taught not to place their own desires ahead of avoidance of wrong-doing. In crimes of misogyny and such, they need to be taught not to see women (or whatever group) in the way that they do.
None of this means they ‘get off easy,’ or are given a ‘soft ride,’ or whatever it is you seem to see it as. It is in addition to any deterrence effect, no matter whether that be as weak as I see it or as strong as you see it. It improves the chances that they won’t re-offend.
I fail to see how any of that is taking power away from victims of any kind of abuse or other crime. I see it as adding further protection to potential future victims.
In the name of full disclosure (and in the name of taking up even more space for no reason), I’ll say that I think that calls for “harsher punishments” are stupid and unscientific in the majority of cases.
However, I simply don’t understand the motivation for people to become all bleeding heart about a case like this: A crime which hasn’t been widely acknowledged before, which has a clear profit-oriented foundation and which took place during a long period of time. It’s like a goddamn textbook example of a case where throwing the book at the offender actually works.
In addition, I’ve seen too much of women being disempowered when it comes to control of their own sexualities and bodies to buy a clearly disempowering line of reasoning. Women having the ability to wield the threat of punishment is not something that should be thrown aside just because it’s in conflict with your ideology.
@53:
I have yet to see any evidence that deterrence doesn’t work. Of course the studies I linked to failed to pass your arbitrary skepticism threshold, that’s not exactly a surprise.
@54:
@54:
What the fuck are you on about now? You’re the one who has spent all this time denying the very existence of a deterrence effect, and now you say that it’s in “addition” to any deterrence effect? Make up your fucking mind.
@54:
Do you have any evidence that you can actually teach misogynistic assholes to not be misogynistic assholes?
@ Pink Jenkin
Remove the word “misogynist” and you have your stereotypical right-wing talking-point. Nick Gotts and Daz have already done a good job of pointing out the illogic of this statement.
#47
A fair concern, however I never argued that people shouldn’t be locked up for committing crimes, and I didn’t see Nick or Daz arguing that either. I’m not sure if you didn’t notice this or are willfully misinterpreting it, but:
Me #39
My contention is merely that simply locking someone up with no attempt to rehabilitate them is a shortsighted, fairly pointless, kneejerk reaction which is proven not to work. If you care about preventing this same crime being committed again, rather than just punishing someone for committing it this time, then you ought to be in favour of rehabilitation.
@59:
I am arguing that:
a) There is such a thing as a deterrence effect.
b) You can’t cure profit-motivated misogyny.
What part do you disagree with?
Pink Jenkin #56:
And what the fuck does that even prove? Yeah, recidivism is high. No shit. Are you saying that the recidivism would be lower if the sentences were lower? Where exactly is your evidence that deterrence has no effect whatsoever?
Where have I argued for lower sentences?
Pink Jenkin #57:
Really? If I’ve given such an impression, I can only assume it to be my own bad wording; for which I apologise. I simply see the deterrence effect as being very small. If 50% are re-offending, and taking into account that some offences would be one-offs anyway, and the person would not have re-offended even if not caught, then those not deterred by their experience of prison would seem to be by far in the majority.
Pink Jenkin #58:
Do you have any evidence that at least some cannot be? Because this looks to me very much like a ‘there’s nothing to lose by trying’ situation, since they will, in most cases, be released back into society at some point, rehabilitated or not.
To answer your question exactly as you phrased it, the latter. It is a simple fact that it is possible to change a learned behavior, and you have absolutely no evidence that misogyny should be any exception.
More broadly, figures show that the deterrence effect is nowhere near as strong as you claim it to be. Otherwise the UK should have a crime way above that of the US (we have much lower sentences here).
Beyond simply asserting that it exists, I haven’t seen you actually prove either of your points.
BTDubz, reoffending rate in the uk is closer to 26%. More specifically, 26.1% for the 12 month period ending March 2013.
Pink Jenkin #60:
a) There is such a thing as a deterrence effect.
Answered above.
