10 ms·

Raise the Crime Rate (2012)

108 points by myrrh 12y ago

jackpirate 12y ago
This all makes me so sad. I wish I knew how to help change the situation.
- angersock 12y ago
  Hire convicts, provide good jobs--and vote the bastards out.
  - jtheory 12y ago
    Supporting your first suggestion -- what are the best ways to improve education opportunities for prisoners?
    - angersock 12y ago
      I don't know offhand, and I kind of wish that I did. I imagine that you could probably talk to parole officers or local-nonprofits and ask for more information. If you hear about somebody getting out of the clink, offer to help I guess? I assume it's basically like trying to setup help for any other underserved demographic. Identify them, identify their needs, and see if you have or know something worth contributing.
      - rdl 12y ago
        The Last Mile at San Quentin seems interesting. http://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2012/03/bringing-san-quentin-to-social-media/254823/ http://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2012/03/bringi...
    - lallysingh 12y ago
      Put education in the prison? Maybe attach good grades to earlier release?
      - alexhawdon 12y ago
        This seems like such an obvious solution and, with the advent of things like MOOCs, something that needn't be particularly costly. (Setting aside the fact that even 'costly' but effective rehabilitation is demonstrably cheaper in the long-run.) As well as the obvious benefits of equipping offenders with skills that will make them more employable upon release it seems intuitively true that the struggle for self-improvement would make them all-round 'better people'. For those who argue that self-study isn't enough, another component could be pairing up inmates of differing attainment levels and having effectively having them teach one another -- again, the act of teaching and helping a stranger has got to be a positive experience. Is there a big problem with any of this? Have studies been conducted that indicate my intuitions are incorrect? Have I massively underestimated the difficulties and costs associated with such a scheme? ...Or is it simply a combination of lack of imagination on the side of the administration, coupled with a strong urge for punitive justice on the side of the electorate?
        watwut 12y ago
        If I recall right, education for education sake did not lowered recidivism much. It made prisoners better behaved while in prison (e.g. there was less violence and less problems in prison). I suspect that part of the problem with practical education for prisoners is that everybody else have to pay for it. So, law abiding (or not caught yet) citizens get all jealous about the perk they are not getting.
- Zigurd 12y ago
  If you sit on a jury, don't vote to convict on drug "crimes" or other prison-stuffing non-violent offences short of fraud and larceny on an epic scale.
  - Malician 12y ago
    I feel that the core argument of the article is that we cannot fix the problem through non-violent inmates. There are not enough of them. The biggest problem is with violent inmates who none of us really want back out in society; the problem is that the damage caused by imprisoning them is so much larger than the improvement experienced by everyone else.
    - chaostheory 12y ago
      > the problem is that the damage caused by imprisoning them is so much larger than the improvement experienced by everyone else. Is it? Correct me if I'm wrong, but isn't the US prison population just 0.00730843528654% of our country's total population? 0.99269156471346% of the US population experiencing lower violent crime is a larger improvement than the crimes suffered in prison. Wouldn't it be more effective if we just decriminalized drug possession and just ended the drug war entirely?
      - lutusp 12y ago
        > Correct me if I'm wrong, but isn't the US prison population just 0.00730843528654% of our country's total population? Citation needed. In fact, the figure is 0.94% in jail, and 2.9% in one or more of jail/probation/parole: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Incarceration_in_the_United_States http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Incarceration_in_the_United_Sta... Quote: "According to the U.S. Bureau of Justice Statistics (BJS), 2,266,800 adults were incarcerated in U.S. federal and state prisons, and county jails at year-end 2011 – about 0.94% of adults in the U.S. resident population.[4] Additionally, 4,814,200 adults at year-end 2011 were on probation or on parole.[8] In total, 6,977,700 adults were under correctional supervision (probation, parole, jail, or prison) in 2011 – about 2.9% of adults in the U.S. resident population." This means your provided figure is (a) wildly exaggerated as to its accuracy, using far more digits than its source can justify, and (b) flat wrong to an astonishing degree. > Wouldn't it be more effective if we just decriminalized drug possession and just ended the drug war entirely? Absolutely, many agree including me. But your figures are still wrong.
clay_to_n 12y ago
