This has always been a question of mine - how would a communist state deal with homicides, robbery, thefts, burglaries, and other nuisance crime
End poverty.
Institute anger management, conflict resolution, and family/child-rearing educational courses in all high schools and available for free for all adults.
Give everyone the same access to the legal system that rich people currently have access to today for conflict resolution of people’s disputes.
This will solve about 90% of it.
See: http://aworldwithoutpolice.org/study-guide/ for more good reading
anger management is huge
most people don't know that a large portion of the homicides that happen in America are due to personal disputes; people pull guns so they don't look like they lost an argument.
And most disputes center around economic survival in the face of capitalist enforced poverty. End poverty->end crime.
Most of the rest are because there are no accessible dispute resolution services for anyone but those few people rich enough to afford lawyers and lawsuits to settle disputes.
And both would be reduced if there were any modicum of an attempt to address the rampant toxic masculinity that is destroying our society currently.
And the economic threats and exclusion that goes on.
When I was very stressed cause I was very close to being without a home and my bosses wouldn't pay my insurance and also held back half a year of pay I was very agitated. That was made worse by having become sick and still having to fight a multi front battle.
Having had a secure alternative safe living situation which safe access to food and healthcare, as well as spaces and rooms to have social integration I wouldn't have had much of the trouble I got now. Having had social support when I was sick to care for some reproductive for for the two month would've made a change for the next two years, too, as it took so long to claw myself back to a safe and secure living situation.
If you have those things and structures in which you get cherished and even are bettering our world there is little crime to be done, except petty or habitual crime. With petty crime I mean stuff like eating more helpings of the cake than would be your share.
Graeber writes at some length in The Dawn of Everything about how certain Native American tribes (who were communist in all but name) had no central authority whatsoever to enforce punishment, but instead had strong social connections that made everyone accountable for each other. This combined with the fact that there was really no need to commit crimes - they lived in such an equitable and afluent condition that there was hardly any crime to speak of.
If someone stole food, for example (this is a bad example, I can't remember the actual example Graber uses) the thief himself wouldn't be punished retributively, rather his family or friends would apologize on his behalf and make restitution. It's an ingenious and compassionate way to think about justice, and it worked so well precisely because the communistic structure of their society inherently addressed the material basis for criminality, namely poverty.
Thing is that what you have in your hands after the revolution is a world and society that has gone through hundreds to thousands of years under feudalism , capitalism and various religious and cultural paradigms. Until the entire socioeconomic structure is radicaly transformed and until generations grow up under it that approach Grabber describes isn't feasible. It's something to work towards down the line but it may only be workable decades and decades after a revolution.
Based on the OP prompt you have to plan an approach based of how people are now and how society is the day after the revolution(that isn't even global necessarily) . Barely begining a slow wholscale transformation towards communism but far from achieving it. So it has to work with the humanity and deep rooted societal and cultural scars capitalism leaves as with and for however long it takes to move away from them
Also it sounds like that approach is specifically tied to people who would generally stay and live in proximity with their family and the same people for most of their lives to form very close bonds like that, which seems like even if you have people who have lived under a communist socioeconomic structure is not going to be the case due to the ease of transport.
Our view of Soviet repression is skewed by the upper intelligentsia which was for good reason under close political watch.
Bukharin on the subject from the perspective of the Bolsheviks after taking power
When we come to consider the punishments inflicted by proletarian courts of justice for criminal offences which have no counter- revolutionary bearing, we find them to be radically different from those inflicted for similar offences by bourgeois courts. This is what we should expect. The great majority of crimes committed in bourgeois society are either direct infringements of property rights or are indirectly connected with property. It is natural that the bourgeois State should take vengeance upon criminals, and that the punishments inflicted by bourgeois society should be various expressions of the vengeful sentiments of the infuriated owner. Just as absurd have been and are the punishments inflicted for casual offences, or for offences which arise out of the fundamentally imperfect character of personal relationships in bourgeois society (offences connected with the family relationships of society; those resulting from romanticist inclinations; those due to alcoholism or to mental degeneration; those due to ignorance, or to a suppression of social instinct, etc.). The proletarian law-court has to deal with offences for which the ground has been prepared by bourgeois society, by the society whose vestiges are still operative. A large number of professional criminals, trained to become such in the old order, survive to give work for the proletarian courts. But these courts are entirely free from the spirit of revenge. They cannot take vengeance upon people simply because these happen to have lived in bourgeois society. This is why our courts manifest a revolutionary change in the character of their decisions. More and more frequently do we find that conditional sentences are imposed, punishments that do not involve any punishment, 'their chief aim being to prevent a repetition of the offence. Another method is that of social censure, a method that can only be effective in a classless society, one in which a social consciousness and a social sense of responsibility have greatly increased. Imprisonment without any occupation, enforced parasitism, the penal method so frequently employed under the tsarist régime, is replaced by the enforcement of social labour. The aim of the proletarian courts is to ensure that the damage done to society by the criminal shall be made good by him through the performance of an increased amount of social labour. Finally, when the court has to deal with a habitual criminal (one whose liberation after his sentence has been performed will entail danger to the lives of other citizens), isolation of the criminal from society is enforced, but in such away as to give the offender full opportunities for moral regeneration.
Idk, that seems to introduce a potential for moral hazard. We definitely wouldn't want an incentive to broaden the definition of a "habitual criminal" if there's a need for dangerous jobs to be filled.
I think it might also end up not really working to reintegrate someone into the community, particularly dangerous jobs are not usually that open to the public to observe, and if they are deliberately filled with "habitual criminals" then that might create a bad reputation for people who have performed those jobs.
