In this thread we post our most :LIB: takes, and discuss whether that is the logical end point on a given topic or whether we need to lose that last bit of liberalism.
In this thread we post our most :LIB: takes, and discuss whether that is the logical end point on a given topic or whether we need to lose that last bit of liberalism.
I’m like 95% on board with prison abolition but,
Some people deserve to be imprisoned, namely perpetrators of sexual abuse. I don’t think rape/molestation stems wholly from material conditions, and we won’t eliminate it even with falgsc. Some people will never be rehabilitated and they need to not be wandering about the community.
We say prison abolition because prisons are disgusting reactionary cesspools and counterproductive. That doesn't mean we don't want reeducation camps and other institutions that will replace prisons for cases as you are concerned about.
This is why prison abolition is a poor framework for the conversation. The absurdity of saying "we don't want prisons, but custodial penal institutions are OK" is an automatic discussion derailer. Any bad faith participants in the conversation will tear into that and not let go. Good faith participants who aren't already on board with you will be confused, and even if you explain what you mean the confusion will only switch to why you labeled it "abolition" in the first place.
It's much more productive to start with "prison as an absolute last resort," and then describe how your "prison" would be far better than prisons are today.
The concept of prison must be purged from peoples minds. The best approach is to have both "radicals" going all the way with their language and also people like you who are more cuddling in their language.
Why? Some people -- at least temporarily -- need to be separated from society, or have their access to society limited. However nicely we dress that up, that's imprisonment. That's not a concept that needs to be eliminated.
because a prison is a reactionary backwards horrible thing. like the police it has to be abolished. this is not about finding an euphemism to replace the word, the point is that the whole modern conception of the prison is rotten to the core, it has to be dismantled and replaced with something different. if you want to call this "something different" a "prison" that's ok but it's only confusing cause the whole point is that the new thing is not a prison. reeducation camps are not prisons, separating someone dangerous from the rest of society is not what defines a prison. what defines prisons is their class control objective, inhumane treatment of prisoners, punitive objective, unjust sentencing, domination of the inmates by chuds, etc.
This is not going to get ordinary people on board, and we need ordinary people if we want to get anything done.
Tell an ordinary person that a reeducation camp isn't a prison and they'll say: "Can you leave? Is that where you put criminals? Yeah, that's a prison."
Well as i said, I think "ordinary" people need to hear both things.
I see the appeal of that communication strategy, but it has the potential to confuse the issue, too.
Comparing work to chattel slavery is also a poor framework that automatically derails any productive conversation, yes.
Using the term "abolition" as an end goal for chattel slavery was appropriate because you shouldn't be able to own people, you shouldn't be able to buy and sell their children, and you shouldn't be able to beat, rape, or kill them whenever you like. There's no conceivable scenario where you can argue any of that is good. There are conceivable scenarios where the best remedy is to separate dangerous people from society, i.e., imprison them.
Prisons are not just "separating dangerous people from society." That is identical to calling chattel slavery "working for a living." You are taking a possible characteristic of prisons, and magnifying it to be the defining characteristic.
Prisons, particularly in the American context, are inseparable from the enslavement and torture of a lower class deemed "criminal." If you want to create a qualitatively different system which only "separates dangerous people from society", that is prison abolition.
If prisons "separated dangerous people from society", we would not see drug users behind bars, while bankers and war criminals walk free. It is a tool of class warfare that must be abolished.
If you are going to capitulate to the ruling class ideology, why be anti-capitalist? It is "the most efficient tool to distribute good and services; a rising tide which lifts all ships." That is a good thing, right?
I'm doing the exact opposite. The defining characteristic of prisons is separating people from society. There are brutal prisons that do that, but there are also reasonably humane prisons that do that. The concept of "prison" isn't defined by brutality, it's defined by not allowing people to leave.
You're right that in the modern American context "prison" is synonymous with "brutality," but that specific context is by no means the extent of the concept.
Well no, it's not. Say you want to change nothing about the American criminal legal system besides prisons. Your proposal is to tear down the prisons we currently have, but you rebuild them so that each prison cell is a decent apartment, and you closely monitor the guards to ensure they don't just abuse prisoners however they like. That's a qualitatively different system -- it would be far less brutal than what we currently have -- but everyone would tell you it's still a prison (especially the folks inside of it) because the defining characteristic of prisons is not allowing people to leave.