Wow, very powerful article. I agree that our prison system is America's biggest moral wrong, and I hope that history books in 50 years write about how sad and unjust it is in our time. That said, does anyone know what proposed solutions are? When the author talks of abolishing the prison system in exchange for higher crime rates (and potentially even more deaths by the state), does he literally mean we should close all prisons (like he seems to say near the end)? I'd love to see more articles / writing about this, and proposed solutions with specifics about how many people could be removed from the prison system, estimates for increases in capital punishment (if arguing we should have more), etc.
- kazagistar 12y ago
  The problem presented is very real, but the proposed "solution" is absurd. There are plenty of way functional prison systems. As long as we stop dehumanizing felons and normalizing crimes against them, I see no reason why reform is impossible.
  - deleted 12y ago
    [deleted]
  - jessaustin 12y ago
    Reasonable prison systems incarcerate much smaller percentages of their populations than the USA one does. Any reform worth contemplating will result in the release of many prisoners, and the closure of prisons in all but the most overcrowded states.
    - Ntrails 12y ago
      Already in the Prison Treatment Act of 1945, the view was expressed that the deprivation of freedom itself should be regarded as the penal element of a prison sentence and not the actual prison experience itself. Thus, the PTA of 1974 states explicitly that an inmate shall be treated with respect for his or her human dignity. [1] As ever when I look for an country that I think will be an example of doing something well, I start with the nordics. And I see that Sweden has recently closed 4 prisons because they don't have enough prisoners to fill them any more. [2] I would love to hear counter points if my cursory reading has missed something - but in general I was once again impressed by the attitudes I see there. [1] http://www.internationalpenalandpenitentiaryfoundation.org/Site/documents/Stavern/29_Stavern_Report%20Sweden.pdf http://www.internationalpenalandpenitentiaryfoundation.org/S... [2]http://www.theguardian.com/world/2013/nov/11/sweden-closes-prisons-number-inmates-plummets http://www.theguardian.com/world/2013/nov/11/sweden-closes-p...
jtheory 12y ago
http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/cifamerica/2012/feb/21/us-more-men-raped-than-women http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/cifamerica/2012/feb... This also links to other resources on the subject, and discusses some of the startling stats in the OP (like that in the US more men are raped than women, because of prison rape).
- bostik 12y ago
  After reading these two articles, I can't help but wonder if the depiction of prison life in US, as seen in Oz [0], wasn't that far from truth. I still would want to get some background (and financial interests) on the author. The build-up of the article culminates the third chapter from the end: Abolishing prisons and releasing all the prisoners would amount to a deregulation of criminal punishment. It would mean letting the private sector determine how best to prevent ourselves from getting robbed. In high finance, the laissez-faire approach has proved to be a disaster; for petty crime, it would be a boon. So, the antidote to the proposed solution will be more gated communities and private police forces guarding these sanctuaries? Considering that the article avoided pointing at the financial incentives of the prison industrial complex system, I can't shake a feeling there are some other financial interests behind this article. [0]: http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0118421/ http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0118421/
daveloyall 12y ago
Thank you, Mr. Glazek, for the concept of hyperhell.
hammerzeit 12y ago
I applaud this article for challenging the received wisdom in libertarian communities that our prison problems are a function of drug laws -- indeed, if there's one thing this article does well, it's establishing that we cannot solve our problems solely by dealing with nonviolent crime. That said, this article makes a large number of controversial claims that it fails to support on anything other than a rhetorical level, including: * The moral crisis in prisons is so severe that effectively any social burden should be borne for it to be fixed. * In time, the increased public money from eliminating prisons will turn violent felons into peaceful individuals. * The differences between the US and UK's social situations is a function of our prisons. Ultimately, this article's vigor outweighs its coherence; it seems to oscillate between making ontological claims and moral claims, between libertarian claims and authoritarian claims (note the advocacy for more CCTV).
- pokpokpok 12y ago
  I agree with your other points, but I'd like to point out that there's absolutely nothing wrong with supporting multiple ideas that are usually found in different ideological cages
- whiddershins 12y ago
  It is not inherently authoritarian to have cctvs. It can just as easily be an anarchist or libertarian concept. It really depends on who pays for and controls the cameras, who has access to the recordings, and what punishments can be given to those recorded while committing a crime.
jsdalton 12y ago
Perhaps surprisingly -- or perhaps not -- a strong plurality of Americans actually think prison life is "too easy": https://today.yougov.com/news/2014/07/21/many-americans-think-prison-life-too-easy/ https://today.yougov.com/news/2014/07/21/many-americans-thin...
- joesmo 12y ago
