The Cost of Rape
How to Qualify for a Discount!
from 
JoeUser Forums
JoeUser Forums
Citation below from:
“The National Institute of Justice estimates that rape and other sexual assaults of adults cause an annual minimum loss of 127 billion dollars, or about $508 per U.S. resident. This includes tangible losses such as initial police response, medical care, mental health services, property damage or loss, and loss of productivity; and intangible losses, such as loss of quality of life, pain, and suffering. These costs do not include the costs of investigation, prosecution or incarceration of offenders. This figure makes sexual assault the costliest crime; even higher than murder.” US Department of Justice, Victim Costs and Consequences: A New Look, 1996; Summary by Virginians Aligned Against Sexual Assault
Prologue: A couple of recent cases illustrate all too well some of the points I attempt to make below. In one case, widely reported in the national media, a gay man filed a suit against the prison system, alleging that he had been repeatedly raped by other prisoners while the guards and prison admininstration turned a blind eye, despite his complaints to them. It seems that their attitude was that 'since he was gay,' then it really didn't count.
The jury, in spite of plenty of evidence and witness testimony, apparently shared this view, as they found in favor of the prison system. One has to wonder about just how long and brutal a future that man now can expect, now that the system has effectively been given carte blanc to allow the gangs to do anything they want to him.
In the 1980's, as a cab driver in the OC, I got to witness some of this when one of my customers from the notorious OC jail, a milktoast of a middle-aged man, overweigth, short, bespeckled, wearing a business suit, began weeping unconsolably in the rear seat. When I asked him what the trouble was, he related in a rather high-pitched voice that he was scheduled to be married in two weeks, and so his friends took him to a bar for a little celebration. A fight broke out, entirely unrelated to his group, and someone called the cops, who arrested everyone in sight.
Because of his appearance and high-pitched voice, the female prison guard assumed that he was gay, and thought it hilarious to put him in a cell together with a notorious prison rapist twice his size and at least 20 years younger. She watched and applauded while he was repeatedly raped and forced to perform other sex acts.
"Now," he wailed, "what am I supposed to tell my fiancee? I might have contracted AIDS! What am I going to DO?"
I had no answer for him... except to get himself examined immediately by a physician, so that at least he could file suit against the county. But he was naturally reluctant to even do that. I hope he was lucky.
Meanwhile, twenty years later, we have these young men, who, as typical irresponsible, drunk and horny juveniles, a couple years back raped a drunk and unconscious female associate, including rape with a pool cue and other objects. They did the girl no apparent physical harm, as she had no complaints afterwards and, in fact, would likely never have known that anything had even happened - or, given her alleged desire to become a porn star, likely even made a big deal out of it. (Apparently she had gotten undressed and layed herself down completely nude on the pool table while still conscious.) And if the boys had been a little younger, it would have been a slap on the wrist, and, younger still, all written off as "playing doctor."
Except that the boys naturally videotaped the entire episode and then gleefully showed it around to all their buds. Whatever the ribald humor value, unfortunately for all concerned, one of the offenders was the son of a major figure in the local Sheriff's Department, which made it prime-time news locally, when someone provided the D.A. with the tape.
While these sorts of stupid sexual hyjinks thing go on all the time in the cloistered gated communities of YuppieTown OC, once the news was out, the teens' fates were sealed. Essentially, in the OC, as in many wealthy communities plagued with spoiled brats whose daddies are assumed to be able to bail them out of any situation, the problem is not what actually happened, but rather how it appeared in the media.
The situation was further exacerbated when the kid with the law enforcement parent got allegedly caught with mariuana while out on bail and the officer involved drove him home, on alleged instructions from a higher up, with no charges. Somehow, however, the "OC Weekly" found out about this whole episode, gleefully splashed it all over their front page, and then things got really chancy...
So, a farcical comedy of errors, but one that made it critical that they be punished to the limit of the law, of course, even though no permanent damage had resulted from their crimes. The thousands of other teens in the OC who regularly push the limits of bored sexual or pharmaceutical experimentation, trash local restaurants on a weekly basis, deliberately run their RVs through flower beds to show how "bad" they are, beat up the homeless, etc., etc., etc. will doubtless take this lesson to heart and mend their boring little juvenile jerk ways. Right.
So, even though the victim here suffered minimal harm, certainly less than in the average car accident, the courts threw the book at the three young men, and decided to treat them as adults for purposes of sentencing. It will be a LONG time before they see the light of day, but the community retained "face."
