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posted by janrinok on Friday September 02 2016, @06:39AM   Printer-friendly
from the notorious dept.

Common Dreams reports

Reviled Florida State Attorney Angela Corey lost her reelection bid on [August 30], prompting widespread celebration as the woman The Nation once suggested was "the cruelest prosecutor in America" was ousted.

"Corey's loss is an encouraging sign that the public will no longer tolerate overzealous and unprincipled criminal prosecutions, including women and children", University of Miami law professor Mary Anne Franks said in a statement.

Corey, whose eight-year tenure in Florida's Fourth Judicial Circuit Court saw her charge 77 children as adults in 2016 alone and sentence more people to death than any other Florida prosecutor, gained widespread notoriety for her inadequate prosecution of Trayvon Martin's killer, George Zimmerman, and for seeking a 60-year sentence for Marissa Alexander, a domestic violence survivor with three children, for firing a warning shot in the direction of her abusive husband. (Alexander spent three years in prison.)

[...] Corey was defeated by unknown opponent and corporate lawyer Melissa Nelson, who will now face off with write-in candidate Kenny Leigh in the general election--although Jacksonville media noted that no write-in candidate has ever been elected to the state attorney position in Florida, and that Leigh has yet to make a single campaign appearance.


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  • (Score: 2) by HiThere on Friday September 02 2016, @05:52PM

    by HiThere (866) Subscriber Badge on Friday September 02 2016, @05:52PM (#396727) Journal

    Anthropologists say (once said?) that among the Kalahari Bushmen the rates of abuse are about equal, with men being slightly the dominant abusers, probably because they average stronger.

    Now the Bushmen had no courts and laws regulating behavior, and the anthropologists were not members of the tribe, so possibly not someone you had to be ashamed in front of. So I tend to accept that frequency as approximately accurate. And the Bushmen are, or were, essentially egalitarian.

    Therefore, if women are more likely to abuse men than the other way around, I would suspect that it's because they live under increased stress. And I don't think that there is evidence that men are genetically more inspired to commit abuse, except by usually being larger and more powerful.

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  • (Score: 2) by NotSanguine on Friday September 02 2016, @06:00PM

    by NotSanguine (285) <NotSanguineNO@SPAMSoylentNews.Org> on Friday September 02 2016, @06:00PM (#396733) Homepage Journal

    And I don't think that there is evidence that men are genetically more inspired to commit abuse, except by usually being larger and more powerful.

    Please read the article [jrbenjamin.com] I linked.

    If you think genes don’t matter for how people behave, consider this amazing fact: if you are a carrier of a particular set of genes, your probability of committing a violent crime goes up by eight hundred and eighty-two percent.

    ...

    By the way, as regards that dangerous set of genes, you’ve probably heard of them. They are summarized as the Y chromosome. If you’re a carrier, we call you a male.”

      [emphasis added]

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    • (Score: 2, Interesting) by Francis on Friday September 02 2016, @09:50PM

      by Francis (5544) on Friday September 02 2016, @09:50PM (#396794)

      Not really, I have to say this, but, correlation is not causation. People who wind up in prison for violent crimes have a lot of other things in common. Or other situations that commonly occur to them. Things like poverty, exposure to toxic chemicals in childhood, abuse, drug abuse and a lack of positive view of their future.

      The evidence isn't there to demonstrate that this gene is the cause as in other places, like Europe, they have similar levels of property crimes, but violent crimes are not anywhere near the levels they are in the US. If it's this gene, then how do you explain that disparity in the violent crime statistics? A huge proportion of Americans came from Europe and one would assume would have similar genes to what they have in Europe.

      The reason is most likely that they don't allow boys to be abused the way that they are in the US. They don't allow children to go hungry or to do without necessary education. When criminals are sent to prison, there's a lot more consideration paid to rehabilitation than there is to punishment and their recidivism rates tend to be lower.

      In short, the whole idea that this is genetic, requires a lot more support. And I wouldn't personally, take the research of anthropologists seriously as they clearly don't understand how the brain works.

      • (Score: 2) by NotSanguine on Friday September 02 2016, @10:01PM

        by NotSanguine (285) <NotSanguineNO@SPAMSoylentNews.Org> on Friday September 02 2016, @10:01PM (#396798) Homepage Journal

        Not really, I have to say this, but, correlation is not causation. People who wind up in prison for violent crimes have a lot of other things in common. Or other situations that commonly occur to them. Things like poverty, exposure to toxic chemicals in childhood, abuse, drug abuse and a lack of positive view of their future.

        I never said otherwise. I merely pointed out (or rather the link I posted did), that having a 'Y' chromosome is an excellent predictor (by an order of magnitude) of violent behavior.

        Other factors, of course, apply. However, as I mentioned previously, you were complaining about *women*, not poverty or other environmental factors.

        --
        No, no, you're not thinking; you're just being logical. --Niels Bohr
      • (Score: 2) by NotSanguine on Friday September 02 2016, @10:05PM

        by NotSanguine (285) <NotSanguineNO@SPAMSoylentNews.Org> on Friday September 02 2016, @10:05PM (#396799) Homepage Journal

        The reason is most likely that they don't allow boys to be abused the way that they are in the US. They don't allow children to go hungry or to do without necessary education. When criminals are sent to prison, there's a lot more consideration paid to rehabilitation than there is to punishment and their recidivism rates tend to be lower.

        In short, the whole idea that this is genetic, requires a lot more support. And I wouldn't personally, take the research of anthropologists seriously as they clearly don't understand how the brain works.