I havent put an extreme amount of thought into it but it seems like it might work better to try and spread "community service" or whatever equivalent program this would be into as many appropriate workplaces as possible to not form a specific reputation of any one type of job as relegated to criminals, plus some jobs will be more immediately connected to the community and help build or rebuild a connection between someone that has done a crime and their community.
Better IMO to provide incentives and respect for those who choose to do risky work, unless there is an immediate emergency need to fill those positions.
that seems to introduce a potential for moral hazard
Uh oh better cancel the rev there’s a chance of moral hazard
Weird take to imply someone is criticizing the rev as a whole when they critique a specific post-rev policy
I was attempting to be glib in implying that any post revolutionary scenario opens up the possibility for “moral hazards”. Any destruction of the preceding societal order opens up the space for abuse, just as the perpetuation of the current societal order opens up the space for the very same moral hazards. Turns out maybe just when human beings are involved in a system there is a chance of “moral hazards”.
Weird take to bring moralism into the historical necessity of the proletariat overthrowing the bourgeoisie. Was the bourgeoisie concerned with the moral hazard of overthrowing the divine right of kings?
Sure there will always be some moral hazards around but this sounds like the human nature argument of capitalism, if there are moral hazards you can identify in specific parts of a system, do you either just discard that observation as inevitable or good enough, or do you look for ways to minimize the dangers there?
Just sounds like you're arguing with someone who is concerned over the morality of a revolution as a whole, instead of what the person actually said which is that specifically giving risky and dangerous jobs to criminals risks introducing an incentive to find more criminals for dangerous positions when spots are open(and, I would add, comes off as a kind of passive retributive justice, where instead of directly punishing a criminal you place them in a position where they are more likely to be "punished" by circumstance).
Weird take to bring moralism into the historical necessity of the proletariat overthrowing the bourgeoisie. Was the bourgeoisie concerned with the moral hazard of overthrowing the divine right of kings?
Again, everyone here agrees on that, stop grandstanding.
Think of the moral hazard of capitalism needing workers to do dangerous jobs and therefore having an incentive to inflict poverty upon people until they are willing to risk their lives for a paycheck.
That would be crazy.
Well yeah sure, but thats not exactly an excuse for introducing potential incentives to stamp people as habitual criminals in order to coerce into dangerous work.
Everyone here is or should be already aware of the structural horrors of capitalism, its not exactly a dunk to throw that at someone who's offering a critique to a proposed alternative, no reason to settle for marginally better than current existing capitalism.
I wasn’t trying to dunk on anyone, just add to the conversation and topics to think about.
Put a strong rein on the media. Crime reporting as it is now are fearmongering racist-classicist bullshit that stirs and feeds on the people's paranoia, pushing them into supporting heinous "tough" on crime policies while rejecting rehabilitationist policies.
I'll throw in something here: end the land rent
the need to relocate prevents the creation of strong cities. if you don't know your neighbors, it's hard to create informal means of surveillance, which is crucial to crime prevention. social disorganization theory talks a lot about this.
I'm not equipped for this task so I would simply step down and thank my comrades for their high opinion of me in offering me the position in the first place.
Alot of the important work has to be done before a revolution. Trust needs to be built within communities with a mass line and practice based on their often unique material conditions. Taking from programs like Self-Management and Recovery Training, DRIVE and CRAFT efforts to genuinely protect people and combat the causes of crime can be developed and continuously improved in what will be a practical example of participatory democracy for the community.
After a "revolution", you are going to be in survival mode. The world you won is scorched earth with useless condos and suburbs only sustainable under imperialist exploitation. Not to mention no water, depleted soil, microplastics, pcbs, pfas and a opiod war. It will take decades to build addiction medicine and mental health services to combat the corrosive effects these things have on society. Until then grassroots self-help efforts will protect your revolution from this.
I think counterrevolutionary crime is the thing to worry about more than petty crime. To do that, you have to start from the top and move down.
Quietly get rid of the intelligence agencies and top military commanders. Replace military with politically aligned revolutionaries. This cripples the creation of new operations against you. Now you have to deal with existing ops that can easily operate without a head. This means going after organized crime. Go after the big drug dealers, the human traffickers, black market goods, etc. You also have to go after the legitimate face of intelligence, all the companies used as fronts for operations. That means nationalizing energy, pharmaceuticals, weapons, banking. Go after the money next, cut everyone off from their off-shore banks and hiding places.
The national level will have to deal with the big stuff and then you can have community defense cover petty/local/individual crime. There has to be some national directive there though because counterrevolutionary violence will be carried out at the local level.
That'll keep you busy for a while. Once that's done you can bring in a restorative justice system and probably have eliminated most crime.
I think this is one of those questions that can't really be fully answered in a satisfactory way in a vacuum like this, sure you can talk about causes and how communism would mitigate those causes, but that might not amount to much without tying it to a material situation with specific resources and pressures.
In general I'd be more interested in reading an analysis of how you can handle crime as a newly revolutionary state with all the remains and birthmarks of capitalism in your society compared to how a stateless society would handle this.
:gigachad:
I would simply fix the problem that led to the social contract failing. Food, medicine, therapy, make sure people don't need to do crime in the first place. Few enough happy well adjusted people do crime that I think it probably isn't a real issueAbout 10% of people may be sociopaths actually.
But that’s what the :gulag: are for.
I think they just mean sociopaths who do crime against their own self interest but yeah, important to note