Abolition means abolition. It doesn't mean reform.
If prisons do X + Y, the defining characteristic of prisons can still be X. Prisons do separate dangerous people from society; that's just not all they do.
The most dangerous people in the world are not "imprisoned." That is not their purpose. They are a tool of capitalist class war.
I'd sooner say "compassionate prisons" are something qualitatively different than prisons, and should be called something else. Prisons have a clear historical purpose that is not "separating people from society."
Fundamentally, this is a disagreement of terms. Prisons are best defined by their enforcement of class rule, enslavement, and torture from my perspective. They need to be abolished and replaced with qualitatively difference system which address crime and social ills.
There are plenty of people in prison who have committed real crimes, and who are reasonably considered dangerous. That does not mean they separate all dangerous people from society, or that they cater to every small political group's definition of "dangerous." Functionally, anything that separates dangerous people from society -- in any society, controlled by any political group -- will be called a prison.
Prisons (in the modern sense) were intended as a less-brutal replacement for public executions and torture. Their original purpose was much more closely tied to enlightenment thinking than to capitalism. While plenty of enlightenment thinking was pro-capitalist or at least capitalist friendly, quite a bit was not, and the two concepts aren't the same.
Are re-education camps prisons? Are boarding schools prisons? Is boot camp a prison? "Separating 'dangerous' people from 'society'" just seems such a ludicrous definition for a prison that covers basically anything. What is "dangerous", what is considered "part of society"...
I would rather just take a materialist perspective on prisons in my context. They are a system of enslaving and torturing people deemed "criminal," and "criminal" often just means lower class - failing to afford tickets, debts, selling or using drugs, etc. They need to be abolished. Any positive use they served can be incorporated into a new system. Just as you can abolish slavery without abolishing labor.
If you want continue using the word prison for whatever reason, you can still acknowledge that the existing prison system needs to absolutely destroyed, crushed, with every remanent tossed into the dustbin of history. You could make your own "proletarian prison" or "the peoples' prison." At that point, it is just a disagreement of terms.
If you can't leave, and especially if your re-education is aimed at "dangerous" people, then yes.
You can leave, and they're not aimed at dangerous people, so no.
We're fundamentally on the same page here -- I'm just using the term prison because that's what the term means. It's hard enough to convince people to radically remake how we handle criminal behavior without re-defining words to boot.
What does "dangerous" mean? My high school justified compulsory attendance because they did not kids getting mixed up with gangs. If kids skipped school, their parents were threatened with prison. Schools absolutely consider non-white students "dangerous." Are they prisons?
I disagree. No one would reach the conclusion that prisons "separate dangerous people from society" when analyzing the material conditions of prisons. Defying reality because the idea some people have of prisons is counter-productive. You are alienating the millions of people who have been imprisoned on drug charges, missed tickets, or false charges to appease a bourgeois understanding of prisons.
There are people in my life define Capitalism as “the most efficient tool to distribute good and services; a rising tide which lifts all ships.” Should I advocate a better Capitalism to appease them? Or should I educate people about the reality of Capitalism?
You can dissect any definition with questions like this.
It's hard to argue that schools are prisons when children are able to leave, and when you're acknowledging that there are prison prisons people can be sent to.
There's a difference between using a heavily-propagandized definition and using a practical definition.
And in some cases, it is important to dissect. When you are trying to define an institution which imprisons people for riding a train without a ticket, then I think it's important to dissect your use of the word "dangerous." I would not consider them dangerous.
Sorry, I forgot to add that schools have entire police forces, and have apprehended kids who've skipped and brought them back. I still would not consider schools prisons because of the definition I provided above.
Yes. I do not consider your definition of prison to be practical. It is a propagandized definition.
I agree that person is not dangerous. As I've pointed out, the fact that non-dangerous people are in prison does not keep "dangerous people" from being a defining characteristic of prisons.
All prisons must have X, so something that includes X + Y can be a prison even though it doesn't exclusively include X.
That's closer to a prison, but as the school isn't trying to separate dangerous people from society -- you can get expelled for starting fights, and school isn't anywhere near as separated from society as prisons -- it's still quite a bit different.
My definition is the bare bones of what prisons do in practice. It's the core concept, it's the essential elements. There are prisons that do not wage class warfare (see the Soviet penal system, for example), therefore that is not an essential element of the definition.
