Asked him what he was doing in a few days in the evening and he told me "can't hang out, I'm in prison." He's in prison in the evenings and every other weekend.
Gave him a ride to the prison too, we stopped for burgers and he was worried he was gonna be "late for prison."
He got arrested via letter.
I dunno, system and so on, but also just... That's funny. Remove systemic critique from your mind and just grasp the concept of being late for prison. Remove the rational thought too, because it kinda makes sense to let people be in prison part-time. It's super normal. Just... Part time prison. It's funny. It's like a guy turning himself into a pickle. Funniest shit I've ever seen.
Imagine getting arrested by letter. Wouldn't be me, I'm built different (I did get arrested by letter once actually, funniest shit. Didn't show up and my mom called the police to tell them off for sending me the letter lmao. She's not important, there's no calss thing, she's just a mom. They apologised to her lol)
I need to stress this is real.
Since a lot of people read this like it's in the US and it's the US system - It's not. It's one of those damn commie scandinavian countries
edit: Since a lot of people read this like it's in the US and it's the US system - It's not. It's one of those damn commie scandinavian countries
I'm not 100% convinced on the abolish prison stuff but if you got to the point that you need people to exert their own discipline and voluntarily turn themselves over to go to prison every evening I think you gotta think of another system.
Honestly, at least in any country other than America which I don't trust to not fuck it up, it's a much better approach to prison as rehabilitation than most places allow - it allows them to physically demonstrate remorse for the crime by showing up for their sentence, while leaving them with a lot of individual freedom.
Like there's not really many crimes I think it's appropriate for - most of the crimes it would be applicable to shouldn't be crimes at all - but "send yourself to the naughty box" is pretty good for the current prison system.
I just don't see why it should be prison at all at that point. Why not make it a vocational training facility at this point? Actually have the people learn skills that they could use to find employment instead of continuing to live off crime?
I mean, I get that the core has deindustrialized so there really isn't much more space for the reserve army of labor to just find jobs, but at least train them on using Excel and working at a fake job!
Vocational training is great for people doing crime because it's their only option, but less so for people who already have jobs and commit crimes of neglect or laziness - the ones which are most likely to feel remorse for their actions, rather than justified in doing what they needed to survive or just being remorseful they were caught. Like I said, very few crimes it's actually appropriate for, and vocational training would usually be better, but I still think it has its place.