What to do after dismantling the prison system

My thinking sort of goes to how small a problem it actually is. A relatively small proportion of prisoners are sex offenders and serial murderers while the rest are victims of a racist and classist justice system.

On to your actual question though. . .

I'm thinking that in a revolutionary situation, the prisons will see massive revolt as will. The prisoners may well have revolutionary organizations. These well probably have autonomy in the undertaking of the final affairs of the prisons as they are abolished. There is every reason to believe, good or bad, that prisoners will assure an orderly and safe release from prison, in particular if the other revolutionary working-class organizations actively engage with and have a history of solidarity with the struggle of the prisoner.

yeah id say prisoners are one of our greatest allies

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Iron_Column

I think prisoners, as a section of the working-class, have been as active if not more, then other sections during this long period of low-level class struggle in the US. Profoundly inspiring struggles and interesting writings and manifestos have dotted the era. Isolation units are a spark in prisoner struggle at the moment, though they go full-on with their demands once started, very specific.

http://www.libcom.org/blog/30000-prisoners-california-are-refusing-food-09072013

As well as that, there are the people from the drug trade or organised crime. If drugs are legalised, there will be no profit in supplying them. The business model for organised crime will also disappear, since it relies on capitalism to create the framework in which it operates. Gambling and prostitution will find themselves in very different contexts: there's not that much point in gambling if there is no reward for "getting rich" and no burning need to take desperate measures to escape poverty, while prostitutes will have plenty of other opportunities to earn a living, even in the early stages of communisation. This, of course, would put the pimps out of business. And the abolition of migration controls would put the sex traffickers out of business as well.

Further:

* Bank robbers? There will be no point.

* Con men? What would they do with the money they get? And how much could they get their hands on anyway?

* Standover merchants? There'd be a living in that, for a time, but progressively less reason to engage in it.

Virtually all crimes with an economic motive would disappear very quickly, as the motive was destroyed. What crime that remains would be the product of social dysfunction or anti-social pathologies - ranging from blokes who get into fights at pubs through to serial killers. I think we'd need some form of justice system, but no prisons. If somebody is being too determined in their anti-social activities, or just too dangerous to have around, I would support exile to an island somewhere. This must not be a place of punishment, however. Instead, it should resemble Majorca much more closely than Devil's Island. It should be somewhere that anti-social types can hang out in and enjoy (with whoever else is silly enough to live with them) rather than somewhere from which they will be driven to escape and thus come back to bother us.

interesting idea , could you elaborate? would they receive as much stuff as they wished? would there be controls on allowing them to leave the island? wouldn't this island be very dangerous and violent?

Bastoy, at just 16 per cent, has the lowest reoffending rate in Europe.

"Here you are given personal responsibility and a job and asked to deal with all the challenges that entails. It is an arena in which the mind can heal, allowing prisoners to gain self-confidence, establish respect for themselves and in so doing respect for others too."

With 120 inmates and 70 staff (35 of whom are guards)

i agree with this. but i think truly dangerous people will need to be locked up, for varying periods of time. as someone mentioned they are such a tiny portion of people, but this doesn't mean that it's safe to let them roam free. not if it's you, or your spouse, or your kid, that they come after to rape or torture or kill.

currently such people are thrown into giant prisons far from their home communities where they are treated in cruel ways that tend to just exacerbate their pathologies. an alternative is a small group-home setting. a house that has been modified for security so the residents can't escape. maybe about five to eight live there. the staff to resident ratio is very high and those who work there are trained as social workers and therapists and their goal is rehabilitation. the atmosphere is therapeutic, not punitive. these homes can be located in residential communities close to where the residents used to live so that it's convenient for family and friends to visit. because truly dangerous offenders are such a small percent of the prison population, these small facilities scattered here and there should be enough to handle them. as time goes on and the anarchist society heals our wounds, we'll (hopefully) have less and less need for such places, and then one day not even they will be needed.

i know there will be those who want to take away my anarchist card for this. but there are also other anarchists who agree. in fact, i got this idea from reading a prison abolition book.

banishment to an island seems like a bad idea. especially if the sexes aren't separated. (think of what would happen to the children on that island! not to mention the women.) even if the sexes were separated, these islands would become tiny hells of rape and abuse, considering we're only sending dangerous predatory violent offenders there.

