Prisons are based on two main ideas:
- If you lock a privileged person up with their thoughts and make them pray really hard they'll realize it is in there self interest to exist in their privileged position in a way that maintains the status quo
Aka prisons before slavery was abolished
- Hey, people are still cool with slavery if you call the slaves criminals, and also arresting wage laborers is cheaper(locally, it has a parasitic effect on production) than having a population of self sustaining slaves or importing slaves from somewhere
Hey, people are still cool with pretty overt eugenics if you position the group you want to reduce the population of criminals
Tbf there is also the third case: We’ve determined you are too dangerous to be a part of the general population and need to be separated. Those people should be given a high quality of life within whatever facility we have to keep them in. Those are also a super small portion of criminals
That doesn't actually fix the problem.
If you throw them in solitary that's a ridiculous amount of violence,
Otherwise they will still be interacting with people who would be subject to violence
It might make people within the general population feel safer, but on the other hand, the people who have hurt me in my life no longer exist in my life. It still scares me knowing that society is a formatted in a way that will allow that violence to happen to me again, if people choose to.
And regardless of whether those "dangerous people" were sent to prison after harming me, I would still be harmed.
To feel safe we need to actually create conditions of safety.
Absolutely. And those things also need to happen. But there is some very small portion of people, your Jeffrey Dahmer types, or your serial r***ists, who cannot be allowed in general society. I’m not saying they should be put in solitary, which should obviously be banned bc it’s fucking torture, but a “prison” where they can have a high quality of life with strong supervision to protect others inside and separation to protect those outside.
This doesn't make any sense. What societal conditions lead to rape?
Part of the thing that is so humiliating is that theyre not that dangerous
This is also pretty messed up to say. Who are you to say a rapist isn't that dangerous?
they can do what they want to do because other people who youre surrounded by are cool with what they’re doing in a very real sense, despite their theoretical moral objections to rape
I guess there are some scenarios where a SA survivor is surrounded be people that let it happen, but that's just not the reality for all survivors. They are genuinely in danger and they are often alone.
I'm 100% in agreement that serial rapists should not be around society.
This doesn’t make any sense. What societal conditions lead to rape?
All the unjust hierarchies?
This is also pretty messed up to say. Who are you to say a rapist isn’t that dangerous?
Someone who is operating based on personal experience and a large sample size. I am making generalizations. The uncertainty of the amount of danger present and how that affects people we can get into if you want
I guess there are some scenarios where a SA survivor is surrounded be people that let it happen, but that’s just not the reality for all survivors. They are genuinely in danger and they are often alone.
You are missing my point. Rape culture, or whatever you want to call it, creates the space for rapists to operate in. Rape culture isn't just some amorphous blob in the cosmos. It is also very local, and very concrete, and can be fought.
It can be fought, but that doesn't mean rape will completely stop. I'm too pessimistic to believe that. In the (hopefully) rare situations in the future where a person does it more than once, they need to be stopped from interacting with society at a certain point.
I think everyone would agree that we would see far less crime in a society where everyone's basic needs (at least) are guaranteed, and where you've decriminalized a lot of dumb stuff we have criminalized today. So with two important exceptions, we're talking about imprisoning people for serious crimes with major harms done to victims.
Another big part of this is what "prison" might look like in a post-capitalist world. This would be a good starting point. If that's what separation from the main body of society looks like (instead of the horrors associated with traditional prisons), you can start to square the circle between "prison of any kind is bad" and "there are some crimes that are serious enough that you can't just let the offender walk more or less free." Make involuntary separation from society the only negative to the greatest extent possible; otherwise, focus on genuine rehabilitation and (to the extent the victim wants to engage) making amends.
The two exceptions I see to only imprisoning people for serious crimes with major harms done to victims are (1) people who repeatedly harm others in small enough ways that any individual case wouldn't merit imprisonment, and (2) people who refuse to engage with a justice process for even one of these smaller crimes. Think bar fights. Individually, most are not a big enough problem that they would merit imprisonment. But what if someone starts a bar fight every weekend? Or what if they start one, but refuse any responsibility, refuse to make amends to the victim, and generally refuse to participate in any sort of non-carceral option? Using the threat of short-term incarceration (especially if incarceration looks like the above) is a good way to get people to take whatever else is on the table seriously.
Transformative justice encompasses both left stuff and lib shit, it is a broad spectrum of ideas
Are Prisons Obsolete? by Angela Davis is a seminal text directly on abolition. Not too long. This is probably the oldest thing on here so some of the information might be dated, but the concepts still apply.
The New Jim Crow by Michelle Alexander is more of an overview of the carceral state in general and how racist it is specifically. It's good reading if you're trying to get solid abolitionist critiques of the criminal legal system, but I can't recall exactly how much it talks about abolition itself. It does touch on meaningful reforms that are happening right now, like reducing or eliminating cash bail.