For those who are not from the OC, it is useful to note that the heart of OC Yuppiedom, the city of Irvine, where there are virtually no sidewalks, as the city fathers reportedly felt that anyone who could afford to live there would drive everywhere, is well over half of Asian heritage, a set of cultures that largely share the subjectivist position that reality counts for much less than precious "face." I'm not picking on Asians, by the way (as I try to avoid the easy targets). There is certainly enough hypocrisy to go around.
But with the economic and academic heart of the OC largely and increasingly dominated by cultures that make hypocrisy a cardinal virtue, I'm just waiting for the next big implosion. Some readers may recall that the enormously rich OC went bankrupt in the mid '90's, due to all the investment funds being given into the care of one man, who hired an astrologer to help him pick stock options. For real.
And, a few years ago, the OC Register - one of the few OC institutions that I would rank as being among the "good guys" - ran a story about the OC being the world headquarters for internet and postal scams. It's just SO hard to keep those demons in their place and under control, darn-it! Do as we SAY, not as we DO! OK?
And now we have THREE (3) - and counting - major scandals coming out of UCI, the academic pride of the OC, in a few short years. First there were the stolen women's eggs, harvested and then sold on the black market. Then, out of the same medical college, the discovery that donated bodies were being cut up and sold on that same black market. NOW we discover that UCI was letting apparently dozens of patients over several years span DIE of liver failure, telling them that there were no organs available, while all the while knowing that there WERE organs, but they lacked the surgeons to implant them.
I'm just waiting for the "OC Register" to get off the dime and look into the likely mass cheating at UCI. Just how many of the stellar academic performances of the 70% Asian student body are for real and how many are more in the tradition of S. Korea, where parents quite literally rioted when the authorities attempted to stop the cheating in school that had become so rampant and sophisticated that the students no longer had to learn anything except how to use the very latest cheating technology.
So, getting back on theme, prison is clearly not about justice, if, by "justice," we mean setting things right, so that people who are injured are compensated by the injurer. The gay prisoner first mentioned above certainly suffered multiple injuries, likely with long-term effects, even if he is so lucky as not to come down with AIDS, genital herpes, and/or hepatitus, all prettly much long-term death sentences. He was GAY! So that makes it ok to kill him.
The guy in the cab only committed the crime of "looking gay," in a culture in which appearance is everything, but, hey, let's not take any chances here...
And the teens would have all gotten off scott free (including the girl, whose traumatization and shame from the trial and exposure surely exceeded the costs to her of the actual acts performed) if the boys had not followed up stupidity with even more stupidity in passing around the video, and then just suffering plain dumb bad luck.
Was anything "set right" in any of these cases? Or several million more of a similar nature? Or did our "justice" system not only fail, but actually serve to make matters many times worse?
So, what is our "justice" system really about?
********************************************************************************************
It's remarkable that so few people commit suicide in prison. The whole point of prison is to create a little preview of the Judeo-Christian HELL fantasy. That's why nothing is done about the high rate of prison rape (the total being twice that of all the rapes of women in the U.S.) or other abuses. Even if the victims of the worst horrors are generally the least "guilty" of the prisoners - newbees, youths, petty drug offenders, it doesn't matter, because the essence of prison is deterence by FEAR!
Not that it works. But, then, neither does the Hell fantasy itself. Very few people, is my best guess, are in the least bit deterred from "sin" by any fear of divine retribution. The really nasty "sinners" are not believers to begin with.
And, doesn't it seem rather hypocritical, after all? I mean, if it's ok for GOD to torture you FOREVER for the crime of not having sufficient faith, then how can it be wrong for you to torture someone else for only a few brief years? The Jesuits and the Inquisition both relied upon this logic. No merely mortal torture could possibly compare to the perfectly horrific pains of a hell designed by the perfectly knowledgeable Master of the Universe. Similarly, no earthly delight... On the other hand, if anyone actually believed this nonsense of heaven and hell, would they live their lives the way they do?
(Well, actually, a few would - namely the suicide bombers looking forward to their 70 perpetual virgins. So sad that they have to take innocent victims along, as their deaths almost certainly constitute a major improvement in the gene pool. I wonder if they realize that it's the SAME 70 virgins - for everyone...)
As Joe Strazinski, creator of the famous Babylon V SciFi TV series, put it at a science fiction conference, in a public debate over the existence of God between him and a Christian theologian, ~"If you believe half of the things the old testament says about God, then you have to conclude that God is a malign thug!"
