Hey everyone, I don't really understand what people mean when they say they are for 'prison abolition', I get the stuff about economic factors need to be tackled and there should be more services trying to stop recidivism, and keep people out of prison, but at the same time don't we still need prisons for the worst offenders? Or at least some kind of place to put people that are a danger to society? Do prison abolitionists have any kind of answer for this? What places should I research?
Prisons exist due to the rather juvenile idea that having somebody stare at a concrete wall for 20 years will have them have a Come to Jesus™ moment, and be redeemed into a Good Person™.
"Prison abolitionism" just means reformatory justice system rather than punitive one.
>>2924678>>2924669Why not do it like the fins and use prisons for rehabilitation? Prisons should be more humane and serve as therapy.
>>2924678I'm all for making prisons better but some people do need to be locked away, it's the most humane option.
>>2924679That feels so silly to call it "abolition" then. Like that means getting rid of prisons not just reforming them.
>>2924691I agree but as above, that's just a better prison.
>>2924694>it's the most humane option. why is having people locked up forever more humane than just killing them?
>>2924695It allows people to at least experience some limited pleasures of being alive, I think if people prefer to die than life in prison that's their choice though
>>2924724Bruh what's with that attention deficit editing
That seems kind of more like a condemnation of Angela Davis than prison abolitionism itself, but yeah I do kind of get the impression that it's kind of a silly liberal buzzword, but trying not to be uncharitable because maybe there's deeper meaning
Hippie influence. A successful socialist revolution would require a massive expansion of the prison system.
Don't bother reasoning with insane people.
Imprisonment and execution are good and necessary.
>>2924669the truth is that unless we develop perfect mechanisms for controlling the behavior of sentient beings (doubtful) there will always be a need to detain beings who are a danger to themselves and those around them. Whether this is done under the rhetorical framework of "crime and punishment" or under the rhetorical frameworks of "protecting the public" and "treating mental illness" makes very little difference to those being restrained and detained. The best we can do is make sure that the bourgeoisie and the reactionaries are not in charge of these levers of power. Any attempt at "abolishing" such things often results in a power vacuum that is immediately filled by a more primitive version of the thing that was just "abolished" hence the meme about the anarchist saying "we're not a state, we're a [large wall of text]"
>>2924678I think you are mistaking the rhetorical propaganda surrounding prisons with their actual function, which is just to have a fresh supply of slaves for capitalism. A supply of slaves that nobody will question because "well they did a crime and crimes get punished."
>>2924752My minimum threshold is that if you rape someone, you should be executed. If you would disagree, we can't really agree on anything else.
>>2924753The problem with leaving life and death up to fallible human justice systems is that justice systems punish people for being
convicted of a crime, not for the crime itself. Most crimes go undiscovered, unprosecuted, unconvincted, and an unknowable number of convinctions are false convinctions. Is the USA leading the world in incarceration because the USA is full of criminals, or is the USA leading in incarceration because there's a
material incentive (slavery) to get as many people convincted of crimes as possible? Once you realize that a justice system is embedded in a particular form of class society, with its own perverse incentive structures, you cease to be a hooting and hollering reactionary screeching for lynch mob justice based on every spurious unproven allegation. You start to ask "how do we create a society where this doesn't happen in the first place?" Crime is a byproduct of poverty, not a byproduct of
not enough public executions following short closed-door trials with no public scrutiny, no jury, and presumption of guilt as every chud seems to think.
> if you rape someone, you should be executed.Yes. Of course. If you rape someone you should be executed. Who would disagree with such a plain, simple, and unadorned sentiment? Certainly the crowd of 10,000 screeching white reactionaries who dragged 16 year old Jesse Washington out of a courtoom, cut off his penis, and lit him on fire, before hanging him, based on a coerced confession of raping a white woman, agree with you. After all, it wasn't rape when they violated his genitalia violently with a knife. That's just punishment for rape.
>>2924779>material incentiveRight; I am overcoming the material incentive by supporting liquidation rather than incarceration.
>unprovenLet's say we have 100% proof of rape - do we execute the rapist?
>>2924753Thought terminating argument
>>2924782yeah sure shoot the rapist.
you have asked for me to tell you what you want to hear so that you can judge me based on how i answer. what a silly way of communicating >>2924782>liquidationwhy does every edge lord on here say "liquidation" instead of execution. at some point in their lives they decided that saying "liquidation" was more aesthetically leftist or something but I can't figure out why. liquidation is also the euphemism used by porky when he fires people.