A few interviews/podcasts:
- https://www.nbcnews.com/think/opinion/thinking-about-how-abolish-prisons-mariame-kaba-podcast-transcript-ncna992721
- https://www.commonjustice.org/danielle_sered -- have not read this org's blog or her book, but it's referenced in the above interview and seems interesting and on-topic.
- https://srslywrong.com/podcast/199-prisons-must-be-abolished/
These aren't written for a public audience to the extent the above are, but they're shorter articles and (hopefully) available free on Google Scholar or wherever you can pirate academia. They're also more decarceration than outright abolition, but there's considerable overlap in concepts and facts:
Unstitching Scarlett Letters by Brian M. Murray, 86 Fordham L. Rev. 2821. Also not explicitly abolitionist, but details the abolitionist argument about how damaging even minor contact with the system can be.
Handbook of Basic Principles and Promising Practices on Alternatives to Imprisonment, by the U.N. Office on Drugs & Crime, U.N. Sales No. E.07.XI.2. Not abolitionists globally, but abolitionist on drugs.
A Decade After Decriminalization, by Jordan Blair Woods, 15 U. D.C. L. Rev. 1. Looks at drug decriminalization in Portugal; the largest and oldest attempt to significantly scale back the carceral state.
Successful Alternatives: Juvenile Diversion and Restorative Justice in Suffolk County, by Daniel F. Conley et al., https://perma.cc/SB6L-SDPS . This is about the Boston DA's office under Rachael Rollins, who is doing decarceration, but is not an abolitionist. Still offers plenty about how to handle crimes without imprisonment.
Decarcerating America, by Mirko Bagaric and Daniel McCord, 67 Buff. L. Rev. 227. More on decarceration, but this focuses on how it can be done without increasing crime, which is a classic argument against abolition.
I'm definitely not very ideologically coherent as a leftist, but, I don't necessarily disagree with the concept of confinement. There will always be a small fraction of people who are permanently violently dangerous and unable to change, and those people should be treated as relatively comfortably as we can while still keeping prison staff and their fellow prisoners safe, thus, there will always be a need for some kind of institutional confinement.
Beyond that however, a lot of issues that people are imprisoned are a result of maladaptive cognition plus exacerbating stress and circumstances such as mental illness or economic uncertainty - for people like this, it's worth considering to what degree (if at all) confinement is necessary for rehabilitation. Obviously, it's ideal to think that we can rehabilitate everyone without confining them, but personally I'm not sure that is always possible. Many people who are trapped into mentally unhealthy loops of behavior are trapped because they can't get out of the trap on their own, often because tackling those problems can be very painful.
Ultimately a humane system built on understanding will be the result of real research.
There will always be a small fraction of people who are permanently violently dangerous and unable to change,
"Thats a nice argument senator, why don't you back that up with a source?"
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Antisocial_personality_disorder
There are also a number of other conditions that can cause people become extremely prone to violence, like brain injuries or brain tumors.
You may not like it, but there are people who simply are not safe to be around and never will be baring some kind of medical intervention that isn't currently possible. The human brain is, to put it politely, a barely functional mess and can go wrong in all kinds of ways with horrific consequences that have nothing to do with socialization or learned behavior.
There will always be a small fraction of people who are permanently violently dangerous and unable to change
is this true? would this be true in a society that actually embraces equality?
I think assuming otherwise is utopian. Even in nearly perfectly egalitarian hunter gatherer societies, there were occasionally some people who needed to be expelled from the tribe. In a totally globalized system like communism, there is no option for expulsion so confinement would be the next step. Though hopefully rare, and much more humane than what currently exists
Things aren't exactly great in primitive communism. Life is more precarious, they have less resources to rehabilitate people. There are very reasonable critiques of anprimism even ignoring "this would involve killing most of humanity"
I don't pretend to be the expert, but I think that making amends to victims would be a huge part. Like maybe 30% of your salary would go to the victims family (assuming you were safe in the general population).
for severe crimes like sa, child abuse and murder; prison should still be the system.
Why? Rehabilitation over punishment.
Western leftists —especially Americans— are surprisingly often inconsistent with their ideals*. I'm guessing it's because of the cultural Christian value of punishment — the reactionary values they were conditioned into come into play in areas one doesn't have leftist critique on.
What I mean to say is: ideals are produced wholely by one's culture and easily transformed. A Marxist analysis of the prison system is not, and won't lead to inconsistencies.
*Examples of what I've seen: "Death sentence shouldn't be a thing, but in this case...", or here, where certain crimes apparently cross an arbitrary moral line, and indefinite jailing is deemed appropriate.
I don't think anyone is suggesting indefinite jailing.