  It's never surprising that the vast majority is wrong. The majority is always wrong by definition. I doubt anyone who has been to prison, even for a tour, thinks it's "too easy."
  - Fuzzwah 12y ago
    > The majority is always wrong by definition Care to explain the thinking behind that logic? I can't seem to get my head anywhere near understanding how you can state this.
curlyfrosurfer 12y ago
Are there any resources to help alleviate this problem? A very close associate of mine has just been put away for a white collar offense to a private prison black hole, and I hope that noone has to suffer like he has
jqm 12y ago
The article had me until about 3/4 of the way through. (still a good article). We can't, and we won't, abolish the prison system in the foreseeable future. What we can and what we should do is enact some drastic reforms of our criminal justice system. The old guard needs to be removed from it's duties almost to the man. The CJ system in the US has become an expensive, shameful joke and without a doubt, causes far more harm than good to our society.
- jessaustin 12y ago
  Even if one finds the conclusions extreme, they can be valuable if they're extreme in the right direction. We have to move the Overton window somehow.
whiddershins 12y ago
One of the things i think is missed in the proposed solution (do away with prisons) is the problem of mob violence in general, and "mob justice" in particular. If people don't believe the government will punish people for crimes, they will do it themselves. Would that result in less hyper-hell?
cousin_it 12y ago
Why not make prison more humane instead of abolishing it? Prosecute crimes against inmates, allow independent observers inside, etc. That would also take a lot of political courage, though.
- e40 12y ago
  And in the "crimes against inmates" it has to be pointed out that many of them are committed by the jailers themselves. Those crimes need to be punished with severe penalties.
- dragonwriter 12y ago
  > Prosecute crimes against inmates That's already the official policy. So how do you make it real? Short of removing the executive branch's monopoly on criminal prosecution, I don't see how it can be done, and there's all kinds of problems doing that (for one thing, unless you also abandon protections against double jeopardy, you invite sham prosecutions to protect the guilty.)
netcan 12y ago
This is a part of my perspective as a European: The prevailing system of government in the world at present is a mix of socialism, capitalism, welfarism and the philosophically unchampioned realpolitik practices that were picked up and spread over the years. In any case, Europe has a philosophical heritage of socialism. It's different flavors at different times in different places. There is also conservatism, capitalist liberalism. All sorts. But socialism is not a bad word in Europe. It's not like flying a swastika. It's part of the political heritage of many parties & people of the political centre. In any case, I think that socialism including Marx's own writings read in its 1840s political context contain valuable perspectives. That is, you can think of the world as a self organizing playground for heroic, creative individuals as Ayn Rand does. I dig that perspective. You can view the economy as a mechanical ecosystem as many "modern" economists do (including Milton Friedmanesque monetarism, Keynes, and to a lesser extent Austrian School). That's valuable perspective too too, though far less poetic and invigorating. Back to socialism, it's an important part of our heritage. The history of political, moral and philosophical thought. At the heart of it is class. Class struggle. Class Consciousness. Just thinking about societal dynamics in terms of classes. The majority of incarcerated Americans are members of certain classes where incarceration is common. Americans, with their allergic reactions to socialist language avoid this construct or paradigm. Instead they think of it as culture, or "socio-economics" a watered down Marxist paradigm without much of the richness. Prisons, prison complexes and such have always been a class issue. Avoiding this perspective is avoiding the clearest historical perspective of the problem. The whole modern idea of prisons is not that old. People were not incarcerated for decades in the 1600s. Modern prisons, correctional institutions came into being with the industrial age to deal with the class instability of that period. The lowest classes (beneath the working class majority) were prone to crime, drunkenness and generally antisocial lifestyle. Public sadism solutions (public executions and torture) gave way to forced labour Forced labour gave way to public prisons. These were enabled by Bigger Government (to use an americanism) and a vernal super-sizing of public institution. Along the way, exile (eg Australian & American prison colonies) was tried and some other solutions. But it was always and still is a way of dealing with the underclass problem. Those poor bastards who get the worst of any societal system from Feudalism to Capitalism to Nordic Social Democracy. Whenever I see American underclass issues bubble to an overflowing boil, from my removed location I see class. I see people growing up in a sector of society with certain norms and expectations. Their part of the economy and the society is mostly defined by class. The encouragement of outliers breaking out of this fate is admirable, but it does not change the realities of class. As people, we continue societies that we are born into for the most part. We also break out and rebel and redefine paradigms. But, classes are sticky. People follow the paths laid out for them from birth. TLDR: Americans, get over your socialism allergy. Read Marx & Trotsky. Read it in context. Pay attention to the parts about classes in society and their role in history. Discard the bad parts, but read it first before you determine which parts are good and which are bad.
