in the wake of this tweet by mike mcmahon confirming more details about the gavin mckenna situation, i feel like i can make a post on the discourse happening. tldr: many people who are calling for his head are ignoring the nuance of the situation and how the criminal justice system works!
of course, this is all my opinion but before you come into my ask box asking about my credentials: fourth year criminology major, heading to law school next year. i know ball and don't try to tell me i fucking don't when i study this for a living.
he was almost 100% overcharged for the altercation that happened.
it has been proven time and time again in criminological research that police often overcharge when they make arrests, mostly because they want to look like they're doing their jobs (ridiculous) and also because they want to have a variety of different charges that can be pleaded down. two of the mckenna charges are summary charges, which i wouldn't care too much about because like misdemeanour and harrassment could mean possibly anything......the important ones here are aggravated and simple assault. likely they gave him both cause it was reported that he broke the victim's jaw (therefore causing serious bodily harm). still, it is obvious that he's being overcharged here, when they could've just slapped him with aggravated assault and called it a day
2. he is not going to prison for 20 years. and you shouldn't want him to???
that is oversensationalization talk, and it's ridiculous. it's meant to scare you, but think about it! he is 18, they are not going to send an 18 year old to prison for twenty years! he'll likely be able to be able to plead it down, and maybe even get the charges dropped entirely depending on how things go. i personally think the end result here will be community service or some sort of probationary period. regardless though, put two braincells together and think about why it isn't productive in any way shape or form to send an 18 year old to jail for more years than they've been alive.
and it's not just "he's getting off easy cause he's rich and can just pay them off" no, it's because nobody in their goddamn right mind is sending an 18 year old to prison for two decades for that. is assault a serious crime? absolutely. but a court will no doubt look at his age and make accommodations for the fact that his frontal lobe hasn't developed. same thing applies to the "he's an adult he should know better" argument, like he turned 18 two months ago and will no doubt be able to plead it down because the serious bodily harm he committed did not come from the use of a weapon.
regardless, we should be trying to make the world more rehabilitative and restorative for people who commit crime, not worse. zero tolerance punishments do nothing to dissuade crime and more people calling for penal populist punishments is EXACTLY what we DO NOT need for people who are unfairly charged. i'm not saying gavin has been because it's very clear that he did commit the crime, but the solution is not to send him away to prison to show that he "paying for his actions". think about how that would sound for any 18 year old that ISN'T a hockey player. you should not want any 18 year old to experience that.
3. yes, even if he's white passing, his indigenous heritage matters.
his mother, who he was with, is not white passing. he is a proud member of the Tr'ondëk Hwëch'in First Nation. take a moment and think, given the context of missing and murdered indigenous women in canada (many of whom have been so because of things like sex work and prostitution) why an alleged comment against his mother might piss him off. and then for those arguing that he still shouldn't resort to violence, i hope you know that the canadian government has been incredibly shitty to indigenous peoples for centuries and idk that might have created some generational trauma? or smth? wherein the only way out of being run over is to fight back?
racism, microaggressions, and discrimination also still exist regardless of whether or not you "present" as white. it is just as hurtful to be removed of that part of your identity as it is to be discriminated against. there are many people being willfully "colourblind" rn and saying he always gave you bad vibes or that you knew something like this might happen. i hope you take a real close look at yourself and wonder why you thought an indigenous boy could have a penance for violence, and what stereotypes that pepetuates.
4. no this is not an issue about hockey culture.
him punching someone has nothing to do with hockey culture. you can say all you want about his white teammates hyping him up like it's an amazing thing (that i would consider to be a product of toxic hockey culture) but gavin mckenna's actions have EVERYTHING to do with his own motivations and the context of the situation, NOT hockey. he didn't do it because "he knew he could get away with it". trust me when i say that no minority person ever thinks that about crime. minorities on average are overrepresented in criminal statistics. they never get away with it.
5. it's acab until its an indigenous boy being charged
please do not make the mistake of making yourself so "woke" that you start to identify with right-wing ideologies. "there should be consequences for this!" there are. there will be. consequences does NOT equal years of a young person's life in jail. because they were overcharged, because they are indigenous, because they reacted in an emotional way one time. i would say this about any young person who commits crime because we KNOW that people age out of that type of delinquency! violent or not! it is proven in the literature over and over and over again. saying that he deserves this, that he should be in jail, doesn't help. you are perpetuating an unequal system that allows the police to continue their overcharging, that allows incarceration to continue to be a "viable" solution to crime, that allows minorities to be hurt over and over again just because they are deemed to "dangerous" in some way shape or form. acab period. not just when you agree with their decisions.
