As much as I wish for incremental reform of prison conditions for prisoners, it's important never to forget the fundamentally unethical premise of prisons and s

As much as I wish for incremental reform of prison conditions for prisoners, it's important never to forget the fundamentally unethical premise of prisons and state punishment, which derives from religious fantasies about good and evil. Human beings behave according to the combination of their neurology and their conditions. We should do what we can to prevent dangerous behavior and do our best to treat the people who do dangerous things. Deciding that some people, mostly people who come from historically oppressed groups and from poverty, are bad and deserve to suffer has a toxic effect on the core of our society.