Well, in an ideal society this person wouldn't exist, but whatever.
https://twitter.com/HonourableHappy/status/1341328673547411458
Well, in an ideal society this person wouldn't exist, but whatever.
https://twitter.com/HonourableHappy/status/1341328673547411458
Seriously, stuff like this is why I'll talk all day about how prisons should be radically reformed in a million major ways, but I still won't call myself a prison abolitionist. Beyond the more immediate issue of "you're always going to have some people commit serious crimes; what do you do with them?", how are you supposed to abolish capitalism without a way to remove reactionaries from any sort of position of power?
We can humanely protect the revolution and hopefully show people how to see themselves as the same as their fellow human beings. But, the person who has no remorse for the suffering of others as a byproduct of their capitalist accumulation is just as dangerous, if not more dangerous than a serial killer.
Absolutely. However, I don't see any way to accomplish that without at least the backstop of a custodial institution that -- no matter how humane it gets -- is still essentially a prison.
Skim through this. That's still fundamentally a prison, but it's an order of magnitude less brutal than anything in America. They're taking seriously the concept that restriction of freedom is supposed to be the only punishment. I see that as an acceptable way to treat (and I do mean treat, as in "try to help") people who harm others, and I don't see any way a modern industrialized society can exist without at least the possibility of sending people to a place like this.
I am very familiar with the Norwegian prison system and while I agree that yes it is technically a prison the ability to find fulfillment in your life is much higher. I know that any revolution requires bloodshed but my enemy is only my enemy because he sees me as an other, so the best way to not be an other is to treat them like everyone else and bridge that gap. I know it's idealist but without dreams like that I find it easy to spiral into doomer mode.
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And that should be the first option, absolutely. But what do you do when someone refuses to participate in those programs and goes out and keeps harming people? There still needs to be at least the possibility of being put into custody or people just won't take the non-custodial options seriously, especially if they're rich enough to keep paying fines or keep dragging out legal proceedings.
First, any real prison reform would involve radically shorter sentences across the board. In a lot of countries, sentences longer than 2 years are rare and reserved only for the most serious crimes. This is consistent with research suggesting that sometime around that 2 year mark whatever benefits people see from custody plateau or reverse. Ideally, we wouldn't see any sentences longer than that unless the person was an actual threat to the safety of others. More immediately, you can have the most horrible offenders serve more than 2 years while still reducing sentence lengths overall. In some countries you might serve as little as 8 years for murder, for instance. That certainly crosses into purely putative territory (especially considering that most murderers are unlikely to murder again), but I personally don't find that to be terribly unjust.
Second, even if someone appears irredeemably bad or dangerous today, and that would justify long-term imprisonment, it's still a bad idea to kill them. It's impossible to predict how someone might change over 20, 10, or even 5 years, and it's similarly impossible to predict what type of treatment might emerge over the years. And of course there's the ever-present possibility of a wrongful conviction.
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:Care-Comrade: