True, and unfortunately, even when they tried sentencing guidelines, it turned out to be a failure (federal sentencing guidelines which turned out to be a mess).

Definitely. There's a ton of research on sentencing guidelines and the pros and cons of them.

hijack/
So on one hand there's a need to consider extralegal factors, for example, society doesn't want tons of primary caregivers removed from the home. On the other hand there's a tendency for these extralegal factors to be used as a bias, such as women who serve as drug mules being used as the "fall guy" for general deterrence.

Has a caveman PM'd you about your signature yet?

/hijack

To believe he should go to jail means you believe that anyone who sleeps with any 15-year-old should go to jail, which would take out a pretty huge chunk of the teen population. Throughout human history 15-year-olds have always had sex and they always will; exceptional contexts of our current society have made it suddenly immoral. I personally advocate abstinence, so I would appeal to 15-year-olds themselves to make that decision, not for the criminal justice system to waste its resources locking up their classmate partners.

That's attributed to the "protect the children" movement of the 19th and 20th centuries. It started off as a moral movement and then became political and state-monitored.

If we were looking way back in the history of THIS country (since we're not taking an across-continent approach) we'd find that children were once considered little adults who could do, and be treated as, people twice their age.

What's the middle ground? Should society advocate children having sex or not and should age dynamics matter? If we do advocate it and age doesn't matter, should they then be able to drive, drink, and do other stuff that requires a level of reasoning. Then we have to wonder if the gov't should legislate this type of stuff.

I agree with you here. But society has safety cushions for everything else. We could go around speaking against drunk driving but without the legislation people would be more able to do whatever the hell they choose. Morality and legality.

Oh come on, are you serious? Please tell me you aren't going to compare what was socially acceptable in the 1600s and 1700s to today's time. Hell, forget the sex, lets just let 13, 14, and 15 year olds marry, have kids....sounds great. While we're at it, lets reinstate burning at the stake and stoning.
Once again, this guy was on videotape, in a gangbang, smoking pot and boozing it up. Some of you people almost act like this is just fine, normal behavior. Immoral is an understatement. The guy should have gone to jail...though, probably not for 10 years. Acting like this is some injustice because of the criminal justice system is ridiculous.

if that's the case, then the jails would be full. this happens way more than you'd think. the verdict and the punishment are incredibly overboard for the "crime"

Maybe in your community. Also, it happening more than we might think wouldn't be an excuse, its a reason for action.

i doubt that. this happens all over the country.

But some lame changed the thread title. :(

AmeriKKKa.

I just noticed that as well.

I'm surprised that the Edit message on the bottom of the post didn't show up.

It had to have been one of the mods.

I've said twice that 10 years is harsh........should he have gone to jail. Yes.

.....and i'm sorry, but just because you think it happens all over the place doesn't make it any better or serve as any form of acceptable excuse. Certainly doesn't happen anywhere that I have lived.

A mod had also deleted my previous post pointing out the thread title change.

AmeriKKKa.

I was being sarcastic.

Starang, things like that do happen all over the country. However, its not commonplace or accepted anywhere I've ever lived.

I figured that after the fact.