m0nty 12y ago
Excellent article until we get to this: "[T]he first question any prison abolitionist needs to answer is what we’re supposed to do with violent criminals. An important part of that answer has to be that we must simply put up with an increased level of risk in our daily lives." Good luck selling that idea. It drifts off-topic in any case, since up until then the article is mainly about prison reform and (for the most part) non-violent offenders themselves becoming victims of violent inmates. But wholesale release of violent offenders back into the community? It won't happen, and no politician who hopes to get elected will touch that message with a 10-foot pole. Reading on: "Prison abolitionists should be ready to advocate a massive expansion of the death penalty if that’s what it takes to move the discussion forward" So now you're determined to alienate people on both the left and the right, on the dubious notion that violent offenders should be released, but the most violent should be executed?
- api_or_ipa 12y ago
  If you put aside political left and rights, then the arguments seem to be a bit more justifiable. At least, the author isn't sticking to party talking points and making new arguments. I think what the author is saying is that prisons are, by them selves, a bad way to encourage reasonably low and sustainable crime rates. Wherever possible, criminals should be "punished" by out-of-prison solutions and rehabilitation. The author is pushing the point of executing everyone as an almost rhetorical argument. If you want to imprison so many people, why not simply kill them?
  - m0nty 12y ago
    I suppose I'm using left and right as short-hand for progressive and authoritarian, but it's a bit clumsy and not that much shorter. It's an excellent article, but even if it is just a rhetorical position (re-reading, I accept it could be) I think it poisons the debate to the extent that nobody will engage with it. If you really want to argue in favour of releasing murderers and violent criminals from prison, it will be branded a "murderer's manifesto" and the debate is basically over. So talk about reforming the mostly futile drug laws, three-strike laws, etc, before anything else.
candu 12y ago
Our approach to crime here in the US strikes me as the dark underbelly of the myth of meritocratic rugged individualism. If success is individual in nature, failure must be as well, and it's much easier to dehumanize an entire class of "failures" when you believe that the blame lies entirely with them.
squids 12y ago
One big thing this article misses is that crime has been falling worldwide by a similar rate as in America (http://www.economist.com/news/briefing/21582041-rich-world-seeing-less-and-less-crime-even-face-high-unemployment-and-economic http://www.economist.com/news/briefing/21582041-rich-world-s...). So prisons do disproportionately imprison the lower classes and far far too many people are put in disgusting prisons to be tortured and treated like subhumans in the US but that doesn't necessarily mean it has caused the big drop in crime.
heygiraffe 12y ago
Lately we've seen a number of well written, compelling articles about reforming the U.S. criminal justice system. There was one not long ago about a woman who moved to a poor inner-city neighborhood for a while and wrote about it. Here is another one. But these articles always have a missing piece: why are there so many crimes committed? In the above-mentioned article, it was noted that many of the woman's neighbors would never call the police, as to do so would result in a check on possible warrants for their arrest. But with no further explanation, you've just lost the hordes of right-leaning American suburban whites. They'll think, "There are no warrants out for my arrest, because I don't go around committing crimes. Why can't these people do the same?" Similarly, this article discusses the case of "petty thief" Roderick Johnson, who was used as a sex slave in prison, and raped daily for a year and a half. And then: > After Johnson got out, he lodged a civil suit against six guards who he said refused to help him. In 2005, a Wichita Falls jury found in favor of the guards. In 2007, after passing a note to a clerk at a gas station that read, “I have 9 mm. Put the money in the bag,” Johnson was arrested again. This time, since Johnson was a repeat offender, he got nineteen years. And my proverbial suburban white thinks, "If you don't want to be a sex slave, then stop pulling armed robberies of gas stations, ya moron!" And a long overdue discussion has been nipped in the bud. This issue desperately needs to be addressed. The left isn't going to fix this problem on its own. We need broad societal support. But as it is, half the population of the U.S. has an easy argument allowing them to dismiss proposals from articles like this one.

