The Justice System is failing. 

According to a study by RAINN of the FBI’s database of every 1,000 rapes 995 perpetrators won’t see jail time. That’s 995 victims not getting justice for what was done to them. Here are just a few examples of rapist not receiving adequate sentences for their crimes: Brock Turner assaulted an intoxicated woman behind a dumpster, was literally caught in the act, and served three months in county jail. He was sentenced to 6 months, but released in half that time for “good behavior”. Shane Piche was a bus driver who took home a 14 year old girl from his bus route, got her drunk, and raped her. He received 10 years probation and was registered as level one sex offender. This means he doesn’t have to update his address and that once his “sentence” is served he can have the charge expunged from his record. The judge awarded him this leniency because “it was only one victim”. This has unfortunately become the norm in the world of justice for sexual assault. Abusers are receiving lenient sentences, if they get any at all. In the case of Brock Turner twelve jurors found him guilty of assaulting Ms. Miller. It was a unanimous decision. He was charged with three felony charges. Prosecutors asked for six years behind bars. Judge Aaron Persky could have sentenced Turner to up to 14 years in prison. He sentenced him to 6 months in jail. How many times have we read articles of famous or powerful people being accused of sexual assault and nothing is done? For God’s sake, Jeffery Epstein had an entire pedophilia island that was ignored for years! The courts had numerous files that were going to implicate a lot of powerful people and then Epstein “killed himself” and everything was dropped. The media stopped reporting.Suddenly no one cares about the years of abuse those kids went through. To fix this problem we need to institute a standard mandatory minimum sentence of three years in state prison for rape and molestation crimes across all 50 states. This would mean that if the accused was found guilty, the judge and jury would be forced to sentence the accused to at least three years in state prison. As of right now each state has it’s own laws and sentencing structure for rape and molestation crimes. This allows judges to get away with weak sentences like Brock Turner’s three months in jail. With standardized mandatory minimums in place sexual criminals would be adequately punished in every state and victims of sexual assault would finally get justice for the crime done to them. Once victims see that they are being taken seriously by the criminal justice system more will start to come forward which will get these violent attackers off the streets and result in less crime going unreported. We may also see a decrease in rape and molestation. With the mandatory minimums in place the criminals would also see that their crimes are being taken seriously. With victims becoming more empowered by laws geared to help and protect them, fewer sexual criminals will want to risk the prison time.