Rosemary Penwarden, [a 64 year old] climate activist in New Zealand, faces more than 10 years in jall for a fake letter canceling an oil conference.
Three years later, after a trial in the Dunedin District Court, Penwarden was found guilty on Wednesday of two charges of creating and using a forged document.
“It was a surprise,” she said. “I’m reminded of the topsy-turvy world we’re in. It should not be the grandmothers on trial, it should be the oil industry, it should be those people who are making massive profits off the destruction of all of our futures.”
Seriously. Why the fuck is it even a possibility for ten years of prison over something like this? It’s crazy to me that a nonviolent crime could be punished so severely. I mean, why do we have prison? Is it to remove dangerous people from society? That’s certainly how I think it should be, but these sorts of punishments really show that it’s all about sating the bloodlust of victims.
If you are a powerful person than an activist is the most dangerous person to you and your position. So in a fucked up way the sentencing disparity makes perfect sense.
Look, forgery can be a serious crime and having a max penalty of 10 years seems okay to me.
In this instance though, max sentence definitely isnt deserved! From what I know of our justice system, I think discharge without conviction is a real possibility and seems the best possible outcome.
But yeah fuck pepanz.
What purpose does throwing someone in prison for ten years do though for something like forgery? Would it not be better if they were forced to do community service and lost access to the tools that led to them committing forgery? Why pay money to remove someone from society for a decade? Is it to teach any other potential forgerers a lesson? Is it to teach the forgerer themself a lesson? Is that really a lesson that needs to be worth a decade in a cell to learn? The world’s justice systems have generally erred too much on the side of retribution instead of rehabilitation. It’s especially sinister when you consider how much our capitalist systems place more value on things like capital over people’s lives and wellbeings. To be clear, I consider myself to be a capitalist, but a social democrat that believes in heavy regulations on our capitalist systems. I think our retributive, excessively pro-business justice system is a clear example of what happens when you let capitalism go unfettered and bleed into every aspect of our lives. Forgery is not violent. Most of the time it is not actively dangerous. Why don’t we come up with more creative and proactive ways of punishing people that would benefit people at large rather than ruin the criminal’s entire life? Even in a case where I am not on the criminal’s side I find myself pretty appalled that ten years could even possibly be on the table in a forgery case.
I’m going to guess that the upper end of the sentencing for forgery is probably for situations like human trafficking (forging documents) or smuggling endangered species, ivory, etc. At least that’s the level it should be for.