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That's just one example of an offender who is unlikely to be reformed. There are many others. It's interesting, though, that down thread, the one program give
by Natsu 6y ago
That's just one example of an offender who is unlikely to be reformed. There are many others. It's interesting, though, that down thread, the one program given as an example of this is legalizing prostitution, which many women have been and are forced into both by economic and violent means. Let me just say that that's not the best example to give if you're arguing that you're not advocating that.
I'll agree that rehab is good--if and when it works. There's a lot to be said for helping people obey the law rather than punishing them for disobeying it, especially with laws like mask wearing during a pandemic. But I think that, even there, you'll find some level of compulsion needed and it's odd that this specific example is one where I find other people, though hopefully not you, ready to flip-flop.
Finally, I was more interested in bringing up containment as a reason for incarceration and the choice of criminal example was not something I gave any real thought to. Containment is somehow consistently absent from these discussions about the purpose of prison, even in some scholarly works, despite being rather important. Nobody would write about infectious disease without mentioning quarantines, yet containment is widely ignored as if everyone is cribbing from some list and no purposes that are not on the list even exist.
- camgunz 6y agoYeah, agree about legal prostitution—it’s in practice highly abusive and exploitative. I wouldn’t advocate it as a remedy. But the point there was that there are policies besides incarceration that are super effective at curbing violent crime, and I think it serves well as such an example. I think the occurrence of incorrigible violent offenders is far lower than most people think. It’s certainly not .7%. We couldn’t get through high school or even a basketball game if that were true. There’s also a lot of evidence that violence is learned, not born, and therefore can be treated. But I also know there are people out there that are incorrigibly violent, and that state resources are finite and we don’t have the means to fix everyone’s problems. I’m not saying abolish prisons. I am saying legalize soft drugs, put money into education, therapy, rehab, and other social programs, stop imprisoning people for inability to pay fines and other oppressive garbage, don’t give people felonies for nonviolent offenses (unless we’re talking white collar crime), and clean up prisons so they’re not gulags of abuse.
- Natsu 6y agoWell, I can agree with a fair bit of that, it's just that things like this tend to get taken too far. You see, my own mother died as the victim in an unspeakable manner. In my own home. When I was a teenager. I've seen more than a few people who think that letting the man who did that out of prison is somehow a good idea. I simply cannot agree with that under any circumstance. But yes, prison culture is itself dangerous and needs to be disrupted. I'm fine with things like so-called creative sentencing and diversion to try to keep people out of the system to begin with. It's just that some things are the thin end of the wedge. There's some minority, like Dahmer, who simply need to be contained. Period. There is some core group of utterly unrepentant people who have done things too terrible to be permitted freedom again. I almost never see anyone acknowledge that part of the problem and it's frustrating given what I've lived through.
- Natsu 6y agoNow, to be fair, one place I might agree with such a program is for picking up people for public intoxication. If the police respond, the person is likely to be uncooperative and/or hostile because they expect to get arrested, but perhaps if we have someone taking them to get medical care (and help them into rehab) some of this hostility would be avoided and we might not end up with people overdosing on drugs dying in police custody.