108 points by myrrh 12y ago

jackpirate 12y ago

This all makes me so sad. I wish I knew how to help change the situation.

angersock 12y ago
Hire convicts, provide good jobs--and vote the bastards out.
- jtheory 12y ago
  Supporting your first suggestion -- what are the best ways to improve education opportunities for prisoners?
  - angersock 12y ago
    I don't know offhand, and I kind of wish that I did. I imagine that you could probably talk to parole officers or local-nonprofits and ask for more information. If you hear about somebody getting out of the clink, offer to help I guess? I assume it's basically like trying to setup help for any other underserved demographic. Identify them, identify their needs, and see if you have or know something worth contributing.
    - rdl 12y ago
      The Last Mile at San Quentin seems interesting. http://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2012/03/bringing-san-quentin-to-social-media/254823/ http://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2012/03/bringi...
  - lallysingh 12y ago
    Put education in the prison? Maybe attach good grades to earlier release?
    - alexhawdon 12y ago
      This seems like such an obvious solution and, with the advent of things like MOOCs, something that needn't be particularly costly. (Setting aside the fact that even 'costly' but effective rehabilitation is demonstrably cheaper in the long-run.) As well as the obvious benefits of equipping offenders with skills that will make them more employable upon release it seems intuitively true that the struggle for self-improvement would make them all-round 'better people'. For those who argue that self-study isn't enough, another component could be pairing up inmates of differing attainment levels and having effectively having them teach one another -- again, the act of teaching and helping a stranger has got to be a positive experience. Is there a big problem with any of this? Have studies been conducted that indicate my intuitions are incorrect? Have I massively underestimated the difficulties and costs associated with such a scheme? ...Or is it simply a combination of lack of imagination on the side of the administration, coupled with a strong urge for punitive justice on the side of the electorate?
      - watwut 12y ago
        If I recall right, education for education sake did not lowered recidivism much. It made prisoners better behaved while in prison (e.g. there was less violence and less problems in prison). I suspect that part of the problem with practical education for prisoners is that everybody else have to pay for it. So, law abiding (or not caught yet) citizens get all jealous about the perk they are not getting.
Zigurd 12y ago
If you sit on a jury, don't vote to convict on drug "crimes" or other prison-stuffing non-violent offences short of fraud and larceny on an epic scale.
- Malician 12y ago
  I feel that the core argument of the article is that we cannot fix the problem through non-violent inmates. There are not enough of them. The biggest problem is with violent inmates who none of us really want back out in society; the problem is that the damage caused by imprisoning them is so much larger than the improvement experienced by everyone else.
  - chaostheory 12y ago
    > the problem is that the damage caused by imprisoning them is so much larger than the improvement experienced by everyone else. Is it? Correct me if I'm wrong, but isn't the US prison population just 0.00730843528654% of our country's total population? 0.99269156471346% of the US population experiencing lower violent crime is a larger improvement than the crimes suffered in prison. Wouldn't it be more effective if we just decriminalized drug possession and just ended the drug war entirely?
    - lutusp 12y ago
      > Correct me if I'm wrong, but isn't the US prison population just 0.00730843528654% of our country's total population? Citation needed. In fact, the figure is 0.94% in jail, and 2.9% in one or more of jail/probation/parole: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Incarceration_in_the_United_States http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Incarceration_in_the_United_Sta... Quote: "According to the U.S. Bureau of Justice Statistics (BJS), 2,266,800 adults were incarcerated in U.S. federal and state prisons, and county jails at year-end 2011 – about 0.94% of adults in the U.S. resident population.[4] Additionally, 4,814,200 adults at year-end 2011 were on probation or on parole.[8] In total, 6,977,700 adults were under correctional supervision (probation, parole, jail, or prison) in 2011 – about 2.9% of adults in the U.S. resident population." This means your provided figure is (a) wildly exaggerated as to its accuracy, using far more digits than its source can justify, and (b) flat wrong to an astonishing degree. > Wouldn't it be more effective if we just decriminalized drug possession and just ended the drug war entirely? Absolutely, many agree including me. But your figures are still wrong.

