Excellent podcast on eliminating prisons with Oonagh Ryder here
https://soundcloud.com/novaramedia/the-lockdown-prisons-abolition-or-reform
And related article here
https://novaramedia.com/2018/01/14/what-does-justice-look-like-without-prisons/
Poll: Atheists overwhelmingly oppose the death penalty, but most Christians favor it
by Disillusioned JW 44 Replies latest social current
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slimboyfat
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LoveUniHateExams
Then concentrate on programmes that prevent violent crime happening in the first place - well, that is the claim but whatever programs are started after prison abolishment, there will still be people who commit murder/rape/etc.
They would still need to be punished.
How?
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LoveUniHateExams
Prisons don’t prevent or cure violent crime - yes, because that is beyond their remit. The purpose of prisons is to punish criminals who commit serious crime.
Seeing as there will always be a minority of people who commit serious crime, if we abolish prisons we must think of another way to punish them.
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slimboyfat
It is better to prevent a violent crime in the first place than it is to punish it after it has occurred.
The countries with fewest people in prison are the countries with the lowest rates of violent crime. The countries with the highest number of inmates are the countries with the highest rates of violent crime.
Prisons don’t prevent violent crime they make the problem worse.
btw I think that’s me out of posts for today (I only get 5) listen to the podcast on abolition, it’s most enlightening.
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LoveUniHateExams
It is better to prevent a violent crime in the first place than it is to punish it after it has occurred - I actually agree with you this. But, again, some people will always commit serious crime. That's reality, I'm afraid.
The countries with fewest people in prison are the countries with the lowest rates of violent crime - this may be true. But violent crime still needs to be punished because it can't be prevent entirely.
Prisons don’t prevent violent crime they make the problem worse - I agree they don't prevent crime … not sure they make the problem worse. Maybe when offenders get out of prison they are likely to reoffend. Perhaps this is a problem with the way prisons are run, rather than prisons failing as a concept. And, of course, if the really serious criminals were locked up for life they wouldn't reoffend at all.
btw I think that’s me out of posts for today (I only get 5) listen to the podcast on abolition - sorry, Slim, today I don't feel up to wading though anything put out by Novara Media, lol.
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truth_b_known
I have to agree with Slimboyfat; Prison is not helping anything.
I think we should start looking at our criminal laws and re-evaluate them. Why do we imprison people for having a substance abuse disorder? Locking up people and putting the stigma of "convicted felon" on people because they use substances to deal with suffering, anxiety, and fear is pointless.
If we start with that we can move on to the next item. Take care of non-violent crimes first. Then move on to violent crime.
There will always be crime, but that doesn't mean that mass incarceration is the solution. It isn't even a stop gap.
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Diogenesister
I agree locking people up, especially young people, for non violent crime is beyond absurd. It only serves to institutionalise them, to teach them how to be crooked, to make them feel they have no future so give up and rely on crime etc etc
I'm sort of contradicting myself here, too, but the moment a person cannot be redeemed, cannot be "treated" as such, there is no reason to put them in jail. And there are many such people...the psychopaths we were talking about earlier, for example. It is a severe personality disorder. Do we punish people when they have a disorder? Hopefully not. Do we treat them then? No, because it's not possible. So the only answer is long term high security psychiatric placement, which is what we do (in the UK at least).
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Diogenesister
Here's a story. You tell me the answer ....
what happened to my neighbours son. A boy who played with my twins until a couple years ago when he outgrew them (he's two years older).
He was a nice, well mannered boy. Not the brightest, but anyway. I loved him. He had a few very odd traits. When I first met him he was 2 1/2 and he would literally run into the road in front of cars if he mum started to talk to someone. Terrifying. He would come to play and for no rhyme nor reason he would break or damage something! Almost every time he came around, which was often.
After some years he was diagnosed with ADHD.
He was bullied at school.
His mother was the biggest narcissist I have EVER met. EVER. Which I think explained the running into the road for attention. A mother who regularly beat him until I threated to report her. She did stop and claimed it was a cultural thing.
His father was a nice, gentle man who took him to football practice and was the family backbone.
One day the police came around looking for his mother and said there's been an accident. My heart stopped beating ....but it was his father. Killed whilst riding his bike, during lockdown.😥 The boy tried to throw himself out of his bedroom window.
Almost instantly the boy changed. Started smoking weed on his doorstep with the ne'r do well's. He was so, so out of it each day in the way the young can get so smashed, you know?
Then something terrible happened. He got in a fight and stabbed someone with a screwdriver he was carrying (two girls!) It will be a political judgement because there's a big anti-violence against women thing in London ATM, due a policeman murdering a woman he kidnapped.
What do we do with a 16 year old like that? You tell me!😥
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LoveUniHateExams
@Diogenesister - ok, I agree with your comments and your point. There should be a reform of who we send to prison and how prisons are run. Some people are clearly in prison when they shouldn't be.
Now let me give another story. You tell me the answer ...
In the late 70s in northern towns across England, multiple young women were found dead. Some had been sexually abused. Some had been mutilated. Some had been discovered in humiliating poses. Some had suffered blunt force trauma to the head.
Nobody knew who the killer was - this was before DNA could catch criminals. One or two women survived being attacked and said the guy had a Bradford accent. Later on, an anonymous tape was forwarded to the police. The man's voice took responsibility for the crimes, signing off as 'Jack'. Trouble is, this guy's accent was very distinct. He clearly came from the North East, from Sunderland. Eventually, in 1981, police caught the killer. He was with his next victim and was stopped routinely due to a concern about number plates. The police later found the hammer that the killer had discarded to cover his tracks. Peter Sutcliffe, a lorry driver from West Yorkshire, admitted to the murders of 13 women. And that's just the known victims. There could be others.
What do we do with a guy like that? You tell me!
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pistolpete
What do we do with a 16 year old like that? You tell me!
The key is to acknowledge that we do not live in a Perfect World.
That being said, we should not look for a Perfect solution.
Humans are flawed from birth. Including Good Honest people who can turn in an instant, for whatever reason, Your example shows how this is possible. (The Kid changed when he lost his father.)
The same thing happens over and over. Some Good people change to complete opposite when something drastic happens in their life.
A man trying his best to be a Good Human suddenly loses his wife and children to a heinous murder. How can he not help but to be angry at the World----at God---at life!
His mind goes through a physical change. He becomes a sociopath, then a psychopath, then he takes his anger out at other humans because it was a human that killed his family and changed his life.
He starts killing other humans, including innocent ones who haven't experience the reality of this life.
With that in mind, we seek IN-PERFECT solutions to a CURRENT PROBLEM.
Those IN-PERFECT SOLUTIONS are many times DEATH --no so much to punish the man, but to remove the danger to the innocent people that could become his victims.
Is it fair?
NO!
But that's the wold we live in and we have to accept that.
That's why religion was Born. It was humans trying to make sense of it all and give some measure of hope to those innocent oneS who experience the grief of losing the ones you love---FOREVER.