While the battle to eliminate the simplistic, and dangerously ineffective, imposition of mandatory minimum sentences for last generation’s epidemic, drugs, continues to be fought, new voices, who neither learn from history nor demonstrate the capacity to grasp that their outrage and sad tears won’t change the impact, call to do it all over again. Because this time it touches an issue that they care about.

What should we do with the anger inspired by Brock Turner, the former Stanford swimmer who was sentenced to just six months in jail for sexual assault?

A movement to recall the judge who ordered that sentence, Aaron Persky, continues to gain support, with a celebrity-studded fund-raiser this month.

In California, legislators have proposed several bills meant to prevent short sentences for sexual assaults, including one that would require a mandatory-minimum term for anyone convicted of sexually assaulting an intoxicated or unconscious person.

What should we do? Well, there’s always nothing, because one instance where a sentence doesn’t conform to your political agenda doesn’t require that the judge be burned at the stake or the law be burned to the ground.  And indeed, even Feministing’s Alexandra Brodsky realizes the idea of re-introducing mandatory minimums is terrible.

We share in the outrage at Mr. Turner’s actions, but worry that this law could cause more harm than good. History shows that this reform would not deter violence and most likely would perpetuate punitive racial and class disparities.

It’s unclear whom “we” might refer to, and while I fear that Brodsky suffers from multiple personality disorder, unless she’s a member of the royal family, but at least she’s learned something from history, even if it’s not quite the right lesson.

But inflexible mandatory minimum sentences, like the kind the California legislators want, are not the answer to our anger. During the second half of the 20th century, federal and state governments established mandatory minimum sentences, with a special focus on drug offenses. Many supporters saw minimums as a way to be “tough on crime,” but some also saw an opportunity to reduce disparities in sentences. Reformers worried that people like Brock Turner, white men with access to expensive lawyers, received more lenient sentences than minorities and poor people charged with the same crimes. These advocates hoped that minimums might make sentences fairer.

Well, yes, inflexible mandatory minimums (if they’re mandatory, would they be anything other than “inflexible”?)  were one of the big “tough on crime” answers, because nobody really gave a damn about the fact that while they would capture the bad dudes you wanted to put away, they would still be there for the not-so-bad dudes you didn’t.

But no, this had nothing whatsoever to do with reform, with “white men with access to expensive lawyers.” That’s not even a little bit true. That’s the presentist fantasy of social justice warriors, who see nothing shameless about manufacturing false history to conform with their feelz.

Drug dealers weren’t white men, and drug dealers had tons of money and access to the most expensive lawyers available. More importantly, they saw lawyers as a cost of doing business and had no qualms about spending good money on good lawyers. And still they went to prison because of mandatory minimums.

But so too did the mommy mules and the poor Hispanic kids selling nickel bags on street corners. So too did the buyers who carried more than legislators decided was acceptable for personal use, and so were tainted by “intent to sell” elements that turned a buyer into a drug kingpin. The only time a white guy got pinched was when he was stupid enough to drive his shiny new BMW with Jersey plates up St. Nicholas Avenue in search of a score.

With mandatory minimums, the privileged can still get off easy. Leading victims’ groups oppose mandatory minimums in part because judges and juries may be less likely to convict at all if they are uncomfortable with imposing a long sentence on a “sympathetic” (read: white and wealthy) person.

Huh? Because reasons? No, the privileged can’t “still get off easy,” and they don’t. And no, juries are not “less likely to convict” because they’re not told that their verdict will result in a mandatory minimum sentence. Don’t they teach this stuff at Yale Law School, in between your Intersectional Feminism and the Law classes?

Unfortunately, mandatory minimums have proved a failed experiment, contributing to prison overcrowding, racial imbalances and overly punitive sentences — all without, studies show, reducing crime.

Finally, a clear and accurate statement of fact. So what’s driving the cries for new mandatory minimums?

None of this is to say that Mr. Turner and the judge are not worthy of our disgust. There are better ways, though, to make courts responsive to rape and its victims. Some states have revised their criminal codes so that physical force is not a defining metric of the harm wrought by sexual assault and California should do the same. Consistency in sentencing can come through setting a ceiling, not a floor, for prison time.

Ah. Your disgust at one sentence means everything had to change. Of course it does, because no person you hate should ever be allowed to “get away” with a sentence of which you don’t approve. But what does “setting a ceiling” have to do with anything? Raising the max sentence has what, exactly, to do with “consistency in sentencing”?  Oh wait, that’s a rational question, and use of logic is just “mansplaining.”

Justice and accountability, then, will require increased access to the civil legal system where victims, not prosecutors, can decide whether and how to bring a case. The law in California makes it easier to take sexual abusers to court than it is in most other states, but legal representation is often prohibitively expensive. We need better state and private funding for legal services for survivors.

So they don’t teach civil litigation at Yale either? Bummer. There’s this thing called a “contingent fee” which makes lawyers free on the front end to victims of harm, where they take a third (or so) off the back end. When did free become “prohibitively expensive”?  Unless, of course, there’s no tort or damages upon which to recover, in which case no lawyers will take a case on contingency. But then, if there is neither a cause of action nor damages, it’s a pretty good reason not to sue, no matter how sad you feel for the “survivors.”

As for “state and private funding” for survivors, there isn’t enough funding for indigent defendants, but you want to skim off that for “survivors”? Oh wait, indigent defendants might be accused of rape. Uh oh. That’s a problem. Maybe they should deny representation to indigent defendants accused of rape and give it instead to survivors?

Tolerance for rape is an old but freshly infuriating story. Victims deserve a new solution, not a stale policy.

Mandatory minimums are a legal and societal nightmare, even if not for the reasons dancing around in your fantasy.  As for victims deserving a new solution, one sentence with which you disagree isn’t a cause for systemic upheaval and another dive down the rabbit hole. Be infuriated all you want, but an outcome with which you disagree for one victim doesn’t justify disastrous systemic change, no matter how many tears you cry.