clay_to_n 12y ago

Wow, very powerful article. I agree that our prison system is America's biggest moral wrong, and I hope that history books in 50 years write about how sad and unjust it is in our time. That said, does anyone know what proposed solutions are? When the author talks of abolishing the prison system in exchange for higher crime rates (and potentially even more deaths by the state), does he literally mean we should close all prisons (like he seems to say near the end)? I'd love to see more articles / writing about this, and proposed solutions with specifics about how many people could be removed from the prison system, estimates for increases in capital punishment (if arguing we should have more), etc.

kazagistar 12y ago
The problem presented is very real, but the proposed "solution" is absurd. There are plenty of way functional prison systems. As long as we stop dehumanizing felons and normalizing crimes against them, I see no reason why reform is impossible.
- deleted 12y ago
  [deleted]
- jessaustin 12y ago
  Reasonable prison systems incarcerate much smaller percentages of their populations than the USA one does. Any reform worth contemplating will result in the release of many prisoners, and the closure of prisons in all but the most overcrowded states.
  - Ntrails 12y ago
    Already in the Prison Treatment Act of 1945, the view was expressed that the deprivation of freedom itself should be regarded as the penal element of a prison sentence and not the actual prison experience itself. Thus, the PTA of 1974 states explicitly that an inmate shall be treated with respect for his or her human dignity. [1] As ever when I look for an country that I think will be an example of doing something well, I start with the nordics. And I see that Sweden has recently closed 4 prisons because they don't have enough prisoners to fill them any more. [2] I would love to hear counter points if my cursory reading has missed something - but in general I was once again impressed by the attitudes I see there. [1] http://www.internationalpenalandpenitentiaryfoundation.org/Site/documents/Stavern/29_Stavern_Report%20Sweden.pdf http://www.internationalpenalandpenitentiaryfoundation.org/S... [2]http://www.theguardian.com/world/2013/nov/11/sweden-closes-prisons-number-inmates-plummets http://www.theguardian.com/world/2013/nov/11/sweden-closes-p...

jtheory 12y ago

http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/cifamerica/2012/feb/21/us-more-men-raped-than-women http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/cifamerica/2012/feb... This also links to other resources on the subject, and discusses some of the startling stats in the OP (like that in the US more men are raped than women, because of prison rape).

bostik 12y ago
After reading these two articles, I can't help but wonder if the depiction of prison life in US, as seen in Oz [0], wasn't that far from truth. I still would want to get some background (and financial interests) on the author. The build-up of the article culminates the third chapter from the end: Abolishing prisons and releasing all the prisoners would amount to a deregulation of criminal punishment. It would mean letting the private sector determine how best to prevent ourselves from getting robbed. In high finance, the laissez-faire approach has proved to be a disaster; for petty crime, it would be a boon. So, the antidote to the proposed solution will be more gated communities and private police forces guarding these sanctuaries? Considering that the article avoided pointing at the financial incentives of the prison industrial complex system, I can't shake a feeling there are some other financial interests behind this article. [0]: http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0118421/ http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0118421/

daveloyall 12y ago

Thank you, Mr. Glazek, for the concept of hyperhell.

hammerzeit 12y ago

I applaud this article for challenging the received wisdom in libertarian communities that our prison problems are a function of drug laws -- indeed, if there's one thing this article does well, it's establishing that we cannot solve our problems solely by dealing with nonviolent crime. That said, this article makes a large number of controversial claims that it fails to support on anything other than a rhetorical level, including: * The moral crisis in prisons is so severe that effectively any social burden should be borne for it to be fixed. * In time, the increased public money from eliminating prisons will turn violent felons into peaceful individuals. * The differences between the US and UK's social situations is a function of our prisons. Ultimately, this article's vigor outweighs its coherence; it seems to oscillate between making ontological claims and moral claims, between libertarian claims and authoritarian claims (note the advocacy for more CCTV).

pokpokpok 12y ago
I agree with your other points, but I'd like to point out that there's absolutely nothing wrong with supporting multiple ideas that are usually found in different ideological cages
whiddershins 12y ago
It is not inherently authoritarian to have cctvs. It can just as easily be an anarchist or libertarian concept. It really depends on who pays for and controls the cameras, who has access to the recordings, and what punishments can be given to those recorded while committing a crime.

jsdalton 12y ago

Perhaps surprisingly -- or perhaps not -- a strong plurality of Americans actually think prison life is "too easy": https://today.yougov.com/news/2014/07/21/many-americans-think-prison-life-too-easy/ https://today.yougov.com/news/2014/07/21/many-americans-thin...

