Essay On Brock Turner Neutralisation

Criminals convicted of sexual offences such as rape and molestation often receive sentences that are not severe enough to account for their crime. These lax sentences are due to the fact that rape has had ambiguous definitions in the past and portions of the blame are shifted onto the victim or considered out of the offender’s control. A contemporary example of this is Brock Turner, convicted sexual offender and ex-swimmer of Stanford University. Turner digitally penetrated an intoxicated, unconscious woman (anonymous but known as Emily Doe) behind a dumpster and served three months in prison. Differential Association states that criminal behaviour is learned from intimate associates, like Turner’s swim-team friends. Neutralisation is the

process of learning to rationalise crime by shifting blame and trivialising the crime. Brock Turner’s case is wrought with neutralisation. Turner’s feeble sentence isn’t an exception to otherwise proportionate punishments for rapists; it’s the rule. His statement, the victim’s statement, media coverage and the public perspective can all be analysed using Neutralisation Theory and Differential Association to get a better understanding of why rapists are not sufficiently punished.

Neutralisation Theory and Differential Association both stem from the Positivist School of Criminology meaning that both surmise that punishment should fit the criminal not the crime. This simply isn’t applicable to violent or sexual crime. An example of differential association that Cressey used was children becoming more delinquent the longer they lived in poor circumstances. The first half of Turner’s statement to the judge talks about his naivety regarding the impact alcohol consumption can have on a person and his experience learning to navigate college parties from the behaviour of others. Turner attributed his expectation of intimacy occurring at co-ed, alcohol infused parties to seeing his friends meet girls at a party and leave with them after dancing while intoxicated. Turner became more expectant of intimacy the longer he spent in the college environment where he perceived it as the norm. The second half of Turner’s statement to the judge rationalises penetration of an incoherently intoxicated woman. Turner stated he would never have penetrated his victim if she weren’t willing and that he was unable to comprehend that she was not coherent enough to give consent because he was also intoxicated. These statements are Turner’s attempts at neutralising his offences to relieve some of his guilt and to avoid being viewed as criminal in the eyes of society. Sykes and Matza wrote that neutralisation is facilitated by social norms; the social norm in the case of Brock Turner is alcohol. According to his statement, Turner’s intoxication convinced him that “making out” was a precursor to sex regardless of circumstance and prevented him from acknowledging that sex in public was not acceptable, particularly behind a dumpster, on the ground.

Brock Turner’s victim released a seven thousand, one hundred and thirty-eight word impact statement that was read in court and then disseminated through social media and mainstream news outlets.

The statement sardonically mocked the neutralisation of Turner’s offences in immediate news coverage. She compared her rape to a car accident, suggesting perhaps the car liked being hit in the same way that people neutralise sex crimes by suggesting perhaps the victim “wanted it”. The victim statement refuted aspects of Turner’s statement that he’d explained away with intoxication. She stated he never planned to take her to his room and that he told detectives that he didn’t know how they got behind a dumpster; both aspects of the night that, in his own statement, he’d attributed to drunken excitement and clumsiness rather than calculated choices. Victim blaming is a documented form of neutralisation, particularly when the woman is a victim such as in this case. Turner’s victim stated that because she was unconscious and thus couldn’t remember the assault, the jury would only have his word to go on and that he would say he was confused and not take the blame. The statement also mocked Turner’s “learned” behaviours. The Differential Association that taught him a party with girls and alcohol meant sex failed to teach him to help a person up if they fall over from intoxication rather trying to have sex with them on the ground. Victims of violent and sex crimes are the reason that

the punishment can’t be suited to the criminal, but to the crime as the victim has to be revictimised in the judicial process in order to get any sort of justice. To consider three months in prison a proportionate for a crime that will impact the victim for decades is preposterous.

Mainstream media contributed to the neutralisation of Brock Turner’s offences and participated in learned, victim-blaming journalism that has become too common in today’s news reporting.