I don’t even know what such a thing is. He was motivated by profit, and his misogyny allowed him to see the abuse of women as a reasonable means to attain profit. Those are two different things. His act was misogynistic, but one cannot ‘cure’ an act.
Can misogyny be cured? Yes. (Is it common for it to be cured, or is it possible to make such a cure possible? I don’t know, but I surely see no harm in trying; it can’t make things worse, and may well make things better.)
Can people be taught that their desire for a profit is not more important than avoidance of harm to others? Yes.
Does it hurt anyone to try to cure these things? No.
Thumper: Who Presents Boxes Which Are Not Opened #63:
That’s including those only cautioned, as well as those imprisoned.
@Pink Jenkin, #58:
Parenting.
You ever been a parent, Pink Jenkin? Kids learn and unlearn all kinds of behaviors, including misogynistic ones. Even the ones which become deep and problematic patterns can be and often are parented away. There is nothing magical between adolescence and adulthood that renders such learning no longer possible.
Also? People on this website who have said that they were misogynist before being exposed to the analysis and voices of PZ and the Horde. It’s happened before, it will happen again.
As for evidence that it will happen for this guy, or the likelihood it will or the length of time that will take? Nope. Don’t have that. But there’s quite a bit of evidence of abusive conditions in US prisons that makes one deeply suspicious of 18 year sentences.
Demands for greater sentences are always rooted in revenge; the idea that someone ought to be punished for their actions. I’m not saying he doesn’t deserve to be punished; I can think of few crimes more deserving. But that’s not going to help any of his victims…
If it takes an extortionist out of business, then yes, it WILL at least help other people who might have otherwise been victimized by him. And if it causes other extortionists to at least slow their operations down and take more precautions to avoid being caught (and thus losing the money they want), then that’ too, will be helpful to present-day and potential victims.
I have to join with others and ask why the fuck anyone would be opposed to any serious punishment of criminals like this guy. It’s not like there’s any doubt about his guilt, or about the harm done by his actions. We’re finally making real efforts to fight some very harmful acts of extortion and cyberbullying — why are some people so desperate to belittle such efforts? And what better alternative do y’all have? Do you have any figures to show that “rehabilitation” gets any better results?
You can’t cure profit-motivated misogyny.
If you take away the profit part, then you can stop the particular misogynistic actions that are most profitable — which is good in itself, since the profitable actions are harmful to others. That’s a start at least. Again, why would anyone have a problem with that?
And, going by the figures on re-offenders…
If said figures don’t distinguish between various specific crimes, then they are useless. Some crimes are more easily deterred than others, for a variety of logistical and motivational reasons.
Raging Bee
I meant victims as in existing victims. Any potential future victims will be far better served if we can change his shitty attitudes and stop him committing any kind of misogynistic crime again than they will by simply delaying him by 18 years rather than 10.
No one is. Pink Jenkin has merely consistently failed to read the posts directed at them. To quote myself at #39 again:
@Daz: Keeper of the Hairy-Eared Dwarf Lemur of Atheism #61:
Sorry, I must have confused you with Thumper. I apologize, I’m not nearly as careful a reader as I should be when I’m angry.
@Thumper: Who Presents Boxes Which Are Not Opened #62:
How strong have I claimed it to be, again? I have simply said that it exists. If your claim is that the effect is lower than I claim, you must logically believe that the deterrence effect doesn’t exist. Which is a pretty extraordinary claim. Any evidence to support that idea?
This whole shit started with you making the claim that “demands for greater sentences are always rooted in revenge”, completely disregarding not only the effect of deterrence but also the increased power women have gained to control their own sexualities and bodies from predatory misogynists thanks to this sentence. When a bunch of dudes show up in the comment thread to talk about how they are “of two minds about the sentence” and how any calls for greater sentences are based on “revenge”, how the fuck am I supposed to interpret it?
If he had gotten off with a slap on the wrist, and I had dared suggest that perhaps 18 years in prison would be a more fitting sentence, I would have been completely motivated by revenge, wouldn’t I? And if any of the victims questioned the lenient sentence, it would just be their stupid fucking desire for revenge speaking, rather than any rational thought, right?