>>2924783I wasn't making an "argument".
>>2924784>judgementYes, I judge anyone negatively who thinks rapists should live.
I would never be friends with those sorts of people.
So I'm glad you're not one of them.
>>2924787I already said execution:
>>2924753You're just late.
>>2924784>you have asked for me to tell you what you want to hear so that you can judge me based on how i answer. what a silly way of communicatingi've noticed the dumbest and most manipulable rubes think this way. they try to turn every conversation into a test where you "pass" by confirming their biases. they think they are rooting out the heretics but what they're really doing is setting themselves up to fall in love with the first opportunist who comes along and says the right combination of words to them. that's how you have a pedo rapist like trump standing on staging to wild applause as he promises to execute all the pedo rapists.
>>2924790>Yes, I judge anyone negatively who thinks rapists should live.what a dumb subject to change the conversation to. we could have talked about whether justice systems actually perform their alleged function but you decided to dumb it down to "haha, i bet u think rapey rapey good hurr durr"
you seem really fuckin dumb. i bet the biggest rapist in the world would get your support if he just told you he wanted to give more money to cops, jails, judges, and executioners.
>>2924791I'm sorry you struggle with yes/no questions.
>>2924792>you seem really fuckin dumbWhy would I care what an online stranger feels about me?
I never made any point except "rapists should die" and you're crashing out.
Calm down and put on your nuance cap to feel better.
>>2924793>I'm sorry you struggle with yes/no questions.i answered your purely rhetorical question with "yeah sure shoot the rapist."
you just got mad i added anything more than yes/no because your goal is to "simplify" everything.
why don't you be the change you want to see and leave your house and start shooting some criminals. I'm sure you will always have 100% proof and never believe misleading or false info. after all we can't leave this kind of important task up horrible people like me who weaponize nuance against the infinite justice of swift executions.
tell me. are you so dumb as to think executions actually reduce the SOCIAL CONDITIONS which generate criminal behavior?
>>2924793>I never made any point except "rapists should die"yeah it wasn't really a point that added anything to the conversation. nobody thinks rapists are good dude. the question is whether executions actually prevent crime. I don't think they do. you clearly think they do, but instead of just saying that you try to turn the whole conversation into "heh, i bet you think bad people should live"
>>2924796I'll repeat myself: calm down.
I am a stranger on the internet; this is not serious.
>your goal is to "simplify" everything.It's to set a minimum threshold, as I said.
If you don't think rapists should die, we can't agree on anything else.
From your hysterical and circumlocutious ramblings, I'm beginning to suspect that you think rapists should live, which would be a shame. But please, prove me wrong.
>SOCIAL CONDITIONSTell me what causes rape.
>>2924797>rapists aren't goodBut should they die? Yes/no.
>you clearly think they doI don't necessarily think death penalties prevent crime.
The purpose of execution is retribution, not prevention.
>>2924799Should the bourgeoisie be executed?
>>2924802>I'll repeat myselfdo you do anything else, pullstring doll?
>>2924804You're the one who keeps pulling my string.
If you're bored, then stop playing.
>>2924802>If you don't think rapists should die, we can't agree on anything else.i don't think executions prevent rape, but I think rapists should die. you seem really really dumb.
>>2924805do you think executions prevent crime?
>>2924806You seem to agree with me, so I guess we're both dumb.
>>2924807Not necessarily.
I doubt it increases crime.
But as I say, I am not discussing crime prevention, but punishment.
Of course, crime ought to be prevented where it can be.
>>2924802should tacos always have pudding in them? if you don't agree, we can't agree on basic things like 2+2=4
>>29248102+2=4?
That's a very non-nuanced perspective.
Let me think about it for a while before I respond.
>>2924809>I doubt it increases crime.under bourgeois society, proletarian revolution is "crime," and under bourgeois society, the social murder of the proletariat is the ordinary condition which agitates the proletariat into revolutionary self defense.
>>2924811i suggest reading the principia mathematica
>>2924802>Tell me what causes rape.why are you so hung up on rape. the conversation was about CRIMINAL BEHAVIOR in general and whether JUSTICE SYSTEMS and EXECUTIONS do anything to prevent CRIMINAL BEHAVIOR and you just waltz in and are like "say u tink rape bad or u rapey rapey and me no agree wit u"
everyone can see what you're trying to do there.