In the culture books you get one free murder, then you spend the rest of your life with your cool new buddy; A gun drone that will pop your head like an egg if you do anything aggressive.
You know most murders are crimes of passion where the killer has probably never killed before and probably doesn’t plan on ever doing it again. This is basically saying everyone gets to strangle one person who really pissed them off Scott free and then resume life as normal.
Yeah pretty much. I mean, we know more or less for a fact that prison as deterrence doesn't work, especially in crimes of passion. The idea with the culture is that they've removed every conceivable material reason for violence, and all that's left is things they genuinely can't predict and can't prevent, that aren't likely to cause further danger to the community.
Nothing about that really seems like a good idea.
Well, there's no way to tell if someone is going to murder people until they murder someone, and after they're still nominally free, unless they try to do murders, in which case their chaperone paints them all over the walls and ceiling. There's no bars or fences, but you're still on a "don't hurt people" leash.
Isn't it more "one attempted murder", where "attempted' means "you are up against an AI god whose battles with other AI gods last microseconds at most and also knows everything going on around it, good luck"?
Isn't this what Tristan da Cunha is for?
Take the people that can't be reformed and pose a danger to others, and make a governance-free zone on a remote island with an artificial reef and monitored waters where they can live away from society as they individually please.
Unironically, bring back marooning.
How is that any different from a prison? Also, what if they have kids there?
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I'm more concerned about the kids being victimized.
I dunno, how is any physically-bounded area any different from a prison?
Because you can leave.
i just want a place to dump all the ancaps ok ?
They're all gonna go to Rapture once Peter Thiel finishes building it.
That's part of why I'm hoping for technological collapse before then.
Hi hoping for technological collapse before then, I'm dad!
If they were really ancaps they'd be there already.
I can leave Earth, is Earth a giant prison!!!
John Carpenter was in talks to create "Escape from Earth."
Compulsory education is not a prison...
It's also not usually a punishment.
If it is, it's a prison?
Yeah, I'd say so.
That's a ludicrous definition of prison and infantilizes the experiences of actual prisoners.
Prisons are not when "you are forced to be somewhere." Prisons are violent institutions of slavery and torture.
If your definition of prison includes "being required to be in English class" and slaves putting out Californian wild-fires, you may need to rethink it.
Ok, but those things aren't the essential features of prisons. There are prisons in the world without slavery and torture. If you lock someone in a cell for committing a crime, and force them to take a class, I don't see how that wouldn't qualify as a prison.
How would you define a prison?
Edit: And wait, I literally specified "as a punishment", which obviously excludes English class. Are you deliberately trying to misinterpret what I'm saying?
First to address your edit. What is a "punishment?" Who decides when something is a punishment?
Does the subject or the institution decide when they are being "punished?"
A student forced to take a class may see it as a punishment, even if the institution does not consider it a punishment.
A criminal forced in a re-education program may see it as a punishment, even if the institution does not consider it a punishment.
You consider the latter a prison, but you do not consider the former a prison.
It's based on the intent of the person or institution doing the imprisoning. Not just what they say, but what their objectives are, which we obviously can't be absolutely certain about. There are a lot of thing like that. Is there no such thing as a lie just because people disagree on what does or does not qualify as one, or because we can't tell for sure what's going on in someone's head when they apparently tell one?
A student in a high school is objectively not being punished just because they're in high school, because they're there to learn about science and history and stuff, not to be punished. Re-education may or may not constitute a punishment, I don't know, but how the person or institution locking the person up categorizes it doesn't matter. That is, if their intentions are logically consistent with the definition of a punishment, it qualifies as a punishment. If not, it doesn't. Likewise, I would also not necessarily consider a person in a psychiatric hospital to be a prisoner.
And again: what's your alternative? A prison is when you lock somebody up but also it's bad?
Prisons are an instrument which violently subjugates those considered "criminal" by the ruling class. It is not when you force people to go somewhere.
What do you mean by "instrument"? Because guns can do all the things you described, making them prisons per your definition when used as such. I also wouldn't consider an execution to be a prison; not because it isn't a bad thing or because it's not repressive, but because it deviates too much from what people are actually referring to when they say the word prison.
And what defines "violently"? Is locking someone in somewhere not an act of violence? And in what way does directing violence against someone for being considered a criminal differ from punishing someone for a crime?