joesmo 12y ago
It's never surprising that the vast majority is wrong. The majority is always wrong by definition. I doubt anyone who has been to prison, even for a tour, thinks it's "too easy."
- Fuzzwah 12y ago
  > The majority is always wrong by definition Care to explain the thinking behind that logic? I can't seem to get my head anywhere near understanding how you can state this.

curlyfrosurfer 12y ago

Are there any resources to help alleviate this problem? A very close associate of mine has just been put away for a white collar offense to a private prison black hole, and I hope that noone has to suffer like he has

jqm 12y ago

The article had me until about 3/4 of the way through. (still a good article). We can't, and we won't, abolish the prison system in the foreseeable future. What we can and what we should do is enact some drastic reforms of our criminal justice system. The old guard needs to be removed from it's duties almost to the man. The CJ system in the US has become an expensive, shameful joke and without a doubt, causes far more harm than good to our society.

jessaustin 12y ago
Even if one finds the conclusions extreme, they can be valuable if they're extreme in the right direction. We have to move the Overton window somehow.

whiddershins 12y ago

One of the things i think is missed in the proposed solution (do away with prisons) is the problem of mob violence in general, and "mob justice" in particular. If people don't believe the government will punish people for crimes, they will do it themselves. Would that result in less hyper-hell?

cousin_it 12y ago

Why not make prison more humane instead of abolishing it? Prosecute crimes against inmates, allow independent observers inside, etc. That would also take a lot of political courage, though.

e40 12y ago
And in the "crimes against inmates" it has to be pointed out that many of them are committed by the jailers themselves. Those crimes need to be punished with severe penalties.
dragonwriter 12y ago
> Prosecute crimes against inmates That's already the official policy. So how do you make it real? Short of removing the executive branch's monopoly on criminal prosecution, I don't see how it can be done, and there's all kinds of problems doing that (for one thing, unless you also abandon protections against double jeopardy, you invite sham prosecutions to protect the guilty.)

netcan 12y ago

This is a part of my perspective as a European: The prevailing system of government in the world at present is a mix of socialism, capitalism, welfarism and the philosophically unchampioned realpolitik practices that were picked up and spread over the years. In any case, Europe has a philosophical heritage of socialism. It's different flavors at different times in different places. There is also conservatism, capitalist liberalism. All sorts. But socialism is not a bad word in Europe. It's not like flying a swastika. It's part of the political heritage of many parties & people of the political centre. In any case, I think that socialism including Marx's own writings read in its 1840s political context contain valuable perspectives. That is, you can think of the world as a self organizing playground for heroic, creative individuals as Ayn Rand does. I dig that perspective. You can view the economy as a mechanical ecosystem as many "modern" economists do (including Milton Friedmanesque monetarism, Keynes, and to a lesser extent Austrian School). That's valuable perspective too too, though far less poetic and invigorating. Back to socialism, it's an important part of our heritage. The history of political, moral and philosophical thought. At the heart of it is class. Class struggle. Class Consciousness. Just thinking about societal dynamics in terms of classes. The majority of incarcerated Americans are members of certain classes where incarceration is common. Americans, with their allergic reactions to socialist language avoid this construct or paradigm. Instead they think of it as culture, or "socio-economics" a watered down Marxist paradigm without much of the richness. Prisons, prison complexes and such have always been a class issue. Avoiding this perspective is avoiding the clearest historical perspective of the problem. The whole modern idea of prisons is not that old. People were not incarcerated for decades in the 1600s. Modern prisons, correctional institutions came into being with the industrial age to deal with the class instability of that period. The lowest classes (beneath the working class majority) were prone to crime, drunkenness and generally antisocial lifestyle. Public sadism solutions (public executions and torture) gave way to forced labour Forced labour gave way to public prisons. These were enabled by Bigger Government (to use an americanism) and a vernal super-sizing of public institution. Along the way, exile (eg Australian & American prison colonies) was tried and some other solutions. But it was always and still is a way of dealing with the underclass problem. Those poor bastards who get the worst of any societal system from Feudalism to Capitalism to Nordic Social Democracy. Whenever I see American underclass issues bubble to an overflowing boil, from my removed location I see class. I see people growing up in a sector of society with certain norms and expectations. Their part of the economy and the society is mostly defined by class. The encouragement of outliers breaking out of this fate is admirable, but it does not change the realities of class. As people, we continue societies that we are born into for the most part. We also break out and rebel and redefine paradigms. But, classes are sticky. People follow the paths laid out for them from birth. TLDR: Americans, get over your socialism allergy. Read Marx & Trotsky. Read it in context. Pay attention to the parts about classes in society and their role in history. Discard the bad parts, but read it first before you determine which parts are good and which are bad.

