The point of Prison
Jun 24 2006 07:23
I'm sure that none of us are particularly happy with the current prison system, but havingvictim's advocates is another step towards abandoning all pretence at rehabilitation. Logically capitalists should want to take the cheaper option of rehabilitation shouldn't they?
And this masturbatory voyeuristic pleaure in victimhood is driving me crazy.
And the next time I hear for an idiot asking for "Sarah's law" I'll scream. The only way that law would have prevented her death was if his neighbours had already lynched him.
Jun 24 2006 10:42
#2
Blackn'red Ned wrote:
JC, I agree with what you say, but you also need to take into account the privatisation of prison building and running. There is money in locking people up; you know welfare for the capitalists, you might call it penal keynesianism.
Yeah. It isn't in capital's interests to cut government spending; the more government spending the better in most cases - it works as wealth distribution from workers to capital (since workers pay proportionally more taxes than the rich). Especially as with privatisation the money goes straight to private companies running things, as with prison - just look at the US. Those 2 million prisoners make a lot of money for private prison corporations - and the other corporations who use them for nearly-slave labour.
Jun 24 2006 11:31
#3
Interesting view from Karl Marx on what true rehabilitation is:
Quote:
"5. Regulation of prison labor."A petty demand in a general workers' program. In any case, it should have been clearly stated that there is no intention from fear of competition to allow ordinary criminals to be treated like beasts, and especially that there is no desire to deprive them of their sole means of betterment, productive labor. This was surely the least one might have expected from socialists. (Critique of the Gotha Programme, Appendix)
Quote:
Logically capitalists should want to take the cheaper option of rehabilitation shouldn't they?
As others have said, it isn't profitable. Nor does it satisfy a desire for vengeance and bloodlust. Families and relatives of murder/rape/other violent crime victims somewhat understandably want him or her to suffer as cruel, prolonged, and degrading a punishment as possible. This was the whole meaning of the "eye for an eye, tooth for a tooth" passage in the Bible: a punishment should never be more excessive than the crime committed, despite the tendency to desire this out of revenge. Some peoples have rather peculiar methods of punishing crimes. The Seneca Indians in North America for example would leave punishing a murder up to the family of the victim, even if it was done during a battle. If they knew who did it, they would either kill that person in return, or else force them into an adoptive role to replace the lost family member (albeit with more forced-slavery involved).
Jun 24 2006 12:02
#4
Ghostzart, you mention restorative justice and this was once common in Germanic and northern european societies; you know "You killed Olaf so now we've all decided that you must look after Olaf's family as if they were your own." This was also the origin of the idea of putting a price on a crime, so you could make recompense in gold.
Whilst restorative justice in some circumstances might be an eminently practical approach I think that it would depend on the intimacy of the society involved. I assume that such systems would work much better where people knew one another or at the very least shared a common world view or cultural milieu.
There are examples of organic societies effectively without crime or in which crime is such a rarity that on such occasions everyone can turn their mind to how best to deal with it. At the risk of all kinds of flak, I have to say that it seems to me only possible to definitively deal with crime when we live our lives surrounded by people we know and in which the stranger is again unusual rather than the norm. Scale my dears, it's all a question of the right human scale.
I should add that I am sure that any kind of libertarian communist social settlement would drastically reduce crime, but that unless you fancy some industrial scale and impersonal penal/justice system my comments about scale stand.
The most fascinating aspect of what that sussurating boil on the flesh of humanity Blair has been saying over the last few days is that he recognises that the way the world has changed has led to increasing crime, but of course he cannot go to the next step and admit that the modern state and corporate capitalism are to blame and that prisons and coppers could never solve the problems.
JC, I agree with what you say, but you also need to take into account the privatisation of prison building and running. There is money in locking people up; you know welfare for the capitalists, you might call it penal keynesianism.