Sorrry Ma'am, we know your ex husband is trying to kill you but it would be inhumane to lock him in prison. We can offer you a place in our maximum security safehouse though, it has armed guards, windows barred and lockdown every night.
Have a read of this: https://lemmy.nz/comment/2326509
It's not about ruling out detaining people. It's that prison is a terrible answer to the problem. Some person thinks that crime is acceptable. Let's put them in a building full other other people who think that crime is acceptable, so the only people the associate with are criminals. It's a system that makes more criminals, and it will be seen as obviously a bad idea in 100 years.
I don't think I understand. When someone mass murders people, what do we do with them if we don't have prisons?
My partner studies criminology, and a guest lecturer came to speak about prison abolition. I was curious about what should happen to serial killers, so she sent him and email and this was his response:
"Thanks for getting in touch - I'm glad you've been talking with your friends about abolition! Believe it or not, this is probably the most common question abolitionists get and I think it's an important one. Prison abolition isn't about opening the prison doors overnight. It's a long-term strategy that aims to prevent the creation of future 'serial killers' by creating a less violent society in the first place. However, even in more peaceful society without prisons, people will continue to hurt each other and sometimes quite seriously. For people who pose a serious and immediate threat to the lives of others, they would need to be securely detained and/or supervised. This would not need to be in a prison, however. A prison involves collecting up all those people. An abolitionist alternative would be for that small number of people to be managed in the communtiy, with pretty strong supervision so that they don't get the opportunity to commit the kind of violence you're talking about. They would also get consistent access to habilitation programmes that are consistently found to be more effective in reducing violence than in-prison programme.
Of course, this is a miniscule group of people and the group of people who cause far more death and destruction are on the boards of corporations that contribute to issues like pollution. An estimated 3,300 people die from pollution in NZ every year - compared to about 50 for murder. https://www.ehinz.ac.nz/indicators/air-quality/health-effects-of-air-pollution/#more-than-3300-deaths-from-human-made-air-pollution-in-2016"
I thought this could answer your question as well. I hope you find it useful
Thanks for the explanation. While I definitely agree that offenses exist that should not result in prison time, I cannot agree with the above. This assumes that people are reasonable and can at least learn to be considerate of others.
For example, in the case of white-collar crime where psychopathic CEO/Shareholders/etc consistently find ways to increase profits at the expense of everyone else, I think prison is the only place they should ever be. There's a difference between a guy selling tinnies and a guy who offloads HIV infected blood to poorer countries and infects thousands of people.
Until we have a societal shift that eliminates the possibility of being solely profit (or selfishly) motivated, I would like to keep the prisons.
Maybe white collar criminals could be disallowed from positions of power or authority. I don't know if they would be able to do much harm stacking shelves at Countdown. It's fair to think they deserve prison because of the horrible things they've done, but I think they could still be useful to the community in certain roles.
But I'm not too familiar with all the arguments. I'm not studying criminology
Yeah this seems like a relatively simple problem to fix in the grand scheme of abolition. Also worth noting that not having prisons doesn't mean not having a justice system. There would still be ways of identifying people that are doing bad things, and confirming that they are indeed doing those things. All that could remain as public as it is now (or more so), so folks would know who the white-collar crims are.
That's fantastic, thanks! The original article doesn't really tackle the subject of prison abolition, just that TPM want it. That email tells me a lot about how the system would work.
It didn't take much to convince me, but now I'm a fan of this approach (ok, to be fair I was already keen on a better system than putting all the minor criminals in a big group together to reenforce the behavior). Unfortunately we wouldn't see societal results within a couple of election cycles so it's hard to see how this could actually become reality without the risk of getting cut at the next government change. But this is the kind of future-thinking policy I like to see.
That last note on the larger group of people causing death & destruction is one I find really interesting. I watched a video a year or so ago from Philosophy Tube that among other things talked about what violence is, or can be. Which in a way flips the narrative on violent crime - at least the narrative you read in our major dailies or see on TV.
There's a lot of talk about the impact of violent crime, but if you start thinking about what violence is first, you realise violent crime is just a very narrow subset of violence that our system chooses to address. The same system ignores all sorts of other violence - or in some cases even supports it.
So then when you think, 'well why is this subset a crime, but all this other stuff isn't?', its not a long road to realising that a lot of stuff that isn't crime are activities that by design or not service to reinforce power & privilege. Which then starts to make you wonder about a whole bunch of other crime & justice issues in general, eg when a welfare recipient might get hounded for desperately grabbing some cash they weren't entitled to, but some rich person can fleece millions and get away with it.
I love Philosophy Tube! I saw that video, too. I agree; it's an eye-opening perspective
Most people in this country are too stupid, too racist, too cruel and too venegeful to even listen to somebody say something like this let alone accept it as policy.
They simply want prisoners to be hurt as much as humanly possible. If you told them you were going to torture them by peeling their skin off they would vote for you.
Thanks for the answer it’s naïveté is astounding.
My flippant response is to ask why such a commonly asked question isn't part of the lecture. Though maybe it was touched in briefly and easily forgotten.
Well to be fair they said its the most commonly asked question they get, which I think they meant in general. Probably people see a headline in stuff then post 'but whaddabout the muderers?'.
Oh I have a follow up question that you may or may not know the answer to. On rereading, I noticed they used the term "habilitation", not "rehabilitation". Is there significance in this distinction?
I think the idea behind habilitation is that people who've spent most of their lives in the prison system were never properly integrated into society in the first place- rehabilitation implies return to a prior level of fitness that wouldn't apply here.
Ah thanks! This is the kind of think I thought might have been implied by using that term.
I'm not sure, sorry
Sounds good, I would want this to be available to everyone.
Question, genuine. Looking for discussion.
What does it cost society to imprison a person? Including opportunity costs and recidivism costs.
What would it cost to have them monitored 24/7?
What I'm thinking is if a convicted violent offender had a police minder(s) effectively 24/7 what are the costs to society compared to maintaining prisons, prisoners of which tend to reoffend?
What kind of minding would be necessary? At least three officers within 100m at all times? Clever/smart braclets/tags? We already have community, home, and periodic detention. Is this so different?
IMHO these is still a need for physical incarceration of irredeemably violent crimes. That terrorist, rapists, murderers, etc.
A good question. The recidivism costs I guess are what most, me included, will view as a valid reason to continue imprisonment for serious offences.
Me too.
Society has a limit to how much of "crime X" they'll tolerate.
Some should be exactly one: murder, rape, toture, etc. I'd argue that provable attempts at those count as one, so the threshold is actually less than one.
I feel like pretty much everything else can be "civil" consequences:
What I'm really unsure about is, arguably, progenitors to violence:
Just to throw a few into discussion.
It’s a tough call in deciding the seriousness of an offence when deciding the consequences, especially when it is a repeat. The costs of incarceration are huge, yet it seems to be needed to hopefully discourage the more serious crimes.
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