OK. I thank Ultraviolet for raising this, since we're dealing with a tough question - one which, I have to confess, is the one which I am least confident I have the right answers. I think we do have answers, however, which are better than Ultraviolet's one.

1. We need to think about three categories of people:

(a) Those with anti-social tendencies which are not extreme and who present dangers less than life-threatening and/or less than obvious;

(b) Those with extreme anti-social tendencies who are in effective control of their own actions; and

(c) Those with extreme anti-social tendencies who, through illness or acquired injury, are not in effective control of their own actions.

In considering this, we also need to consider the degree of difficulty in telling into which category an anti-social individual would fall.

Ultraviolet's proposal for establishing small group homes as treatment centres has merit, but I would make one vital amendment. There would be no "security" preventing people from leaving. Once we establish that, we would have a prison, since imprisonment has its own logic and the needs of security would soon result in the development of prison rules that are pretty standard in society today. I would, however, be open to making residence compulsory for the period of treatment, with the community refusing to supply goods and services to involuntary residents who are out of bounds.

It should be noted that separation from family and friends would not be part of the justice order - this is for treatment, not punishment. Therefore, any family or friends who wanted to move in with the offender could do so - though I am willing to listen to arguments for exceptions orders to be made in the case of children who might be at jeopardy.

Exile would be restricted to people who had exhausted the community's patience through repeated crimes, or frightened them sufficiently with a single gross crime (noting that your average murderer rarely presents a danger of recidivism). With exile, the community is washing its hands of somebody*. As with compulsory residence in treatment centres, friends and family can accompany them if they want (and return if they wish, as well - it's only a one way trip for the exiles). In order to make it easier to manage, I think the exiles would be best accommodated on a series of about half a dozen islands, so they can get away from each other if they want to. The exiles, however, should be free to set up whatever social order they please. If they have no guns and explosives, they would present no danger to the outside society and we would put the Anarchist society in more danger by policing them than we would tolerating them.

* I would support the right of an exile to go to another community which has offered to take that person in (an essential defence of individual liberty), provided the community has had the full transcript of the trial).

simple answer:

for something that separates people out from the rest of the population and restricts their freedoms, to call it anything other than prison is an anarchist theoretical somersault.

only lock people up if it is necessary to protect the rest of the population. whilst a deterrent aspect is needed (prison can't be as good as non-prison, otherwise the occasional murder inclined individual would realise they could literally get away with murder/rape and just be moved geographically to basically a communist criminal colony), it is still wrong to deliberately impose suffering upon them through tiny cells and shit meals etc, and the only principle governing incarceration should be that of prevention, not that of a notion of 'justice' (ie. it should not seek to inflict a calculated degree of suffering on the person being sentenced).

this obviously necessitates a hierarchical prison system - there is no way you could pass self-management to a bunch of pedos / rapists / murderers, (which generally would constitute the only crimes necessitating incarceration in a communist world).

the only aspect of prison abolition that ought be supported is the freeing of those whose crimes are directly related to economic motives, or communist political prisoners. otherwise its a load of romanticised shite.

Not rehabilitation then? Nearly all of what you put is basically what prisons are like now. It's also lazy to lump in murderers with rapists and paedophiles; you can't sexually assault someone in the heat of the moment or by accident. If it's just about prevention, you might as well bring back hanging.

No? I've had sex in my sleep before, don't underestimate the sex drive.

hey pikel you got your quotes mixed up, flaneur wrote that quote not me

Rehabilitation is a form of prevention, surely? I refer to prevention from reoffending (not just prevention from it happening in the first place). I'm pretty sure people do sexually assault in the heat of the moment - from what i understood i thought it is only a small fraction of rapes that happen in a premeditated fashion.

Fixed, Harrison, sorry

Aye, fair enough.

Studies say rape is mostly a pre-meditative crime with stats ranging from 58% to 71%. In any case, rape is obviously more severe than killing someone drink driving or in a fight and someone hits their head and it's useless to lump them altogether.

Sorry flaneur cannot agree with you.