But, actually, the New Testament portrait of God is worse! The old testament does not really describe or promise Heaven or Hell to the common run of men. A lot of Jews, then and now, who devoutly believe in God do not have any real belief in any afterlife, in fact. If some street goon came to you and said, "Hey, oofa! Yousa gonna believe in me from now on, ok? So, either pay up or I pour gas all over youse and set yer on fire!" - well, then you might pay up something right then, depending upon just how threatening this jerk might come across, but you sure wouldn't do it any longer than you absolutely had to, and you'd be thinking about guns and neighbors and cops, not about loving the SOB.
So, how is it any better if the threat is that you will burn FOREVER? "Love me of I'll torture you, forever?" And this is what most Americans believe? You know, good old Osama almost comes off as a nice guy, in comparison to Yahwa... I mean, Bin Laden only plans on killing you and destroying your way of life. Then it's over. What possible satisfaction does the Bully of the Universe get, anyway, out of beating up on poor humans who cannot possibly fight back?
But it is only the promise of literally infinite (if largely unspecified) rewards or infinite (much better specified) torture without hope of reprieve that backs up that mainstay of religious conversion, Pascal's Wager, which runs as follows: ~ Consider the consequences of belief or non-belief... If you believe and there is a God, then you are rewarded infinitely in paradise forever and ever. If you believe and there isn't a God, after all, then what have you really lost? If you disbelieve and there is a God, then you suffer eternal torment and damnation, but if you disbelieve and there is no God, how much has it gained you?
So, by this argument, if you assess the probability of there being a God as larger than zero, then any number multiplied by infinity is infinity! Right? So, all you atheists had better run, not walk to your nearest chapel and publically declare your belief in Jesus....
But, which chapel? And, should it be Jesus, or perhaps Mohammed? Sunni or Shiite? Or, maybe the Zoroastrians have it right? Perhaps they are all wrong, as they cannot possibly all be right. In which case your infinite reward scenario is faced squarely with an equally infinite possible number of hypothetical Gods, varying in every parameter and making contradictory demands upon you. I.e., Pascal's Wager fails on decision theory* grounds regardless - until you have actual proof, which none of these multitude of Gods seems to want to provide, they all being strangely shy, perhaps infinitely so...
Decision theory deals with how to apply uncertain knowledge to cost effectively make choices. Simplified, in brief, you assess the expected return of a decision by multiplying the likelihood of various consequences by their expected loss or benefit. Returns can be very high and yet provoke no course of action, due to the very low probability of an outcome.
“The National Institute of Justice estimates that rape and other sexual assaults of adults cause an annual minimum loss of 127 billion dollars, or about $508 per U.S. resident. This includes tangible losses such as initial police response, medical care, mental health services, property damage or loss, and loss of productivity; and intangible losses, such as loss of quality of life, pain, and suffering. These costs do not include the costs of investigation, prosecution or incarceration of offenders. This figure makes sexual assault the costliest crime; even higher than murder.” US Department of Justice, Victim Costs and Consequences: A New Look, 1996; Summary by Virginians Aligned Against Sexual Assault
Prologue: A couple of recent cases illustrate all too well some of the points I attempt to make below. In one case, widely reported in the national media, a gay man filed a suit against the prison system, alleging that he had been repeatedly raped by other prisoners while the guards and prison admininstration turned a blind eye, despite his complaints to them. It seems that their attitude was that 'since he was gay,' then it really didn't count.
The jury, in spite of plenty of evidence and witness testimony, apparently shared this view, as they found in favor of the prison system. One has to wonder about just how long and brutal a future that man now can expect, now that the system has effectively been given carte blanc to allow the gangs to do anything they want to him.
In the 1980's, as a cab driver in the OC, I got to witness some of this when one of my customers from the notorious OC jail, a milktoast of a middle-aged man, overweigth, short, bespeckled, wearing a business suit, began weeping unconsolably in the rear seat. When I asked him what the trouble was, he related in a rather high-pitched voice that he was scheduled to be married in two weeks, and so his friends took him to a bar for a little celebration. A fight broke out, entirely unrelated to his group, and someone called the cops, who arrested everyone in sight.
Because of his appearance and high-pitched voice, the female prison guard assumed that he was gay, and thought it hilarious to put him in a cell together with a notorious prison rapist twice his size and at least 20 years younger. She watched and applauded while he was repeatedly raped and forced to perform other sex acts.
"Now," he wailed, "what am I supposed to tell my fiancee? I might have contracted AIDS! What am I going to DO?"
I had no answer for him... except to get himself examined immediately by a physician, so that at least he could file suit against the county. But he was naturally reluctant to even do that. I hope he was lucky.