>>2924812By "crime" I am referring to violent crime perpetrated against civilians such as theft, rape and murder. I don't care if you steal from stores, obviously, but stealing from a pedestrian or a house is very different.
>social murderWho goes on trial for this?
>>2924815You said I should look at social conditions for crimes.
I am asking you (an expert, obviously) on what causes rape.
Educate me. I am an idiot, as the other anon has discovered.
>>2924817are you against raping the bourgeoisie?
>>2924820I don't believe rape is a lawful penalty for crimes.
Some vigilantes and/or gangs like to rape their enemies, though.
>>2924821Good so you understand perfectly. Now consider the fact that I live in a society run by pedo rapists, including the justice system, and you will understand perfectly why I am immediately suspicious of anyone who waxes poetic about increasing executions before getting rid of the current ruling class.
>>2924823(Executions specifically as a function of the current state and its justice system, not as a necessary aspect of revolution)
>>2924823I don't understand.
Shouldn't the pedo rapists in charge also be executed?
Do you think I am excluding them from the brunt of justice?
>>2924825>Shouldn't the pedo rapists in charge also be executed?yes of course dumbass. i can answer this loaded question 100 times and yet you persist. do you want the conversation to evolve in any kind of direction, or do you just want to keep "testing" me like the self appointed cop you are?
>>2924826I am just confused because we seem to agree on everything, yet you posture a distance from my own position. There is no "test"; only a clarification. We agree, so thankfully this conversation can either end, or develop from an alternative starting point.
>>2924828>I am just confused because we seem to agree on everything, yet you posture a distance from my own position.the first thing I said to you was "would that it were so simple." I only added the dreaded "nuance" to what you said while you simply took that nuance as opposition and repeated your heretic-test ad nauseum.
>>2924803There's two types of Communist it seems, demon slayer and puzzle solver. We need them both, but they hate each other.
>>2924829No; I already confirmed our agreement originally:
>>2924790The rest of the time was just clarification.
It's odd to be hostile to peoplw you agree with is all.
>>2924840>asks loaded question>gets the answer he wants>ignores anything else>"it's just so odd that you're so mean to me even though you agree that i'm right about everything"LOL what is this manipulative bullshit
>>2924832the demon slayers love to "purge" their top puzzle solvers in the name of "anti-revisionism", die, then leave a bunch of revisionists in charge. the stunning conclusion of course is that the demon slayers didn't kill enough puzzle solvers.
>>2924845the high priest is always the biggest atheist.
>>2924729>Bruh what's with that attention deficit editingNo idea, not my video. It's probably because Norm is a very slow speaker.
>more like a condemnation of Angela Davis than prison abolitionism itselfThe point is that activism for prison abolition without changing the material conditions that produces the need for prisons to begin with is a waste of time. Is such a change even possible? Utopian socialists say yes.
>>2924908Yeah it's kind of ancap levels of delusion. I guess that's a rule with any of the anarcho-prefix ideologies is you have to have pure delusional levels of belief about how society should be run. I think both ancaps agree with the other anarchos- about abolishing the police.
>>2924669These people also want to abolish the police, but then you ask them what replaces it, they say community policing, people's militias or some informal thing where everyone just roams around with weapons policing their own neighborhoods or something. You ask them what happens to rapists, serial killers, and mass murderers or whatever criminals everyone agrees shouldn't be walking around free. They'll say the community police just lynch them on the spot I guess. Fuck a professional police force, judiciary, due process, all that bullshit, they've got it all figured out. All we need is to bring back lynch mobs.
>>2924924>they say community policing, people's militias or some informal thing where everyone just roams around with weapons policing their own neighborhoods or somethingSo the police force is replaced by… a de facto police force.
>>2924908>>2924924>>2924932your straw man is so true. long live bourgeois society
>>2924932But it's informalized now so it's better. Maybe it's so informal it's not even really a police force. Just everyone citizen's arrest(judge, jury, and executioner) whoever they feel is breaking the law(??? but are their still laws and shit? Or everyone just makes their own personal determination about what is allowed and not?) It's very in line with the "don't try that in a small town crowd!" If you really think about it. The two sides, the BLM "abolish the police protesters" vs the guys doing exactly what they're advocating for of informal citizens brigades or whatever taking the law into their own hands.
But on a broader note, that's what all these people who advocate just upending the system and doing whatever always do, they always just reinvent the wheel and recreate the same system. Instead of practical steps to improve the system and understanding there is a reason certain systems came to be and you will just have to recreate the same thing.