As for why some punishment is appropriate for the most serious crimes:
- How would you enforce rehabilitation? What if Person A murders Person B, and then Person A refuses to engage in whatever you're asking them to do?
- What if a victim's family member decides justice has not been served? Say Person B's brother thinks Person A got off easy, and murders Person A because he'll get off easy, too?
- What if someone who's committed a serious crime sees the response as acceptable, and decides serious crimes are a valid way of handling things? Maybe Person A murdered Person B over a very small slight, can easily live with the response, and then gets another small slight?
IMO these are all fun hypotheticals, but there will be a legal system which handles this all.
From the base, the mode of production, emerges the superstructure: law and government. Quick example is how universities in Belgium and the Netherlands came into existence after wealthy cities created a ruling class which needed educated workers. Hundreds of years later, universities still fulfill that same role, but in a different manner — because the base has changed (feudalism to capitalism).
Socialism is the struggle towards communism. It will differ for different peoples and areas, due to material and cultural differences. If indeed global communism is achieved (:specter-global:), prison and police abolition will look different depending on where you are. However, that difference won't be decided with sophistry, but by action and reaction of the masses.
These aren't hypotheticals, though. They're real-world problems that are no small part of why our legal system looks the way it does today. It's not enough to say there will still be a legal system in a post-capitalist world; we're talking about how that legal system will handle the problems the current one attempts to handle.
I don't see how we'd be able to accurately detail what a communist society's legal system will look like beyond extrapolating from the general class analysis, nor for what reason we'd think about it.
That might be a difference in ideology; an anarchist obviously has immediate use for knowing when hierarchy is morally justified, as a commune is different from the Marxist idea of class warfare and historical epochs.
The reason we'd think about it is so we can suggest something better. "Do this specific thing instead" is a lot more convincing to people than "the current system sucks but I have no specific suggestions."
The lack of a positive vision of an improved system is actually a big weakness of a lot of literature critical of police and prisons.
Well said! You've got a point. A better starting point would IMO still be from the current system and how it came to be, and go from there (e.g. this and that law came from the protection of private property, punishment came from XYZ bourgeois cultural norms and therefore rehabilitation, etc...)
I've got prison abolishment literature on my to-do for 2023, do you have some suggestions?
not really about punishment, i don't know i f i want to have actual serial killers out.
yes, but there has to be some kind of confinement where they have to be monitored so they don't kill or abuse again. examples like :epstein: or Prince Andrew
In principle I agree but how can you be sure the worst cases can be rehabilitated? Can people really be safe around serial rapists or killers even after they've received the best treatment they could get? Is the psychiatric science really that sure of itself?
What do you propose then?
I dont care much about individual cases, I'm talking about prison abolishment at large.
Detaining the worst cases for life, at least until we can be almost completely certain they won't relapse.
So no I don't think you can get rid of prisons entirely, but you could probably cut them down by like 95%.
I did not study criminology nor psychiatry, so I don't know what these worst cases look like or at what point someone is rehabilitated. What is obvious to me however , is that humane "prisons" should be utilised — if at all — which would be more communities than a prison with guards. In a communist society, with a different cultural and political context, I can see those being preferred as a matter of course
In general I agree but I can't imagine not having at least some security in form of trained guards or reinforced doors for the worst cases.
Well, obviously. Social workers in rehabs now have access to guards. It's not like having a fun environment means a meth addict undergoing withdrawal will be equally as fun.
Some things can be rehabilitated. Some things cannot.
The vast majority of homicides are crimes of passion and the killer does not go on to commit other violent crimes. They experienced an emotional peak, lost control, and did something horrible. But it's not reflective of a pattern of behavior or necessarily a predisposition towards further violence. In those cases restorative justice is clearly called for. The victims should be compensated in so far as is possible and the killer should be re-integrated in to society.
On the other hand you have serial killers, serial rapists, serial child abusers, narcissists who engage in abusive or violent behaviors, people with anti-social personality disorder who exhibit a pattern of violence, various kinds of brain tumors or traumatic brain injuries that result in uncontrollable violent behavior, and various less well defined brain abnormalities that result in uncontrollable violent behavior.
Many of these conditions cannot be rehabilitated because they were never a result of environmental factors or learned behaviors in the first place. There's a popular notion that serial killers have some deep Freudian cause for their murderous actions, but it's just not well supported by evidence. For the most part there's just something deeply wrong with them that is likely biological in nature. Many serial abusers have measurably different brain function and exhibit disinterest or even contempt for the rights and safety of others regardless of their personal circumstances or experiences. These things aren't learned behaviors, except in so far as the perpetrators learn how best to harm others while avoiding consequences.
There's a notorious phenomena where putting serial abusers and some people with ASPD through therapy, far from making them better socialized, teaches them how to more effectively manipulate and abuse others by giving them more insight in to human emotion and psychology.