Meanwhile, twenty years later, we have these young men, who, as typical irresponsible, drunk and horny juveniles, a couple years back raped a drunk and unconscious female associate, including rape with a pool cue and other objects. They did the girl no apparent physical harm, as she had no complaints afterwards and, in fact, would likely never have known that anything had even happened - or, given her alleged desire to become a porn star, likely even made a big deal out of it. (Apparently she had gotten undressed and layed herself down completely nude on the pool table while still conscious.) And if the boys had been a little younger, it would have been a slap on the wrist, and, younger still, all written off as "playing doctor."
Except that the boys naturally videotaped the entire episode and then gleefully showed it around to all their buds. Whatever the ribald humor value, unfortunately for all concerned, one of the offenders was the son of a major figure in the local Sheriff's Department, which made it prime-time news locally, when someone provided the D.A. with the tape.
While these sorts of stupid sexual hyjinks thing go on all the time in the cloistered gated communities of YuppieTown OC, once the news was out, the teens' fates were sealed. Essentially, in the OC, as in many wealthy communities plagued with spoiled brats whose daddies are assumed to be able to bail them out of any situation, the problem is not what actually happened, but rather how it appeared in the media.
The situation was further exacerbated when the kid with the law enforcement parent got allegedly caught with mariuana while out on bail and the officer involved drove him home, on alleged instructions from a higher up, with no charges. Somehow, however, the "OC Weekly" found out about this whole episode, gleefully splashed it all over their front page, and then things got really chancy...
So, a farcical comedy of errors, but one that made it critical that they be punished to the limit of the law, of course, even though no permanent damage had resulted from their crimes. The thousands of other teens in the OC who regularly push the limits of bored sexual or pharmaceutical experimentation, trash local restaurants on a weekly basis, deliberately run their RVs through flower beds to show how "bad" they are, beat up the homeless, etc., etc., etc. will doubtless take this lesson to heart and mend their boring little juvenile jerk ways. Right.
So, even though the victim here suffered minimal harm, certainly less than in the average car accident, the courts threw the book at the three young men, and decided to treat them as adults for purposes of sentencing. It will be a LONG time before they see the light of day, but the community retained "face."
For those who are not from the OC, it is useful to note that the heart of OC Yuppiedom, the city of Irvine, where there are virtually no sidewalks, as the city fathers reportedly felt that anyone who could afford to live there would drive everywhere, is well over half of Asian heritage, a set of cultures that largely share the subjectivist position that reality counts for much less than precious "face." I'm not picking on Asians, by the way (as I try to avoid the easy targets). There is certainly enough hypocrisy to go around.
But with the economic and academic heart of the OC largely and increasingly dominated by cultures that make hypocrisy a cardinal virtue, I'm just waiting for the next big implosion. Some readers may recall that the enormously rich OC went bankrupt in the mid '90's, due to all the investment funds being given into the care of one man, who hired an astrologer to help him pick stock options. For real.
And, a few years ago, the OC Register - one of the few OC institutions that I would rank as being among the "good guys" - ran a story about the OC being the world headquarters for internet and postal scams. It's just SO hard to keep those demons in their place and under control, darn-it! Do as we SAY, not as we DO! OK?
And now we have THREE (3) - and counting - major scandals coming out of UCI, the academic pride of the OC, in a few short years. First there were the stolen women's eggs, harvested and then sold on the black market. Then, out of the same medical college, the discovery that donated bodies were being cut up and sold on that same black market. NOW we discover that UCI was letting apparently dozens of patients over several years span DIE of liver failure, telling them that there were no organs available, while all the while knowing that there WERE organs, but they lacked the surgeons to implant them.
I'm just waiting for the "OC Register" to get off the dime and look into the likely mass cheating at UCI. Just how many of the stellar academic performances of the 70% Asian student body are for real and how many are more in the tradition of S. Korea, where parents quite literally rioted when the authorities attempted to stop the cheating in school that had become so rampant and sophisticated that the students no longer had to learn anything except how to use the very latest cheating technology.
So, getting back on theme, prison is clearly not about justice, if, by "justice," we mean setting things right, so that people who are injured are compensated by the injurer. The gay prisoner first mentioned above certainly suffered multiple injuries, likely with long-term effects, even if he is so lucky as not to come down with AIDS, genital herpes, and/or hepatitus, all prettly much long-term death sentences. He was GAY! So that makes it ok to kill him.
The guy in the cab only committed the crime of "looking gay," in a culture in which appearance is everything, but, hey, let's not take any chances here...
