Summary
A French court sentenced Dominique Pelicot, 72, to 20 years in prison for drugging and raping his ex-wife, Gisele Pelicot, and arranging for other men to rape her while unconscious over nearly a decade.
Of the 51 co-defendants, all were found guilty, with sentences ranging from less than 10 years to 20.
The trial, marked by shocking evidence, spurred national debate on rape culture and consent laws.
Gisèle’s courage in waiving anonymity has galvanized feminist movements, with campaigners calling her a national hero for sparking societal and legal reflection on sexual violence.
Interesting that there weren’t multiple charges of rape he was found guilty for, like would happen in the states. Each rape occurrence would have been a separate charge, and each one would have carried a 20 year maximum, so he’d be serving hundreds of years easy.
This is generally to ensure that even if he gets some of his years commuted for good behavior while inside prison, he’s still got hundreds of years left to go. Making it a death sentence.
With that said, the US prison system is archaic and punitive, so I might need to re-evaluate my views.
In Germany at least, jail time doesn’t scale linearly with the count of crimes or victims. Jail time isn’t primarily meant as revenge or punishment, but more as the time required to revisit the mistakes you did and to make you again a functional member of society.
It won’t necessarily make a difference if you murder one person or 10 or 100. Typically, the sentence will be 15 years. If the judge thinks you’re too dangerous to ever be released again they can order you to stay in prison after the 15 years end (“Sicherheitsverwahrung”) but also this decision will be revisited at some point.
Jail time isn’t primarily meant as revenge or punishment, but more as the time required to revisit the mistakes you did and to make you again a functional member of society.
Dear Americans;
This is what happens when your prisons don’t rely on private profit motives to operate.
Signed: The civilised world.
I always enjoy the Americans having their minds blown when they find out how a rehabilitative justice system works.
Normally I’m 100% for this, it’s just that this particular case seems so evil and egregious…
Are German prisons as scary as US (from what I’ve seen on TV) prisons or South African Prisons?
I’d rather die than spend two seconds in Pollsmoor prison.
Are German prisons as scary as US (from what I’ve seen on TV) prisons or South African Prisons?
Nope, not even close from what I hear about the US prison system. It still sucks obviously and we just had a scandal in Augsburg where inmates have been tortured (beatings, not enough water provided, forced to stay naked, sleep on the floor etc).
No, I think there are some that are comparable to mid-class hotels and some that are a lower standard. But in general none should be as bad that you’d rather die if you didn’t want to die before your imprisonment.
Here’s a great video that addresses US vs German prisons:
In France, the punishments do not communicate. If one is found guilty of multiple charges, only the highest punishment is applied. Also the law specifies maximum punishments for the various crimes.
Wait, really? If you kill three people vs one it’s the same sentence? That seems a bit odd. What’s the deterrent from just committing the same crime 50x?
In the case of murder, the sentence is up to life in prison. So, in this case it will depend on the circumstances. Accidentally killing someone will not give you the same punishment as murdering several people.
Let’s say, if you do a robbery and kill someone, you, Robert gives you 2 years in prison and murder 20 years (I am making the numbers up, I don’t actually know) then you will be sentence for only 20 years (because this already includes 5 years).
I think the body horror of a Warhammer 40k servitor where you are trapped in an unending waking nightmare forced to perform a menial task completely unable to move or talk by removing your humanity and agency to be an independent person by replacing body parts with crude machinery, and kept alive unable to sleep with drugs in constant unending pain and anguish, and unable to interact with people consistently for years due to being placed within a random distant cold industrial alcove, is the proper punishment for rapists.
Edit: unable to scream and forced to speak through an AI voice encoder, like these people. They all look the same, but its implied they are different people because the brutal process to create servitors strips an individual of their unique identity.
With that said, the US prison system is archaic and punitive, so I might need to re-evaluate my views.
In this instance, the US justice system wins out because it discourages continuing to do more crimes.
