@WrongKindOfFeminist @OtterlyAstounding
I totally get your anger. I am furious at the leniency of rape sentences too.
But in this case, I am approaching it from the perspective of someone who works with teenagers, and with prisoners.
I have worked in a school with boys like this. Low intelligence. SEN. Poor impulse control. Usually chaotic home lives and poor parenting in the mix - often parents with low intelligence and SEN too, and drug/alcohol abuse, domestic violence, emotional/physical abuse, poverty, neglect, etc. A lot of them wound up in trouble with the police but they were not evil or monsters. They were children who had been horrifically let down by the adults around them, and hadn't been given the tools to function normally in society.
When it comes to the boys in this case, the reality is we can't lock them up for life for what they have done. The law doesn't allow us to.
So we have to think about - when their sentence ends, what do we want the outcome to be? That they are back out on the streets raping more girls? Or that they are able to reintegrate into society successfully without reoffending?
Statistically, the latter option is much more attainable if they don't go to prison. That will have partly been why the original judge went down that sentencing route. Young people are statistically proven to be less likely to reoffend if they don't go to prison but instead serve a community sentence (up to 50% less likely), and that is the result that is better ultimately for society as a whole, even if it's not immediately better for the victim.
This is the challenging and difficult nature of discussing sentencing and punishment and so on. It's not just about the victim and what's best for them. Of course it should be, but it can't be, because if, as in the majority of cases of crime, there is a reality that the perpetrator will not be in prison forever, there has to also be thought to what the outcome of that will be, and how to reduce the chances of there being future victims of that perpetrator.
As someone who volunteers in the sector, has interacted with a lot of prisoners and people working in the justice system, and has done a lot of reading around the subject, I am clearly coming at this from a different perspective than the majority of people on this thread, and I don't think that's a problem - it's a discussion forum, and all views should be valid and open to exploring.
I am angry about what happened to the girls. I am so sad for them and the trauma they have experienced, and I have a huge amount of empathy for them and their families.
But having taught hundreds of 14 year olds in my career, I can tell you that something has gone very, very wrong in these boys' home lives for them to have done this. It doesn't excuse what they have done or mean they don't need to be punished - I am just not convinced prison is the right form of punishment if the desired outcome is rehabilitation, which in my view, it should be when we're looking at people who are very young and have a lot of life left to live.