>>2924940How is it a strawman? What did I get wrong. Reminds me of Angela Davis:
>>2924724I read her book about prison abolition, she spends like 97% of the book just talking about why American prisons are bad and then finally the last few pages she finally adresses the first and most fucking obvious question:
>but what about the murders and rapists and serial killers? And she goes:
<Uhhhh, I dunno, something I guess?Totally unserious.
>>2924943Rape and murder are what you do when you feel powerless for your entire life and those feelings bubble over and can’t be repressed anymore, in an actual dictatorship of the proletariat everyone would have the healthy means and avenues to express all their desires thus no rapes or murders would happen in the first place
>>2924946>in an actual dictatorship of the proletariat everyone would have the healthy means and avenues to express all their desires thus no rapes or murders would happen in the first placeare you trying to tell me that there never was an actual dictatorship of the proletariat????
>>2924949China might be a dictatorship of the proletariat by 2050 should the correct class forces win political power
>>2924949>in my perfect society nobody will do bad things<if people do bad things it's not my perfect societyIt makes sense.
>>2924669In the particular Burgerstan context, prison is when slave labour for profit organization and police is when occupation army and being murdered for sneezing. They think it sucks and want something else. Simple as
>>2924953People are mostly products of their environment and socialization specifically
>>2924951They'll stop all crime by being the Flock surveillance state that Americans are freaking out about right now. I was just thinking about that, how they were doing all this Flock shit a decade ago, and the media was calling le authoritarian, now it seems America has warmed up to the idea.
>>2924924i mean my political views would probably fall into the category of anarchism but i'm not dumb enough to think that you can abolish the police. someone is going to be the police some way or another. if you go to places like juarez mexico and drive around the city, most places will be policed by the actual police, but there are certain areas where the police have been effectively abolished and in those zones the drug cartels are the police - they dress exactly like police with paramilitary uniforms and masks and tactical vests and carry assault rifles and handheld radios and they conduct patrols and traffic stops and arrests and raids and set up roadblocks and checkpoints, they pull you over and ask where you're going and what you're doing here and if you have any drugs or weapons in your car, etc. there are always police, it's just the way of the world.
if you bulldoze schools and build prisons, you get more crime, not less
>>2925004 (me)
Of course, many people in life are dealt such a shitty hand that there's basically nothing they can reasonably do to improve their situation.
about the whole abolishing the police thing, something that nobody seems to question or talk about is the way we tend to think of guns as talismans instead of instruments. both the left and the right do this, they think that the gun has innate power that grants automatic authority to the wielder. this is an entirely authoritarian conception, whether people realize it or not, they are internalizing textbook authoritarian thought by thinking of weapons this way. a firefighter could blast some old granny across the street with a firehose and they would get into a lot of trouble and have their firehose taken away and never allowed to be a firefighter again, but we don't think of firehoses as symbols of authority when firefighters are carrying them, they're just tools. but when the police hold the firehose and blast it at black protestors the firehose suddenly becomes an authoritarian symbol. but they're both just firehoses and they do the exact same thing, the object hasn't changed, it's the wielder and their authority that has changed and their authority doesn't come from the firehose, it is granted to them by society and the system and what we permit them to do and how we hold them to account for their actions. and we don't have to grant them any authority at all if we don't want to; if the police are truly accountable to the public and everything they do is observed/recorded by public witnesses at all times and they are appointed and removed from the position by public consensus, then they have no authority. they just have temporary provisional privileges and if the public decide that they have misused or abused them then they are discharged and their privileges are revoked. so under that system there's no real hierarchy, the police aren't above the rest of society, they're just like firefighters or doctors or airline pilots or nuclear power plant operators or all kinds of other jobs that carry tremendous levels of responsibility. but how can we ever have a system like that if we believe that the gun grants them authority?
>>2925004>Not really. Your environment deals you the cards and assigns them value, but ultimately you decide how to play your deck."you decide" no, your neurons fire in response to environmental stimuli and "memory" (AKA training from past environmental stimuli). so called "free will" is a sham and a humbug. the closest you can get having free will is to stop believing in that nonsense.