Guns alone cannot do what I'm describing. A person wielding a gun can contribute to a prison.
Neither would I, that's just executing someone.
I would consider physical harm or withholding necessities to human life to be violence. The constant use of these are a core component of prisons. Schools, hospitals, re-education camps, etc. all include the threat of violence if someone does not comply, but the institution does not require violence to function.
Either the gun itself or a person wielding a gun, depending on what exactly you mean by "subjugates", is the prison. If at the very least a person with a gun doesn't qualify as a prison, then it follows that a person with a gun can't subjugate a "criminal".
But it's (a) an instrument which is inherently violent (b) an instrument that can subjugate criminals and ( c) is used by the ruling class to do so. So what's the difference?
So if a criminal is locked in a cell, but not otherwise harmed, they aren't in a prison? Or is being locked in a cell inherently violent?
There's a lot of danger attached to this idea. First, what if we fuck up and declare someone who can be reformed unreformable? Second, saying "we owe this group of people absolutely nothing and they could die tomorrow for all we care" sets the precedent that it's OK to treat some people like that, and that can enable others to be treated similarly.
Something like this seems like a better approach. You still isolate dangerous people from society, but there's a way back, and you're not condemning them to barbaric conditions.
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Marooning would of course be a last resort; it would happen only after efforts to rehabilitate someone were fruitless for a few years, or long enough to confidently conclude that someone is permanently damaged beyond societal reintegration.
This circles the question of "how much are you going to invest into someone to reform them". Scandinavian-style prisons sound great but it takes a lot of work to operate them. If you needed 2 full-time-working-equivalents to reform 1 prisoner, would you say that is worth it? If you needed 2:1 but didn't have the certainty that you'd succeed, is that worth it?
The prison linked above has a 1.7-to-1 prisoner-to-guard ratio; the ratio in U.S. state prisons is about 4.9-to-1. But note that this doesn't necessarily mean more total guards. If you reduce recidivism (as that prison appears to do) you reduce total prisoners and thus total guards, and so you might see an overall reduction in the guard total even with more guards per prisoner. You could further reduce the total guards needed by legalizing drugs and decriminalizing homelessness, among other policy changes.
If we're really talking about "last resort" options, than the answer is "a lot." It's not really the last resort if you give up too easily. And we're not particularly close to real resource constraints on rehabilitation efforts; the question is solely whether we want to make those efforts or not.
That's a good point. And I wasn't suggesting that we give up easily, only that there might still be a point where it wouldn't be worth it. Of course there would still be an option to return, but I suppose the marooning option would only be used for people who were resolutely opposed to adhering to the reciprocal foundations of society.
These people exist, and it's good to consider how any hypothetical justice system would handle them.
I think the real lib take is thinking that a 2:1 staffing ratio is prohibitively/impossibly expensive. We already have huge amounts of labor that is currently unutilised or utilised in highly inefficient industries which could be deployed for this use.
In Australia, a staffing ratio of 2:1 for people with disability is not unheard of.
Another factor that would be important to consider is a necessary reduction in the number of criminal offences - even neoliberal economic analyses suggest that it's never useful to lock up drug users and rarely useful to lock up car thiefs (unless they're out stealing expensive new cars, which is rare).
I’m kinda curious what “rehabilitate” means.
Outside of periods of extreme social instability most heinous crimes of ones of passion committed by individuals who aren’t really inherently dysfunctional and probably would ever commit the act and continue a normal life again had they never been caught. Idk what a good punishment for those people are.
To be honest, I'm curious what "rehabilitation" is going to mean in a post-revolutionary context as well.
I don't have all the answers.
Hi curious what "rehabilitation" is going to mean in a post-revolutionary context as well, I'm dad!
I'm and welcome to a fresh new episode of Guess What Asshole Made This Useless Piece Of Code, your host and subject material for this episode is me
Hi kinda curious what "rehabilitate" means, I'm dad!
Talk about lib takes
I think the best framing for this conversation is "prison as an absolute last resort," not "prison abolition." You're right, some people do need to be separated from society, and even if we make that as limited and humane as possible it's still imprisonment. Using a term like "abolition" non-literally muddies the water right off the bat.
Besides, if prison conditions are improved to the point where prison is no longer synonymous with being beaten and raped, "imprisonment" takes on a far different meaning. If your average prison looks like this instead of Shawshank, that's going to change the conversation dramatically.