When women get in the way of ideology, fuck the women.
Well, I never actually said it didn’t exist. So this is a rather pointless argument. But the data does show that longer sentences do not act as a deterrant, as proven by the c.50% reoffending rate in the US as compared to the 26% reoffending rate in the UK. So, knowing this, could you please explain what your motivation is for believing longer sentences are better? It wouldn’t perchance be a belief that he ought to be punished severely for his crimes?
I find interpretation is greatly aided by actually reading the comments you are attempting to interpret. I never once said that his sentence ought to be any shorter than it is.
You appear to have been angry pretty much since the get-go, then.
@70:
Stop moving the fucking goalposts. You said that the deterrence effect is not as strong as I claimed it was. How strong did I claim it was, and where’s your evidence that it isn’t that strong?
I haven’t said you said that. I pointed out your behavior. Why are you of two minds about this sentence? Why do you claim that all calls for greater sentences are based on revenge?
Why is this such an important fucking topic for you?
All those who think that “rehabilitation” should be the chief concern in cases like these: Do you have any concrete examples of what form this rehabilitation should take? And any evidence suggesting that such rehabilitation has actually had any kind of effect?
@ Thumper, #70:
No, you’re just passionately arguing that longer sentences are solely motivated by revenge, in a thread about a particular long sentence, and echoing OlliP #2, which was clearly an argument that the sentence was too long. It may not be your intent, but given that you’re saying basically the same things as they did, it’s not unreasonable to read you that way.
Certainly that reading seems particularly appropriate for your #70:
Emphasis mine. I acknowledge you’re positing a fully successful rehabilitative prison experience (*snort*), but sentencing kind of has to happen before that. Also, as pointed out above, if he truly modifies his behavior, parole is always an option.
@ Crip Dyke:
Obviously, parents have immense power in inculcating behavior. However, you need good parents for good behavior. Until you can show me that correctional officers have the training — not to mention the inclination! — to stamp out misogyny, I fail to see how your comment is anything but a huge non sequitur.
@PatrickG:
The assertion to which I responded was Pink Jenkin’s demand for an example of rejecting misogyny/unlearning misogynist behaviors – proof that that can happen.
Pink Jenkin did not make a request for evidence of the different claim, “Our penal system is currently competent to routinely cause those incarcerated to reject misogyny and unlearn their misogynist behaviors.”
I have provided proof that it CAN happen. If the conversation would like to flow in a fruitful direction, I can aid quite a bit in talking about what aspects of gendered systems of power currently common in US prisons would need to be dismantled before we could even begin to construct a prison system that rejects misogyny, much less a prison system that can provide a good likelihood that those released from it will reject misogyny.
In the meantime, if answering Pink Jenkin’s challenge is off topic then why didn’t you chastise Pink Jenkin for making the challenge?
@Crip Dyke, RRFFoD&HH:
It seems like there are two sides talking past each other here, one focused on abstractions and the general state of the prison system, while the other is specifically concerned with Kevin Bollaert and his sentence.
I would place Pink Jenkin’s posts in the latter camp, and that challenge was very clearly not “Is it possible at all for any human being who has ever existed?”. It was “Can you do it for this guy and those like him?” So yeah, I think the parents thing was a bit weird, given that the challenge was made after a discussion of adult recidivists. Your mileage may vary.
By the way, I think my post towards you came off a bit antagonistic. I’ve found Thumper’s insistence for only discussing the abstract to be a bit annoying (not to mention demeaning someone for their strong emotions around these issues — a peeve of mine), and I think that spilled out on you. Sorry.
@PatrickG;
Meh. It’s fine.
If what Pink Jenkin really meant was “show me that this one person is going to be successfully rehabilitated as a result of this particular sentence,” I don’t think Pink Jenkin’s phrasing makes sense.
(Reminder, it was this: “Do you have any evidence that you can actually teach misogynistic assholes to not be misogynistic assholes?” in a comment by itself – any context comes from entirely separate comments.)