In the months after the assault, Turner was known as an “ex-Stanford swimmer”, “Stanford University Athlete” and “All-American Swimmer” who was accused of rape by a woman who was “heavily drinking”. Neutralisation trivialises crime and victims. Humans make up the justice system and are susceptible to believing something is irrelevant or excused if they are told it is. Sixteen months after the assault, Turner was found guilty of assaulting with intent to rape, sexually penetrating an intoxicated person with a foreign object and sexually penetrating an unconscious person with a foreign object. Brock Turner can’t be referred to as a rapist under California law because “rape”, in California, is non-consensual sexual intercourse. “Sexual intercourse” in California is penetration of gentalia by the penis but Turner used his fingers thus he did not “rape” his victim. The definition of rape is inconsistent from state to state and when compared to federal law. The inconsistency makes prosecution and punishment of sex offenders irregular because they’re open each individual judge’s opinion on what is sufficient. The media both imitates and enforces rape culture by victim blaming. Part-and-parcel of that is sympathising with the offender by outlining positive aspects of the person and the loss

they incur while enduring their punishments. Though the media is progressing in terms of discussions of race, gender, sex and violence, for decades it has perpetuated ideas that allowed rape to occur and silenced victims when it did because that’s what the public did. Victim blaming isn’t a crime but society has learned to do it to avoid seeing someone otherwise “good” as a criminal, to do that they neutralise the crime by making it the victim’s fault.

Public opinion on this case varied. It wasn’t until Turner was given a pitiful sentence that the world took notice. Eighteen months after the assault, Turner was sentenced to six months in prison followed by three years probation, ordered to register as a sex offender and attend sex offender rehabilitation. His father read a letter to the judge in court before the judge sentences Turner. The letter said that Turner will never achieve his dreams and that it was a steep price to pay for the digital penetration of an unconscious, intoxicated girl. Turner’s father referred to the digital penetration as “twenty minutes of action”, effectively neutralising the act by denying both victim and injury due to the swiftness of the assault. On the same day, the victim impact statement went viral and every person with a wife, sister, child, brother; everyone who had been raped, known someone who had been raped or was every afraid that they would be raped had read the statement and the narrative shifted from victim blaming to something different. The victim impact statement was so succinct and aware of victim blaming that it bypassed the phenomena all together. The impact statement was shared over eleven million times in four days, it was read out loud on CNN and the Vice President wrote her an open letter calling her courageous young woman. In sharing her experience, Emily Doe poked holes in the habitual silencing of rape victims in society. The acclaim that the open letter was received with draws attention to the fact that victims generally don’t broadcast their stories because of the fear of backlash and the media chooses not to cover their stories either. Unlearning victim blaming and offender sympathising is going to take time but at the end of it the media will be better for it, furthermore; the public will be better informed without bias in journalism.

Differential Association when considering most crimes makes sense. Monkey see, monkey do. It makes sense for the case of Brock Turner, the friend he looked up to were grinding on girls while drunk so he decided to grind on girls while drunk but that’s where the similarities ended. Turner didn’t see is friend take a girl behind a dumpster and put their fingers inside her. He didn’t see his friend salivating over a barely conscious woman who couldn’t form a coherent sentence. He interpreted his actions as acceptable because he considered them comparable to the actions people he held in high-esteem. Differential association implied a system of learning, which to a degree applies to Turner but the way he interacted with what he learned, his interpretation of it resulted in crime that was otherwise not being committed. In this case, neutralisation occurred in denying victim, responsibility and injury. The victim exposed the neutralisation in her impact statement, which heavily influenced public opinion regarding the case, particularly considering victim blaming and calling the sex offender an “All-American Swimmer”. The biggest issue with neutralisation in crime is that it can be a subconscious effort to relieve guilt but in this case, it seemed to be for the benefit of the accused to avoid the maximum fourteen years he could have had in prison. Media neutralisation of Turner’s crimes stopped almost entirely following the release of the victim impact statement, likely due to the entirely justified incredulous response to a sexual offender being dubbed an “All-American Swimmer”

Leading up to sentencing, Brock Turner was just another white boy awaiting his punishment. Emily Doe was another rape victim waiting for her rapist to walk out of the courtroom with just a slap on the wrist. In their statements they told their own story of what happened on January 18th 2015. The judge took to heart Turner’s while the public and the media absorbed Emily Doe’s. Turner used differential association as his way of fitting into college, he excused his drinking because he was trying to fit in at college and he did not admit to rape because he was intoxicated and he thought she wanted it. Turner used neutralisation to minimise his crime and his victim and she felt that; from the day she learned what happened to her in a newspaper to all the days she spent in court being interrogated and blamed for her own assault. Eventually, society will unlearn the tendencies that allow neutralisation to be believed; victim blaming will be a thing of the past and perhaps rape won’t happen. For now, there are protestors outside Brock Turner’s house including one with a gun and a sign that says “shoot your local rapist.”