m0nty 12y ago

Excellent article until we get to this: "[T]he first question any prison abolitionist needs to answer is what we’re supposed to do with violent criminals. An important part of that answer has to be that we must simply put up with an increased level of risk in our daily lives." Good luck selling that idea. It drifts off-topic in any case, since up until then the article is mainly about prison reform and (for the most part) non-violent offenders themselves becoming victims of violent inmates. But wholesale release of violent offenders back into the community? It won't happen, and no politician who hopes to get elected will touch that message with a 10-foot pole. Reading on: "Prison abolitionists should be ready to advocate a massive expansion of the death penalty if that’s what it takes to move the discussion forward" So now you're determined to alienate people on both the left and the right, on the dubious notion that violent offenders should be released, but the most violent should be executed?

api_or_ipa 12y ago
If you put aside political left and rights, then the arguments seem to be a bit more justifiable. At least, the author isn't sticking to party talking points and making new arguments. I think what the author is saying is that prisons are, by them selves, a bad way to encourage reasonably low and sustainable crime rates. Wherever possible, criminals should be "punished" by out-of-prison solutions and rehabilitation. The author is pushing the point of executing everyone as an almost rhetorical argument. If you want to imprison so many people, why not simply kill them?
- m0nty 12y ago
  I suppose I'm using left and right as short-hand for progressive and authoritarian, but it's a bit clumsy and not that much shorter. It's an excellent article, but even if it is just a rhetorical position (re-reading, I accept it could be) I think it poisons the debate to the extent that nobody will engage with it. If you really want to argue in favour of releasing murderers and violent criminals from prison, it will be branded a "murderer's manifesto" and the debate is basically over. So talk about reforming the mostly futile drug laws, three-strike laws, etc, before anything else.

candu 12y ago

Our approach to crime here in the US strikes me as the dark underbelly of the myth of meritocratic rugged individualism. If success is individual in nature, failure must be as well, and it's much easier to dehumanize an entire class of "failures" when you believe that the blame lies entirely with them.

squids 12y ago

One big thing this article misses is that crime has been falling worldwide by a similar rate as in America (http://www.economist.com/news/briefing/21582041-rich-world-seeing-less-and-less-crime-even-face-high-unemployment-and-economic http://www.economist.com/news/briefing/21582041-rich-world-s...). So prisons do disproportionately imprison the lower classes and far far too many people are put in disgusting prisons to be tortured and treated like subhumans in the US but that doesn't necessarily mean it has caused the big drop in crime.

heygiraffe 12y ago

Lately we've seen a number of well written, compelling articles about reforming the U.S. criminal justice system. There was one not long ago about a woman who moved to a poor inner-city neighborhood for a while and wrote about it. Here is another one. But these articles always have a missing piece: why are there so many crimes committed? In the above-mentioned article, it was noted that many of the woman's neighbors would never call the police, as to do so would result in a check on possible warrants for their arrest. But with no further explanation, you've just lost the hordes of right-leaning American suburban whites. They'll think, "There are no warrants out for my arrest, because I don't go around committing crimes. Why can't these people do the same?" Similarly, this article discusses the case of "petty thief" Roderick Johnson, who was used as a sex slave in prison, and raped daily for a year and a half. And then: > After Johnson got out, he lodged a civil suit against six guards who he said refused to help him. In 2005, a Wichita Falls jury found in favor of the guards. In 2007, after passing a note to a clerk at a gas station that read, “I have 9 mm. Put the money in the bag,” Johnson was arrested again. This time, since Johnson was a repeat offender, he got nineteen years. And my proverbial suburban white thinks, "If you don't want to be a sex slave, then stop pulling armed robberies of gas stations, ya moron!" And a long overdue discussion has been nipped in the bud. This issue desperately needs to be addressed. The left isn't going to fix this problem on its own. We need broad societal support. But as it is, half the population of the U.S. has an easy argument allowing them to dismiss proposals from articles like this one.