Of course I could be wrong. But showing that “it’s possible” doesn’t show that it will happen for this one particular person. Thus I consider my interpretation more reasonable unless/until we get something from Pink Jenkin clarifying.
Also, I didn’t “become” a bleeding heart over this one jerk. I’ve written elsewhere, at length, on certain failures of the prison system, especially in regards to rape and to gender-based oppressions. Personally I find the prison system in the US quite appalling, and I don’t want anyone to spend a day in it.
This is not, of course, to say that I would never support incarceration upon criminal conviction, merely that the US system doesn’t meet what I consider the minimum standards of humanity for a prison system that is to perform such incarceration.
Once you get past that, as far as relative sentences go, I’m of the opinion that people who do damage to so many people that it’s hard to even identify a single victim in a flood of faces get off more lightly than they should compared to, say, someone who breaks into 2 houses a week apart.
I’m not willing to say that 18 years would be too long under any circumstances, but certainly compared to other urbanized democracies we imprison people longer for many similar offenses, and more attention should be paid to possibly reducing sentences in the US than raising them. On the other hand, the circumstances in which I think considering an increase is most frequently justified amount to circumstances like these. I’m not passing judgement on this one 18 year sentence, unlike others here.
I jumped in merely because Pink Jenkin in #58 was suggesting that change wasn’t possible, and that it needed to be demonstrated that “assholes” could ever be taught to be “nonassholes”.
I know that such changes happen. I’ve seen them happen.
If I thought Pink Jenkin’s #58 was going off on just this one person’s ability to be taught to change behavior, I wouldn’t have opened my keyboard’s mouth: it’s an area where none of us have anything productive or educated to say.
Thanks for the response, CripDyke. I’m definitely not suggesting you’re developed Bleeding Grinch syndrome (3x larger, dripping with blood)! As to failures of the prison system, I think we’re fully in agreement re: conditions, basic humanity, disparate sentencing, and the like. Of course, the only way to be sure….
.. would be to ask for links to those “elsewheres”. :) I like and appreciate your writing, but my weak google-fu is confused by your many comments here and elsewhere (not the right “elsewheres”), not to mention prison violence and rape involving the Crips. Seriously, my google-fu sucks.
Beyond that, I don’t want to comment further as the principals haven’t weighed in, and I’m wading further into potential mind-reading territory. :)
Pink Jenkin #72:
Here you go. [pdf link]
The main take-homes from that link:
•Yes it does work, though much work is still needed in order to tease out which methods are best and which are actually counter-productive.
• The current seeming-preference for the ‘anti-rehabilitation’ POV is largely a product of the socio-political climate of the 1970s, and was, to a large part, based on a paper whose conclusions—that the previously-followed pro-rehabilitation view was wrong—its own author later walked away from. The idea that criminals should be reformed is not some modern invention of ‘bleeding-heart liberals;’ it goes right back to the founding of the prison system itself.
As to the rehabilitation—or ‘curing,’ if you prefer—of misogyny, we know it can be done because we’ve seen it done right here on this blog. Hardly the best therapeutic environment, I’d think, yet even here we’ve had some small success. (Indeed, looking at the wider topic of all bigotries, there’s an example on the front-page, right now, of someone who has had such a radical change of heart.) But even if we ignore that; if people’s attitudes to women (or any other group subject to bigoted persecution) cannot be changed, then what the hell are we all doing here commenting on a blog whose main purpose is to try to effect such changes in society? Or is the implication supposed to be that people outside prison can change, but those inside cannot? If so, why?
Also:
‘Cases like these,’ when talking of the crime, not the underlying attitude, are a very new phenomenon. For the first time in history, almost any person, with a very little know-how and few resources, can harm a huge number of people with nothing but the click of a few keys. So no, when talking of specifically ‘cases like these,’ I can’t, in honesty, claim to know that this particular kind of criminality is susceptible to such rehabilitation. But if no one tries it, we never can know.