>>2925009>>2925013 me
Yeah, I agree with a lot of what you say. It isn't the gun that grants them authority. We all are allowed our firearms in America. You can own whatever as long as it is not full automatic, but you can get the rights for those as well. It doesn't change the fact that the police and government are a never ending force of gunwielders like getting stars in GTA, you can kill 10 20 30 100 cops, it doesn't matter, they will kill you shortly because they have way many more shooters. It's not about the gun. They have way more weapons than that. The cops killed Dorner with their incendiary devices, which they called "smoke bombs" as they always do.
>>2925016That's right, fuck the gun isn't it? They will resort to the bombs to one up you. Dallas Sniper got killed by the robots with bombs, the MOVE people got killed with the helicopter dropped bombs by the police. They are going to fucking one up you. The US has a whole arsenal going up to nukes, you won't ever get anywhere fucking the police or the US government.
>>2925012>so called "free will" is a sham and a humbugFree will isn't the same thing as human agency. People have the agency in how they respond to material conditions.
>>2925016SPOOK NUKEM
CHOCOLATE RAMBO
>>2925013>I don't know, I've actually had a gun pointed at my face and instructed about "I won't hestitate to shoot you."i was delivering a doordash order late one night and i drove into this suburban neighborhood and this big pickup truck in front of me was going very slow so i sped up and went around him, i dropped the order off at the customer's house at the end of a dead end street and got in my car and started to leave and i see two bright headlights ahead and as i got closer the vehicle suddenly gunned into reverse and swung sideways blocking the whole street and it was the big truck i passed and this dude in a camouflage jacket and hat gets out and my hand immediately pounds the door lock button several times as he comes over to me and starts banging on my window and screaming at me about how i was driving too fast and his children play here and demanding that i roll down my window. i said "are you a police?" and for some reason that just made him snap and he said "you're about to find out if i'm a fucking police!" and he reached in his jacket and i saw his hand grab the gun from some kind of a pocket holster thing and my foot slammed on the accelerator and i swerved around his truck driving over the curb and through some random family's lawn and back onto the road speeding away while ducking down as low as i could. luckily he wasn't quite insane enough to actually fire at me but it scared the living shit out of me nonetheless, after i got away i was like shell shocked and shaking and felt like i was going to vomit and i had to stop at a gas station and buy a pack of cigarettes and just sit in my car smoking them one after the other to calm down. but that guy still wasn't an authority figure and i never saw him as an authority figure, when i saw the way his eyes looked and him reaching for the gun i just saw a dangerous wild animal, like a rabid dog or something. i didn't respect the gun or respect him, i didn't think or feel anything at all, i just went into total fight or flight reflex mode and got the fuck out of there. that's not capitulating or recognizing authority, that's just basic survival instinct and it doesn't make me inferior.
>>2925067>luckily he wasn't quite insane enough to actually fire at me but it scared the living shit out of me nonetheless, Lucky he wasn't.
> i didn't respect the gun or respect him, i didn't think or feel anything at all, i just went into total fight or flight reflex mode and got the fuck out of there. Lucky that worked out for you.
>>2925073But yeah, sometimes I absolutely believe fight or flight is the better option. Never be me digging my own grave at gunpoint, but that is the good thing about a police force verses other armed people is you stand a better chance of not getting killed by folding to them.
>>2924971>i mean my political views would probably fall into the category of anarchism but i'm not dumb enough to think that you can abolish the police. someone is going to be the police some way or another. if you go to places like juarez mexico and drive around the city, most places will be policed by the actual police, but there are certain areas where the police have been effectively abolished and in those zones the drug cartels are the police - they dress exactly like police with paramilitary uniforms and masks and tactical vests and carry assault rifles and handheld radios and they conduct patrols and traffic stops and arrests and raids and set up roadblocks and checkpoints, they pull you over and ask where you're going and what you're doing here and if you have any drugs or weapons in your car, etc. there are always police, it's just the way of the world. >>2925073well the point of the story is, as much as this guy believed that his gun gave him power and made him some kind of authority figure and as much as his actions affected me, nobody had any real authority in that situation, he wasn't really in control of himself or what i did, i wasn't really in control of myself or what he did, no one was in control, it was just chaos. and that's really the truth of the world, we don't control the world and when we try to we just create chaos, there is no authority. authority is an illusion that so-called authority figures try to reify through coercion and violence and then they deliberately misinterpret the involuntary visceral response of their so-called subordinates as a ratification of their so-called authority. like bill cosby out on a date they manufacture the consent and then they pretend like they didn't and tell themselves that the consent was genuine and they're just a straight up player.
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