        As I have said several times, environmental factors are almost certainly at work here as well.

        If you wanted to have a discussion about why people are violent then have that discussion, rather than getting on your bullshit MRA stalking horse.

        --
        No, no, you're not thinking; you're just being logical. --Niels Bohr
        • (Score: 1) by Francis on Friday September 02 2016, @11:51PM

          by Francis (5544) on Friday September 02 2016, @11:51PM (#396816)

          So, in other words, you're an idiot.

          Bottom line here is that there's ample reason to believe that women are getting off easy here where men aren't. Boys aren't provided with the kind of safe living environment that girls are, aren't provided with support growing up and if they do commit an offense, they're more likely to be convicted and spend more time in prison than women that commit similar crimes.

          That's not an MRA stalking horse, that's an accurate reflection of what's going on. You're the one that brought up that pointless bullshit that has little to do with the current situation, not me.

    • (Score: 2) by HiThere on Saturday September 03 2016, @07:52PM

      by HiThere (866) Subscriber Badge on Saturday September 03 2016, @07:52PM (#397109) Journal

      I wouldn't argue with his figures, but his reasoning connecting it directly to genes and ignoring various social and cultural pressures is unconvincing. This is the old argument summarized as "nature vs. nurture" and there are lots of reasons why it's difficult to resolve, and that's one of the reasons I looked at as different a culture as I could find for my "baseline".

      OTOH, it's true that the genes of men tend to make them more "vigorous", taller, stronger, and more willing to take risks. These factors in combination with social and other cultural pressures will often cause violence to be more common among men. But the link to violence being directly genetic is, at best, unproven, and quite difficult to even try to prove. It is traditional to assume the link, and there is some evidence indicating that it might be real. I cannot take his bland assertion that it is as valid, and the form of his argument is not linked to genetic mechanisms, but rather to social mechanisms. Also please note that he is a professor of psychology, not of genetics or physiology, so the form of his argument is what would be expected.

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      • (Score: 2) by NotSanguine on Saturday September 03 2016, @08:31PM

        by NotSanguine (285) <NotSanguineNO@SPAMSoylentNews.Org> on Saturday September 03 2016, @08:31PM (#397124) Homepage Journal

        It is traditional to assume the link, and there is some evidence indicating that it might be real. I cannot take his bland assertion that it is as valid, and the form of his argument is not linked to genetic mechanisms, but rather to social mechanisms

        Those with a 'Y' chromosome are much more likely to commit crime. [telegraph.co.uk] Full Stop.

        From the linked article:

        There are 84,731 people in prison in Britain and according to the latest figures, 80,915 of them are men. Less than five per cent of this country’s prison population is female, and the trend is similar elsewhere in the western world. In France, it’s about three per cent; in Germany, just under six. The global median is 4.3 per cent, according to figures from the International Centre for Prison Studies.

        Holding other factors constant, having a 'Y' chromosome is an excellent predictor of criminal activity.

        How strong the genetic component is may be an open question, but across vastly different human cultures this observation holds true.

        More relevant discussion can be had here [theatlantic.com].

        You can argue the nature vs. nurture angle all you want, but Dr. Eagleman's statement [jrbenjamin.com] (quoted from this book [amazon.com]):

        In other words, if you carry these genes, you’re eight times more likely to commit aggravated assault, ten times more likely to commit murder, thirteen times more likely to commit armed robbery and forty-four times more likely to commit sexual assault.

        About one half of the human population carries these genes, while the other half does not, making the first half much more dangerous indeed. It’s not even a contest. The overwhelming majority of prisoners carry these genes, as do 98.4 percent of those on death row. It seems clear enough that the carriers are strongly predisposed to a different type of behavior – and everyone is coming to the table equally equipped in terms of drives and behavior.

        We’ll return to these genes in a moment, but first I want to tie the issue back to the main point we’ve seen throughout this book: we are not the ones driving the boat of our behavior, at least not nearly as much as we believe. Who we are runs well below the surface of our conscious access, and the details reach back in time to before our birth, when the meeting of a sperm and egg granted us with certain attributes and not others. Who we can be begins with our molecular blueprints – a series of alien codes penned in invisibly small strings of amino acids – well before we have anything to do with it. We are a product of our inaccessible, microscopic history.

        By the way, as regards that dangerous set of genes, you’ve probably heard of them. They are summarized as the Y chromosome. If you’re a carrier, we call you a male.” [emphasis added]

        David Eagleman is not a psychologist, but a neuroscientist [wikipedia.org].

        --
        No, no, you're not thinking; you're just being logical. --Niels Bohr
  • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday September 02 2016, @06:30PM

    by Anonymous Coward on Friday September 02 2016, @06:30PM (#396740)
    Perhaps the average woman is more likely to hit the average guy than the other way around. The last time I hit a girl was probably decades ago when I was a kid. However when guys actually hit people/stuff we tend to be more effective. From the playground to the gym you'd see most of us start practising earlier and for longer. I know some girls can punch and kick really well, but we are talking about the averages here.

    The thing is, in modern society a woman could hit you 10 times, significantly hurting you but you might get no help from the "justice system". But if you retaliate with a single blow, you'd probably spend a while behind bars.

    Of course there's a large minority of guys who beat their wives and girlfriends and they are the ones who bump up the statistics. Many women like dominant men or even "bad boy types" and being dominated so that tendency is going to stay in the gene pool.