jUsTiCe systems in first world countries 🥴

An insight into how jUsTiCe systems in first world countries works. I wanted to let some steam off and to share with likeminded women what I’ve seen so far, that has made me resign from my job (amongst a few other factors).

We think that certain countries in the world, especially those that market themselves as bastions of jUsTiCe, equality, blah, blah blah, handle their recidivist heinous crime perpetrators in the way that would service justice to the victims. Not so, as apparently the rights of these criminals (almost all male, from my experience) are more important than the rights of their victims (all female). You’d think that when a judge asks for multiple reports, opinions and formal assessments from various professionals, they are all completely unbiased, right? Maybe some of them.

I entered this field many years ago with a hope to do the right thing by victims, and I left really disillusioned. I think judges don’t even have a clue what goes on in tiers of the system below them. My experience has been that I could not write straight-forward reports based on court-agreed facts, citing the most up-to date documents related to the criminals or even list the person’s criminal history, as “it would reflect badly on them”, and should just mention it in passing, glossing things over. There is always a government organisation who pays for “independent” reports, but they then feel they’re entitled to direct the said reports.

Then there’s your boss, who may agree with your views, but wants to keep getting contracts from the said agency, and they also tell you to “soften” your language, omit things etc. The contracting government agency will tell you what documents to cite and what to skip, picking and choosing whatever paints the perp in a better light, will bring more funding to them and show better performance targets. I’m not saying that I’ve been told to tell lies, but that there’s serious pressure sure to paint the picture they want you to paint.

There’s always a need to pull the victim card for any r@pist: any childhood difficulty, any smallest health problem or irrelevant disability gets magnified, to make it seem like he was a victim of circumstances and practically forced to r@pe women. A minority card also get pulled - what of it? What about the girls and women from the same minority that will now have flashbacks for the rest of their lives because of this scumbag’s depravity? Some of them will probably turn to drugs, alcohol - anything to numb their pain, and they will not receive the same amount of help as the perp, because they won’t be hurting anyone, but themselves, unlikely to have run-ins with the justice system. And I’m not speaking from a place of privilege, I am also from a widely looked down-upon minority.

I’ve come to the end of my tether when I had to write a document for a perp that has been assaulting young girls and even old women since he was prepubescent, and I mean - serious assaults, not just some inappropriate touching, blurred boundaries, whatever - he targeted women when they were alone, vulnerable women and girls that he had noticed on the street, in their homes etc., came with a weapon every time, and used it, there was also a good degree of premeditation and evidence of trying to hide his tracks afterwards.

The only saving grace for all these women and girls (some 15 of them that I know of) was that he was and still is a little runt, and not very smart, so they fought him off eventually, and he got caught every time. And almost every time he was released due to young age. Now he’s an adult, so he got to spend a few short years in a jail, where some staff seem to be really charmed by him. The sickest thing was that it was women, not men putting pressure to paint this “poor kid, he doesn’t know what he’s doing, but he’ll be all right with the right mentorship”. His own family have disowned him (including men), and no amount of mentorship has ever made any difference to him. One particular woman manager insisted I interpret his actions as “seeking love”, and that harp on this shit in my report. Fuck that. She wanted me to skip entirely the most recent documents and accurate assessments of his recidivism written by men (I wish I could meet them, they sound like real HVM), and instead cite some old crap written by female flying monkeys of this criminal.

This rot from inside the system made me really sick, and my view of the world very jaded. I was sick of knowing that my job was not to find ways to stop perpetrators from hurting more women, but to make the episodes between their recurrent incarcerations longer and somehow - their crimes lesser. But that still meant that women will continue getting targeted by these wastes of life. What I took from this whole experience that despite popular belief, first world countries’ justice systems are way too lenient, and instead of continuously handing out 2-3 year sentences for horrific r@ape to the same perp, we should be slamming him with 10 years at least, ensuring he strays behind the bars and doesn’t create more victims. I also used to be anti capital punishment, which was all good and well in theory. Now that I know how things work in practice, I am not so sure.

I felt I had to resign before I said something I would regret, and now I’m far, far away from this field of work, having moved onto happier, better pastures.

Thanks for letting me get this off my chest.

P.S.: I don’t know how this category got assigned, and I cant see the menu where I can choose a category. The whole page looks jumbled up a bit, and is as slow as a nineties webpage with a dialup modem...