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.
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.
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!
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Talk about lib takes