The form needs to fit the specific person and situation. If a person is committing X crimes for Y reasons, they learn what is wrong about that and how to change their behaviors. Formally speaking. But you can’t ask about something concrete and specific like that, as well a general form, at the same time. Those questions are not compatible with one another.
As for evidence, the facts are that people do learn things, they do change their attitudes and beliefs, and they do change their behaviors accordingly. The evidence for that is so overwhelmingly obvious, wherever you look in all human societies, that it’s hard to believe you actually mean to ask that particular question.
What you’re probably still confused about is the idea that it has anything to do with being “soft” on criminals, when really that worry doesn’t go away. Medicalizing crimes has had a very harsh history as well, in case you’re unaware of that. If you look at what asylums used to be like (and unfortunately still are in many places) and why people were admitted to them, you’ll see there are still a boatload of problems like that. That’s in cases where you’d presumably say rehabilitation is “obviously” supposed to be the chief concern — but look at what even that can do. Or we could talk about debtor’s prison, or whatever else, no matter what the specific kinds of problems are that such institutions and policies are supposed to be addressing.
The question is what’s effective, not what’s soft. The answer is to genuinely do whatever you can to make people as good as they can be — and so long as that isn’t working, try to provide as many reasonable protections for society as possible. If you thought we should be doing something else, that’s the first and clearest warning sign that you want us to do some more fucked up shit for no good reason.
@ Patrick G #73
This whole thing basically started because I disagreed with Raging Bee’s statement at #28 that “rehabilitation should NOT be an option”. Pink Jenkin disagreed with my response, and after that I was basically defending my position.
I hadn’t realized that I was echoing OlliP, but having gone back and read his comment I can see why the comparison has been made. So allow me to clarify my position:
– 18 years seems an incredibly long time to be in prison to me; but I am English and acknowledge that my cultural perception will have skewed my view of prison sentences. What’s “appropriate” for a crime is after all somewhat arbitrary. This isn’t a point so much as full disclosure; I was saying “Yeah, that seems long to me, but I acknowledge that my view on this is not necessarily the correct one so I’m not going to talk about that, I’m going to talk about rehabilitation”. Perhaps I should have been clearer on that.
– Rehabilitation is not always possible for every individual, but we know it is possible and that a system that focuses on rehabilitation cuts down on reoffending. A long sentence doesn’t help exisitng victims, but rehabilitation does make it less likely that this individual will victimize others in future, so surely that should be the focus?
– Longer sentences do not provide any significant deterrence, as proven above. This being the case, I can’t see any reason other than revenge to insist on one. Pink Jenkin was insisting on one on the basis of deterrence, but this has been shown to be neglible. However, I do not object to long sentences per se, so long as efforts to rehabilitate are made while they are inside. It is not enough to simply lock someone up for ages, and then let them out with a stern warning not to do it again.
Consciousness Razor has summed it up rather nicely:
I think that last sentence is why Pink Jenkin immediately got my back up, and the situation only worsened when they repeatedly refused to actually listen to what was being said and instead mischaracterized what I, Daz, and Nick Gotts were saying.
If by “talking in abstractions” you mean discussing the prison system and the theory of rehabilitation as a whole rather than this very specific case, then yes, that’s exactly what I was doing. And you kind of need to, since a system of justice has to consistently apply the same values to each case.
Thanks for the response, Thumper.
That was pretty much my point. I would also add that Pink Jenkins had clearly stated in her first post that, as a professional in the porn industry, she was personally invested in this issue, and the topic directly and materially affected her experience. Seemed to contribute to further misunderstanding down the line, as she (and some others) were referencing this case but the conversation kept moving to generalities.
Shrug, I’ll go with what Rey Fox said: “The justice and prison system is screwed up, no doubt. But this is not the guy you want as your example.”
Yeah, this goes back to the OlliP comment. While the abstraction may have been intended, the thread was about … rather something else. In this case, a longer sentence can easily be read to mean that the sentence was too long in this case, because .. well, that never really got spelled out. I think you’ve already addressed this in your other points, so I won’t belabor it (more).