And the teens would have all gotten off scott free (including the girl, whose traumatization and shame from the trial and exposure surely exceeded the costs to her of the actual acts performed) if the boys had not followed up stupidity with even more stupidity in passing around the video, and then just suffering plain dumb bad luck.
Was anything "set right" in any of these cases? Or several million more of a similar nature? Or did our "justice" system not only fail, but actually serve to make matters many times worse?
So, what is our "justice" system really about?
********************************************************************************************
It's remarkable that so few people commit suicide in prison. The whole point of prison is to create a little preview of the Judeo-Christian HELL fantasy. That's why nothing is done about the high rate of prison rape (the total being twice that of all the rapes of women in the U.S.) or other abuses. Even if the victims of the worst horrors are generally the least "guilty" of the prisoners - newbees, youths, petty drug offenders, it doesn't matter, because the essence of prison is deterence by FEAR!
Not that it works. But, then, neither does the Hell fantasy itself. Very few people, is my best guess, are in the least bit deterred from "sin" by any fear of divine retribution. The really nasty "sinners" are not believers to begin with.
And, doesn't it seem rather hypocritical, after all? I mean, if it's ok for GOD to torture you FOREVER for the crime of not having sufficient faith, then how can it be wrong for you to torture someone else for only a few brief years? The Jesuits and the Inquisition both relied upon this logic. No merely mortal torture could possibly compare to the perfectly horrific pains of a hell designed by the perfectly knowledgeable Master of the Universe. Similarly, no earthly delight... On the other hand, if anyone actually believed this nonsense of heaven and hell, would they live their lives the way they do?
(Well, actually, a few would - namely the suicide bombers looking forward to their 70 perpetual virgins. So sad that they have to take innocent victims along, as their deaths almost certainly constitute a major improvement in the gene pool. I wonder if they realize that it's the SAME 70 virgins - for everyone...)
As Joe Strazinski, creator of the famous Babylon V SciFi TV series, put it at a science fiction conference, in a public debate over the existence of God between him and a Christian theologian, ~"If you believe half of the things the old testament says about God, then you have to conclude that God is a malign thug!"
But, actually, the New Testament portrait of God is worse! The old testament does not really describe or promise Heaven or Hell to the common run of men. A lot of Jews, then and now, who devoutly believe in God do not have any real belief in any afterlife, in fact. If some street goon came to you and said, "Hey, oofa! Yousa gonna believe in me from now on, ok? So, either pay up or I pour gas all over youse and set yer on fire!" - well, then you might pay up something right then, depending upon just how threatening this jerk might come across, but you sure wouldn't do it any longer than you absolutely had to, and you'd be thinking about guns and neighbors and cops, not about loving the SOB.
So, how is it any better if the threat is that you will burn FOREVER? "Love me of I'll torture you, forever?" And this is what most Americans believe? You know, good old Osama almost comes off as a nice guy, in comparison to Yahwa... I mean, Bin Laden only plans on killing you and destroying your way of life. Then it's over. What possible satisfaction does the Bully of the Universe get, anyway, out of beating up on poor humans who cannot possibly fight back?
But it is only the promise of literally infinite (if largely unspecified) rewards or infinite (much better specified) torture without hope of reprieve that backs up that mainstay of religious conversion, Pascal's Wager, which runs as follows: ~ Consider the consequences of belief or non-belief... If you believe and there is a God, then you are rewarded infinitely in paradise forever and ever. If you believe and there isn't a God, after all, then what have you really lost? If you disbelieve and there is a God, then you suffer eternal torment and damnation, but if you disbelieve and there is no God, how much has it gained you?
So, by this argument, if you assess the probability of there being a God as larger than zero, then any number multiplied by infinity is infinity! Right? So, all you atheists had better run, not walk to your nearest chapel and publically declare your belief in Jesus....
But, which chapel? And, should it be Jesus, or perhaps Mohammed? Sunni or Shiite? Or, maybe the Zoroastrians have it right? Perhaps they are all wrong, as they cannot possibly all be right. In which case your infinite reward scenario is faced squarely with an equally infinite possible number of hypothetical Gods, varying in every parameter and making contradictory demands upon you. I.e., Pascal's Wager fails on decision theory* grounds regardless - until you have actual proof, which none of these multitude of Gods seems to want to provide, they all being strangely shy, perhaps infinitely so...
Decision theory deals with how to apply uncertain knowledge to cost effectively make choices. Simplified, in brief, you assess the expected return of a decision by multiplying the likelihood of various consequences by their expected loss or benefit. Returns can be very high and yet provoke no course of action, due to the very low probability of an outcome.