The need for some system for controlling and monitoring dangerously anti-social people isn't rooted in punishment, but rather in recognition of the fact that for various reasons some people will always be a threat to others. Punishing them is pointless; One of the symptoms of ASPD, for instance, is an indifference to consequences. But they still need to be controlled in some fashion to protect others from them.
In most cases, people are only a danger to others because society grants them power. In those cases, moving them to prison is a way of scapegoating systemically.
sure but the stalker threatening to kill his partner needs to be rendered unable to harm them.
Okay, why is a structure designed to uphold capitalist values the number one answer here?
serial rapist and murderers are dangerous because of their physical power against their victim not societal.
This is incorrect. Serial murderers target oppressed groups for a reason. There is a reason why trans people are raped a lot more than cis women. There is a reason why black people are more subject to violence by other members of society that aren't cops. (In addition to cops)
Well, two reasons. Hatred and because they are easier to target, for social reasons
(This is reductive but the examples I can think of which point out it is reductive also reinforce the case Im making so I'm not going to bother, this is a strenuous topic)
Not to be contrarian or anything because I'm genuinely undecided on this topic, but there are serial killers that target children who would be vulnerable no matter how otherwise equitable society was. I don't know enough yet, I hope that people who are compelled to kill others are just products of material conditions and aren't just psychologically abnormal in such an extreme way. I can't tell if it's libshit or not to propose that some people are born with an ability to kill without remorse or to enjoy killing
There are a variety of biologically rooted conditions that predispose people to violently anti-social behavior and there's no reason to believe these conditions would somehow disappear in a more egalitarian society. People with various conditions like narcissism or anti-social personality disorder exhibit measurable, readily viewed abnormal brain states and show pervasive patterns of disregard for the rights and wellbeing of others regardless of their material circumstances or experiences.
Individuals with these conditions still vary widely; Some will never commit overt acts of violence, while others will engage in serial acts of violence and abuse. But the underlying causes are biological and generally cannot be addressed with therapy or psychiatric intervention. There's actually a notorious phenomena where putting some narcissists and people with ASPD through therapy teaches them how to better abuse and manipulate people while evading consequences by giving them a better understanding of human emotion and psychology.
CW:SA
So I just finished reading Françoise Vergès's A Feminist Theory of Violence, and I was really surprised as she spent most of the book criticizing white, liberal feminists for leaving SA retribution stuff to the state, with its unfair application of punishment that's more likely going to lock up brown people and oppress the global South. She seems to prefer that resources go to helping victims, unlike say going for more police and prisons. She doesn't explicitly seem to endorse any simple remedy. But she is critical of the idea that we give our power of retribution to the police state.
Sorry if this is a bit garbage analysis from a cis man. I just happened to finish this book recently and he's my summary.
Haven't read it, so you might be being reductive, but looks like a good take on face value
I don't take notes when I read, so any summary is going to be limited.
She did mention redressing power imbalances that allow crimes to happen. I think that was pretty cool too.
resources going toward abolition of patriarchy would indeed do much more for the prevention of its crimes than punishments for its adherents. this book sounds like the thread's required reading
omw to commit every crime possible
"oh no mr commissar I've been a bad bad boy and now you're going to have to punish me" :panting:
"Sentenced to 13 consecutive pages of Ao3 Homstuck fanfics"
"Naw, just kill me please"
lame response, but that's a question that only post-capitalist subjects can answer
I think the reaction to crime should focus on preventing crime by removing the causes of crime as well as of making victims and societies whole again.
It follows from this that a socialist justice system should be based on rehabilitation and restorative justice. Criminals shouldn't simply be locked away but should be helped to gainful employment and receive treatment and counselling to help them deal with anger issues, addictions etc. Criminals should also be made aware of the consequences of their actions, a drunk driver is more likely to get a deep understanding of why it's wrong if he has to clean up after traffic crashes or talk to people who were disabled by drunk drivers.
The reactions to crime should always be decided by the community the criminal comes from and take the individual circumstances into account as well as utilise the community and the criminal's own network to make rehabilitation work. At no point should a workers' state engage in the construction of criminal identities by telling people who break the rules that they are evil, dangerous, outside of society and deserving of punishment and the road back to a peaceful harmonious life should always be open and easy to tread.
A minority of criminals are so damaged that some sort of confinement is still necessary to prevent further crime or to make rehabilitation efforts possible but even then the confinement should never be more severe than necessary to ensure that and at no point should cruelty be a point.
Noodling. Youre sentenced to x amount of hours, days or years, of noodling where you will be beat repeatedly by wet pool noodles. If you fuck up real bad you get sent to a tanning chair where you sit long enough to get annoyingly burnt then you get another round of intense noodling. Dissent will end.