Beyond that, this type of comment has been irking me — no one has shown anything of the kind. The two major (supported) arguments I’ve seen are that:
(1) Offenders have high rates of recidivism and therefore deterrence doesn’t work.
(2) Crime rates in the US and UK are comparable
For (1), and note that a number of these criticisms reference Daz’s comments:
– Deterrence is not solely a function of sentence length. It is also a function of penalty applied at all. Deterrence should be properly measured as the decrease in rates of a particular type of crime based on revised penalty, no? Otherwise, why bother penalizing bankers who commit fraud via illegal foreclosure?
– Evaluating deterrence primarily by re-occurrence and re-arrest is mind-boggling. Do I really need to cite a tedious list of the barriers ex-prisoners face in the US vs the UK? This isn’t apples to oranges, this is apples to giraffes.
– Deterrence can also be a factor of rehabilitation under threat, c.f. drug diversion programs (complete OR ELSE). I would posit that rehabilitation without punitive recourse is likely not tremendously effective (as any parent knows!)
– The revolving door prison system is a feature, not a bug. It’s hard to evaluate deterrence when it’s pretty damn well explicit that the goal is to get people re-arrested. See, for example: Ronald Reagan, Pete Wilson, Gray Davis, or pretty much any major political figure in California over the last 30 years (though this will hopefully continue to change).
For (2):
I’m not a criminologist, and fully aware of apples-to-oranges problems, but here’s what I find from a casual search:
Property Crime Rates in the US:
http://www.fbi.gov/about-us/cjis/ucr/crime-in-the-u.s/2012/crime-in-the-u.s.-2012/property-crime/property-crime
Occurrences in 2012: 8,975,438
http://www.ons.gov.uk/ons/rel/crime-stats/crime-statistics/focus-on-property-crime–2013-14/sty-patterns-and-trends-in-property-crime.html
Property Crime Rates in the UK: ~6.8 million (eyeballed from chart)
9m vs 7m (ish). Adjusting for relative size, and with the caveats previously, that raises some questions for me. I’d be happy to see better data — this was the best I could do before I looked at the clock and realized I was about to be late for a meeting. However, it would be ridiculous for me to conclude from this that Sentence Length Deterrence Works, no?
So yeah, I’ll stop there, though I meant to add some caveats about of course I loathe our current system and of course rehabilitation needs to be a primary focus in our general approach to crime and my major peeve is evaluating crime statistics in the absence of larger background.
TTFN. Also, if we’re going to continue this, it might be more properly taken to the Thunderdome? I think we’re way off the OP topic now.
@PatrickG:
Look for an upcoming post on Pharyngula, under my byline.
Unfortunately for you, the writing I’ve done in this area is mostly under my legal name. Though a truly motivated individual can probably put my internet ‘nym together with my meat-space ‘nym, I never directly connect the two out of respect for my family. in the past, unfortunately, some of my human rights work has been met with threats and abuse. Keeping the two names entirely separate helps minimize the risk to others.
That means, really, that you’ll just have to take my word for it that I actually have written about this elsewhere.
Sorry.
Given your prolific output elsewhere, I have no reason to doubt that. I’ll be watching for the upcoming post, though!
The name of the domain ‘ugotposted’ already showed the nature of the site.
This POS deserves to be put behind bars, but the full sentence (18 years) is too hard for his actions. (possible parole after a decade). Rapists-murderers are free, before him. Just look at the police agent that shot the black kid ‘Trevor’ and didn’t even go to prison. The extortion of the victims most likely made the verdict so extreme and the gov also wants to stop similar sites like myex, theporndude ,… This guy knew it was not right, but he let his greed take control ($30.000+)
Revenge porn cannot be stopped, even with a new strict law, since men share their ex-lovers in a state of ‘anger’, but at least they can be punished now, although the damage can’t be undone. Once you’re online, good luck trying to remove a picture.
Maybe they should do something about prevention in high schools? How about teaching students about ‘revenge porn’ in sex education class? If they are better informed about the risks of sending nudes to a boyfriend, then we’ll see less victims?