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Police and Prison Abolition Thread

Any surprise this is the guy who lost his right to post on the sports board so he could defend Manning?

Incessantly demanding people defend the stupid shit they post on a sports thread is a dick move (so is incessantly posting stupid shit, but whatever).

Asking people to provide some logical argument for their claims on the tunnels is kind of the point.

Claiming that we have to keep prisons around because of public safety doesn’t square with the fact that our current system, as fucked up as it is, at least acknowledges that the vast majority of offenders are safe to send back out into public with certain safeguards in place.
 
If my choices are (1) harming someone who has committed a violent crime (but who may be safe to society) by locking them up or (2) exposing society to the risk of further harm at the hands of a violent criminal because a judge made an erroneous decision as to the societal threat they posed, I’m personally gonna go with option 1 every time. We can argue about what crimes are violent and what crimes are not, but the above is a choice I don’t see myself budging on unless there is a real way to incapacitate someone who has committed a violent crime from doing so again short of locking them up.

This is a good explanation of why we have mass incarceration.
 
Maybe some type of prison island they are confined too, we could call it Australia.
 
If my choices are (1) harming someone who has committed a violent crime (but who may be safe to society) by locking them up or (2) exposing society to the risk of further harm at the hands of a violent criminal because a judge made an erroneous decision as to the societal threat they posed, I’m personally gonna go with option 1 every time. We can argue about what crimes are violent and what crimes are not, but the above is a choice I don’t see myself budging on unless there is a real way to incapacitate someone who has committed a violent crime from doing so again short of locking them up.

Are you in favor of remand for all individuals charged with violent crimes? Seems like the logical conclusion of always choosing #1 over #2.
 
I’m open to the concept of no prisons, but the alternative has to be at least as good in serving the standard ends of punishment—deterrence, rehabilitation, incapacitation, and retribution (although this last one is open for debate in my mind). Plainly, prisons don’t do a perfect job at any of these, but they do a pretty damn good job at incapacitation, which, in my mind, along with deterrence, are the most important ends.

No they don’t. Go look up the statistics of violent crime committed in prisons.
 
I know them, thanks. They reveal that prisons do a pretty damn good job of preventing violent crime by inmates on the general population during their time of incarceration.


If a goal of prisons in this country is to direct an exhorbitant amount of violence towards a certain disfavored subset of the U.S. population they are doing a damn good job.

If a goal is to reduce the amount of violence committed against the entire U.S population, they are a miserable failure.

If the goal is to reduce the amount of violence committed against a certain favored subset of the U.S. population then the results mixed at best. And that’s being generous.

At least Junebug is honest about what he thinks the goals of the prison system should be.
 
My post says nothing about people who are merely charged with violent crimes. I’m talking about convicts.

On that point, I don’t really want to get into a semantic debate over whether slapping someone, for example, is a “violent crime.” I’m obviously speaking about things like murder, etc., and my argument is against abolitionism. That’s what is being discussed in this thread. Once we start arguing at the margins, we are arguing about how to reform prisons, not whether we should abandon them.

Your post said “someone who has committed a violent crime.” Not sure how I was supposed to discern you were only talking about convicts.

Most people who end up being convicted of a violent crime (including murder, etc.) are offered the opportunity to return to society while they await trial. It sounds like you don’t think that should be the case. Shouldn’t we always choose to lock those people up rather than put society at risk? Do they pose less of a risk before their trial than they do after their conviction?
 
I'm not following- this seems like an either/or but not both line of arguments. Why not just:
If you murder/rape, you get locked up
If you do something not that serious, you get a punishment that fits the offense.
<end thread>
 
If a goal of prisons in this country is to direct an exhorbitant amount of violence towards a certain disfavored subset of the U.S. population they are doing a damn good job.

If a goal is to reduce the amount of violence committed against the entire U.S population, they are a miserable failure.

If the goal is to reduce the amount of violence committed against a certain favored subset of the U.S. population then the results mixed at best. And that’s being generous.

At least Junebug is honest about what he thinks the goals of the prison system should be.

wouldnt a major goal be "reduce the amount of repeat or additional violence"?
 
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.
 
wouldnt a major goal be "reduce the amount of repeat or additional violence"?

One of the things nobody has addressed is - 1) if you’re saying the harm in locking up people is that it subjects the to violence, you’re acknowledging that there are a lot of violent people that need to be locked up, 2) I haven’t seen any proposal for how you’re going to do a good job of identifying who should be locked up and who shouldn’t be, and 3) I haven’t seen anybody address how to grapple with the inherent unfairness in locking some violent criminals up and letting some go for committing the exact same crimes (this issue exists in current sentencing where judges have discretion; but guidelines and structured sentencing seek to reduce this). If the analysis revolves solely around some analysis of future threat to the public (which i’d note no advocates here have given any explanation of how that will/could work), then you’re going to have a lot of unfair outcomes.
 
These three statements together have me confused where you're trying to get to.

To me, prison abolition is specifically about removing involuntary confinement as a tool of the criminal justice system, leaving open the question of when, if ever, involuntary confinement is an appropriate use of societal power.

If not the criminal justice system, who is deciding on involuntary confinement? Another government run department under a different name/format?

I recognize that there are certain individuals who pose such a large threat to society that their contact with the rest of society must be extremely limited if not outright eliminated. I understand that as a society we need institutions to achieve tha separation and that at least currently one of those institutions needs to be a physical space where individuals are involuntarily confined.

Stop involuntarily confining people as a punishment for crime

These two quotes seem to contradict each other. You recognize some people need to be removed from society sometimes in a physical space where individuals are involuntarily confined, but then you say we need to stop involuntarily confining people. How do these fit together? And if you're ok with a physical space, what does that mean/look like in actuality? A jail cell? Solitary confinement? Home arrest (and if so, how do you ensure their confinement)?
 
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.

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.
 
These three statements together have me confused where you're trying to get to.



If not the criminal justice system, who is deciding on involuntary confinement? Another government run department under a different name/format?





These two quotes seem to contradict each other. You recognize some people need to be removed from society sometimes in a physical space where individuals are involuntarily confined, but then you say we need to stop involuntarily confining people. How do these fit together? And if you're ok with a physical space, what does that mean/look like in actuality? A jail cell? Solitary confinement? Home arrest (and if so, how do you ensure their confinement)?

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.
 
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