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Police and Prison Abolition Thread

Alternative proposal for what? I still haven’t gotten a very clear articulation (backed up by data) of what legitimate purpose the current system is supposed to serve.

Involuntary confinement is inhumane. Period. If you think it’s absolutely necessary for society, tell me why and I’ll give you some suggestions for how to create such a system.

It’s necessary to separate murderers from society, especially those who are likely to commit violent crime again in the future.
 
As to the first bold, that would be one option.

As to the second, they don’t. Committing a crime, on its own, isn’t reason enough to involuntarily confine someone.

Your quote above has you saying "at least currently one of those institutions needs to be a physical space where individuals are involuntarily confined."
 
Your quote above has you saying "at least currently one of those institutions needs to be a physical space where individuals are involuntarily confined."

Correct. There are reasons we as a society might need to involuntarily confine someone. Having committed a violent crime isn’t one of them.
 
Alternative proposal for what? I still haven’t gotten a very clear articulation (backed up by data) of what legitimate purpose the current system is supposed to serve.

Involuntary confinement is inhumane. Period. If you think it’s absolutely necessary for society, tell me why and I’ll give you some suggestions for how to create such a system.

You and a few others are the ones proposing a change in the current system. It's incumbent on you to provide the justification for change and the alternative plans.
 
worse for society. there's more opportunity to stop a person from committing a crime if they've already committed one

Why is that worse for society. If overal crime is the same, why would it matter to society that half of it was repeat crime vs. say only 5%.

And how predictive of future crime is having been caught committing a crime? Are there other measures that are more predictive of future crime? Why don’t we use those instead?
 
You and a few others are the ones proposing a change in the current system. It's incumbent on you to provide the justification for change and the alternative plans.

Sticking a human being in a cage against their will is inhumane. My alternative plan is don’t do that. I’m quite confident our society would be far better off for it.

If there’s a benefit you think the current system provides, let me know and I’ll propose another way to meet that specific benefit.
 
Correct. There are reasons we as a society might need to involuntarily confine someone. Having committed a violent crime isn’t one of them.

Ok, so are you referring to mental health issues then for reasons involuntary confinement might be ok? Or some combination of violent crime and something else?
 
You and a few others are the ones proposing a change in the current system. It's incumbent on you to provide the justification for change and the alternative plans.

Meh, I disagree with this. While I certainly think we shouldn't avoid discussing the alternatives, we already have a justification, and it is that we make up 5% of the world's population and 25% of the incarcerated population, in an objectively violent, racist, and unjust system.

I don't have the MLK quote handy, but he talks about it not being the responsibility of the oppressed to determine the conditions under which their oppressor grants them their freedom. It was not incumbent on slaves to determine what society would look like after slavery before they fought for their freedom. It is not necessary to have all the answers, before recognizing that it is inhumane to lock someone in a cage.
 
OK so, you commit a murder and are caught (or are you, since no police?): what should happen to you?
 
I asked that before and just completely glossed over. It’s on you to prove that those that commit crime are not destined to repeat their crimes. The repeat crime rate is like 75% in the United States, with a large spread in other countries with an average somewhere around 50%. That argues that those that commit crime will commit more crime and that when they aren’t removed from society they will commit a crime. Since victims of crimes are innocent they should be weighted more than the perpetrator of said crime so with the recidivism rate that high you could even make the argument that for society it is better once a single crime is committed to weigh removing them from society permanently.
 
OK so, you commit a murder and are caught (or are you, since no police?): what should happen to you?

A lot of people commit murder and aren't caught in our existing system. The point is asking, how does our current system address and prevent these harms, and how can we reimagine a world where we deal with that harm differently than locking people in cages and subjecting them to even more physical and sexual violence.
 
Meh, I disagree with this. While I certainly think we shouldn't avoid discussing the alternatives, we already have a justification, and it is that we make up 5% of the world's population and 25% of the incarcerated population, in an objectively violent, racist, and unjust system.

I don't have the MLK quote handy, but he talks about it not being the responsibility of the oppressed to determine the conditions under which their oppressor grants them their freedom. It was not incumbent on slaves to determine what society would look like after slavery before they fought for their freedom. It is not necessary to have all the answers, before recognizing that it is inhumane to lock someone in a cage.


we're not asking convicts to solve problems. we're asking college educated instigators to solve the problem they are saying exists on this message board thread they created
 
we're not asking convicts to solve problems. we're asking college educated instigators to solve the problem they are saying exists on this message board thread they created

We (the royal we) are fighting for liberation. That includes people inside, call them people not convicts, and activists on the outside. Millions of people live in that unjust system. It is not incumbent on incarcerated people, or the activists who share a common goal, to finalize concrete plans for what is next, BEFORE demanding liberation.
 
Ok, so are you referring to mental health issues then for reasons involuntary confinement might be ok? Or some combination of violent crime and something else?

Some people pose such a serious and immediate threat to society that the least restrictive means for preventing that threat is involuntary confinement and the serious of the threat outweighs the seriousness of the violence we are inflicting on that individual.
 
This isn’t even a discussion because no alternative proposal has been made. It’s just shitting on the current system. So far the only alternative that’s truly been offered is no system at all (because everyone is human and deserve better even if they are truly awful or some utopian hippie shit like that) which is an insane concept because it means no consequences for your actions so no laws.

My ideal criminal justice system would contain:
1) No cash bail. If you are charged with a crime, you are brought in for standard booking and held for 24 hours. During that 24 hours, there would be a legally required risk assessment for danger to the public and flight risk. Unless there is severe risk of public harm or near certainty of flight by the offender, they are let go from the station. Kentucky has implemented an almost identical system and has seen early success in the program. Obviously there would need to be a lot of input from a variety of sources as to what goes into the risk assessment algorithm to prevent as much implicit bias as possible, but it would be far better than cash bail as currently implemented.

2) Reduced court costs for defendants below the poverty level and no charge whatsoever for public defenders. North Carolina is fucking awful about overcharging indigent defendants and then issuing warrants and arresting for non-payment, even when the judge was made explicitly aware that payment was impossible. John Pfaff, law professor at Fordham, is a leading scholar on mass incarceration and in the last few days on Twitter has highlighted many issues surrounding debilitating court costs and the lack of understanding and criminalization of poverty that comes with those costs. He’s a mandatory follow if you are at all interested in the problems with mass incarceration. @JohnFPfaff is his handle.

3) Job training and placement programs for post-incarceration life. One of the biggest indicators of recidivism is unemployment in formerly incarcerated Americans. Unemployment for that category of people is far higher than even the national unemployment during the Great Depression. It’s simply unacceptable. Oregon and Washington have done a great job recently in matching unions and contractors with prisons and jails to do training while incarcerated and then helping to land union or contracting jobs after release, and the recidivism rates in those areas has fallen dramatically. Similarly, there are non-profits in California that assist formerly incarcerated Americans find jobs post-incarceration and then subsidize their wages for 13 weeks after getting the job. Results have shown that after the subsidized wages are done, employers keep those formerly incarcerated employees on the job, demonstrating that the biggest issue for these people is getting access to the jobs, not keeping them.

There are more things I would tweak or change, but those are the big 3. Also LGJ, I disagree with your characterization about abolition of prisons. No one is saying there wouldn’t be consequences, but committing a crime does not mean you lose your humanity. Prisons should not be torture chambers, should not be Russian gulags.
 
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