It may have its own revolutionary purposes, but in the US it's basically just an excuse to kill black people and must be abolished immediately
the death penalty is punative punishment and a part of the carceral state that must be destroyed. no punishment should exist at all for crime.
now, that's after we establish communism and I think that it is naive to not keep the ultimate form of violence around for enemies of the people during a revolution. like say CEOs, cops, heads of state, and so on. people who are too dangerous to be left around and their deaths are symbolic for the violence they have caused. could this entrench capital punishment? yeah, it could, but, the guillotine is the engine of revolution and once revolution is over we do not need it any more and can work on a society that reforms people than punishes them.
in general for questions on criminal jusice, I would defer to the works of Angela Davis and especially 'Are Prisons Obsolete?'
I am not gonna spend time detailing out what other people have said on this, but just go and check out what Angela Davis says on it all. punishment does not work, it is not helpful, and the ideological ways it imposes itself upon the rest of society via that dehumanisation are toxic
"Are Prisons Obsolete" is a great critique of modern U.S. prisons, but it doesn't offer much in the way of alternate ideas on how to handle crime. As I recall, it also doesn't look at foreign prisons that radically change what imprisonment looks like:
"This is like living in a holiday camp," Mikko*, a prisoner at Ojoinen open prison near the city of Hämeenlinna, told Yle News.
Mikko's view is pretty common, and it's not without foundation. Prisoners in the Nordic country get their own rooms, access to plenty of recreation and are transferred to open prisons quickly to prepare for their release...
Once the working day is over and the evening meal has been eaten and cleared away, the prisoners are free to spend their time as they wish. There are exercise areas, television rooms and many prisoners have video game consoles in their cells. Mikko, who served the first part of his sentence at a closed prison, welcomes the freedom of choice and movement that he enjoys at Ojoinen -- and the wider atmosphere it creates -- compared to his earlier prison experience...
"It is hard to argue that open prison systems don’t work," says Tyni. "You can consider the system as a progressive system where a prisoner starts his or her sentence in a closed prison, moves later into an open prison, continues to electronic monitoring out in society and lastly to parole. It is a step-by-step process based on an individual sentence plan."
Critiquing the current system is good, but it's not enough. It has to be accompanied by ideas on how to do things better.
It actually does. Doesn't mean it's very good but it very much does work, albeit not always. But it's not exactly an earth shattering revelation that sometimes the reason people don't do illegal stuff because they're afraid of punishment. That book has a major issue, which is that while it's fine as a critique of prisons in the US, but if it's supposed to show you can just not have punishment/prisons or something it doesn't really do that. There's a difference between reforming and improving, even radically changing punishment and focusing on restoration and rehabilitation and completely rejecting the idea of punishment, which is just something that won't ever work.
But it’s not exactly an earth shattering revelation that sometimes the reason people don’t do illegal stuff because they’re afraid of punishment.
To elaborate on this, deterrence literature usually focuses on three separate aspects of punishment:
- Severity of punishment
- Certainty of punishment
- Swiftness of punishment
The consensus is that certainty matters a lot, and severity matters much less. There's some research that suggests swiftness matters more than severity, too, or at least is a significant factor in deterring crime.
Short term, there's enough evidence that severe punishments don't do much to deter crime to support dramatically ratcheting back whatever punitive measures we're handing out. Long term, I could see ways to increase swiftness of punishment that wouldn't make the system less fair (e.g., significantly expand the capacity of the legal system so defendants can get quality representation much more quickly). What's really difficult is the certainty piece. It's hard to think of ways to make punishment more certain that wouldn't expand the already-ubiquitous surveillance state.
Agree with everything you've said, just wanted to add that contemporary attempts to increase certainty (mandatory minimums etc) have all leaned towards more severe punishment, in ways that risk unjust outcomes.
Yes, I'm not arguing severity vs certainty vs swiftness or whatever, just that punishment in general is a deterrent.
Swiftness btw is good in general not just for punishment. I have a friend who took about 8 years to be acquitted after being arrested in a protest. 8 years of your life spent in trials and under restriction is way too long, especially when you were acquitted anyways
Good point about how swiftness would help people wrongly accused of crimes, too. Note also that many people in your friend's situation would take a plea deal so they can get back to life (especially if they're in pretrial custody), leading to innocent people getting criminal records.
Against in a bourgeois reactionary state. That's not to say they become OK under socialism either, but in a system that is inherently unjust by design, there can be no just application of the death penalty.
Executing someone like Charles Manson or Jeffrey Dahmer is good and fine, but the US government obviously is too evil to have access to it.
I mean, it it gives the victims' families closure I still think it's fine.
Again though, in a white supremacist dictatorship of capital, it's just too dangerous to let the government kill people.
Ok but thats literally just punishment for the sake of self satisfaction that someone is suffering, at least for me the only somewhat legit rationale for the death penalty is that the person in question will never reasonably stop being a danger to others without essentially removing their ability to function at all and therefore its a quicker end for everyone involved.
Though even in that case in an ideal scenario its preferable to have facilities were people are able to live out their days as well as possible if they so choose, death by the state should preferably only be used in extreme cases were there is either not resources or the person in question is exceptionally dangerous, or if the person chooses death over confinement.
