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?
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.
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.
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.
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?
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
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.
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:
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?
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:
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.
Lovely, thank you. Saved this, I'll check out the ones that aren't america-specific
not really about punishment, i don't know i f i want to have actual serial killers out.
Enforcing psychiatric treatment, you mean?
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
deleted by creator
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.
deleted by creator