Being dogmatic about the relative severity of offences is silly. Why is killing someone through the self-indulgence of drink driving necessarily less severe than rape? Is it therefore a mitigating factor for a rapist to say they were drunk when the offence happened?
Life is more complicated than that and lets hope a product of the revolution will stop the mass murder on our streets by egocentric car fanatics. (Bit of personal prejudice creeping in here.)

etit - awful idea sorry

all the current prisoners should be let free though of course

Harrison #13
I agree with this post.

I feel most posts have been over optimistic regarding the residue of criminality after the revolution. Of course many people in prison would be part of the revolution. However the shedding this society’s anti-social legacy may take some time, perhaps a generation.

It may be realistic to pre-suppose the majority a folk, post-revolution, are libertarian communists or at least sympathetic to the cause, though social attitudes would be uneven and some people would be unsympathetic to those who may be ‘damaged or socially deviant’. It is likely in the short term some ‘criminal offenders’ would need protection from the ‘revolutionary righteous’, who think these problems can be solved quickly by a bullet to the head.

As referred to in other posts not all present day ‘crimes’ are based on economic exploitation – there are sexual predators of all types, and sadists - including those who find amusement in torturing animals, etc. These sad sods are not going to simply disappear with the end of capitalism.

I understand in the Soviet Block the authorities refused to believe there were any serial killers, as they were a product of ‘decadent capitalism’. The result was that numerous children, etc., died because of ideological dogma. Anarchist-communists should beware of taking the same road of wilful myopia.

The revolution overturning the economic base of capitalism and the establishment of a society based on libertarian communist principles should be seen as the start of a process, not the end in itself.

i actually disagree with my own post,
i think prisons show a big flaw in anarchist politics

I didn't know that about rapes, i'll have to read about that. With regard to drink driving / death during a fight, those are both manslaughter and not murder - i was referring to murder, as in killing someone with the intent of doing so.

vicent, seriously, grow up, don't post barbaric shit.

dp

Because no one drink driving sets out to kill anyone and people do drink and drive without incident. For all the faults of the current judicial system, it at least acknowledges intent and severity in the judgement.

Harrison, in the US a drink driver can be convicted with second degree murder. The point I was making is murder/manslaughter carry a lot of variables whereas rape does not and they should be treated separately.

ok sorry guys i obviously dont mean hacking people apart i meant something more along the lines of http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chemical_castration
this also applies to females

the tattoo was meant so that if they escaped people could see that they were bad people,
the tattoo could just be a dot inside the nostril or something

beatings are a terrible idea as are island prisons and i cant defend myself, thats why i retracted my statement

Flaneur #26:
‘For all the faults of the current judicial system, it at least acknowledges intent and severity in the judgement.’

This is the point I was trying to make: ‘Being dogmatic about the relative severity of offences is silly.’
You appeared to argue the opposite: ‘…rape is obviously more severe...’

Someone who drinks and drives is probably just a selfish individual who does not care if their abilities are impaired – ‘So I may have an accident/get caught, I’ll take the chance!’ In my experience, along with speeding, this is socially - ‘Well it’s your call.’ Motorised Russian roulette with other peoples lives.

Perhaps rapists all set out with the intention to rape someone. Or perhaps they are just selfish insensitive people who do not care if their sexual desires conflict with another’s wishes.

In terms of the victims and the victim’s families both these sets of crimes are devastating.

The trouble here is that "bad people" engage in whatever despicable behavior because of the social conditions that have shaped them; it's not as if there's some badness gene that certain folks are born with that makes them irrevocably bad for the rest of their lives. Focusing on punishing "bad people" (except to the extent that such punishment is incidental to whatever action's necessary to protect others from antisocial behavior) rather than addressing the conditions that have led them and others down that path is not just cruel but ineffective.

i have a question... my post (#11) got one "up" and harrison's post (#13) got six "ups". why? i'm not interested in a popularity contest! lol it's just that as far as i can tell, we're both advocating basically the same thing.

so it makes me wonder, is there a difference in our positions that i'm not seeing? because what harrison wrote makes a lot of sense to me, so if there is a difference, maybe there's something in my position i need to rethink.

if there is a difference, can someone explain it? is it just because i'm not calling what i propose "prison" and am therefore guilty of the anarchist theoretical summersalt?