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[–] 38 points 6 months ago (6 children)

Prisons more like European prisons that focuses on rehabilitation not isolation. Not slave labour camps the Americans call jails.

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  • [+] [S] 13 points 6 months ago (4 children)
  • [+] -8 points 6 months ago (3 children)

    Not all can be rehabilitated: some just are wired THAT different, & butcher people for fun, because that's the way they're wired.

    Ignoring that is the making-believing that makes such believers into accessory-to-murder when the not-contained serial-murderer murders yet-another.

    There was a story, maybe a few years ago, a woman who wouldn't accept that an inmate was really destructive-of-life, she befriended him, & got butchered.

    Leftist got ate by leopards.

    ( it isn't only the right which demonstrates idiocy! )

    The problem is that categories exist, & our whole system is pretending that it's a spectrum, instead of distinct-categories, with spectrums .. sorta-overlapping .. each category.

    Some absolutely need to be permanently segregated from communities.

    & the idiocy of putting people into a criminality-manufacturing-pressure-cooker while gaslighting about that somehow being "corrections", needs to be terminated.

    Correct the problem-motivation/wrong-mental-function, aversion-therapy may well be part of that, but don't increase the criminality in them, & do offer them humanness-improvement opportunity & asssitance.

    _ /\ _

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  • [–] 20 points 6 months ago (2 children)

    A focus on rehabilitation doesn't mean releasing dangerous predators into society. Merely that rehabilitation is the focus, rather than punishment or profit.

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  • [–] 8 points 6 months ago (1 child)

    Correct. Some simply require a permanent albeit humane separation from civil society. Anders Breivik is an example of this.

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  • [–] 8 points 6 months ago

    Absolutely my take. People who are harmful to society need to be removed from society for the good of society. These people should be treated humanely, and we need to accept that a great many of them behave the way they were taught. What we need to do while society is being protected from them is teach them how to behave in society. For those that accept that their behavior needs to change and learn new behavior, great. Release them on parole, monitor and assist them to make sure the new behavior is being maintained and let them continue with their lives. For those who don't or won't learn to behave in society, keep them isolated from society in a humane environment with people there to make sure the recalcitrant and incorrigible aren't harming themselves and each other, and move on.

    And all that leads to the question of what is harmful to society...

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  • [–] 13 points 6 months ago (5 children)

    Why the downvotes? It is a perfectly reasonable topic to discuss, and an interesting one at that.

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  • [+] [S] 6 points 6 months ago* (last edited 6 months ago) (4 children)
  • [–] 4 points 6 months ago (3 children)

    Yeah that's not complicated to understand... Some people take their lives on internet forums far to seriously 🤣...

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  • [+] 24 points 6 months ago (3 children)
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    [–] 11 points 6 months ago (8 children)

    In concept, it's simple: Identify the conditions that lead people into anti-social behaviors, and change those conditions to encourage pro-social behavior instead. That way, not only do we avoid having to incarcerate people, we don't have victims anymore. This may sound abstract and hand-wavey, so as a concrete example, crime is way, way down compared to the 1970's, and it seems to have a lot to do with eliminating leaded gasoline, and allowing abortion. A concerted effort to reduce poverty would go a long way to reducing crime rates even further.

    Social influence (culture, social norms, peer pressure, etc.) is the most effective way to keep people in line. Laws do diddly-squat. Most people respond to their life conditions and surroundings, including what people even think of as crime. For a good example, instead of jaywalking, consider speeding. It's against the law, but socially promoted, so virtually all drivers do it even though it's against the law. Or, consider a "law-and-order conservative" business owner whose social circle wants to see the heads of the local panhandlers cracked, but happily engages in wage theft from his employees, and whose pastor at church is diddling kids. Simply put, the better alternative to prison is to create and put people in social environments that don't tolerate crime in the first place.

    Even people who don't respond to social influence, the sociopaths, can be handled more productively. They still have motivations and needs that, while disconnected from empathy, still guide their behavior. They're still essentially rational people, too. There's a program here at the Mendota Mental Health Institute that works to rehabilitate sociopathic people who've landed in the criminal justice system. They've had good success by identifying what these young men want, and explaining/demonstrating to them (i.e. through their rational faculties) that they can get what they want long-term by learning and following society's rules. I know a guy who is/was deficient in empathy, and landed in jail, where his therapists helped him exercise and develop his empathy. Smart dude, and now he's got a productive job where he's invaluable to the company. The concept is again deceptively simple: As an intelligent man, he learned to consciously ask himself, how would I feel if my actions were instead applied to me? He uses the Golden Rule, essentially.

    Let me flip this around and ask why do we consider prison as an appropriate way to "deal" with murderers, rapists, and child predators? I would point out that the United States has a huge prison population, and murderers, rapists, and child predators. If the threat of prison were an effective deterrent, why is that? (To unload the question, I'll say that I believe that we practice incarceration as a morality play by which we re-assure ourselves that we are good people compared to the criminal scum. It has nothing whatsoever to do with concern for victims.)

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  • [+] [S] 1 point 6 months ago* (6 children)
  • [–] 3 points 6 months ago (1 child)

    Yeah, some people are just born fucked up, and putting them in prison to handle it is a bad way to handle them. What do I mean? Well, when people are born fucked up, it's usually pretty obvious. A lot of the infamous mass shooters that come to mind, people knew. In some cases, they tried desperately to get somebody to help do something about it.

    But our system (correctly, IMO) operates on the principle of innocent until proven guilty. That is, we have to wait for fucked up people to hurt somebody else before we can put them in prison. Better would be a system that addresses mental health concerns and anti-social personality issues that people around them could draw upon, rather than just relying on cops and courts.

    Don't get me wrong, I don't think that we could ever completely eliminate incarceration. We don't live in a perfect world, after all. But getting rid of prisons is a good goal to aim for.

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  • [–] 3 points 6 months ago (1 child)

    Vibes based "feels like" over empirical data based (hard evidence). "It feels like bloodletting is a more effective cure for sepsis than intensive antibiotic treatment." That's how that sounds.

    All the time you spend asking questions and disagreeing you could as well spend actually searching, reading, watching videos.

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    [–] 11 points 6 months ago

    jaywalkers, enemys of society #1.

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  • [–] 10 points 6 months ago (3 children)

    Any serious answer to that is going to be pretty much book-length really.

    Here's one attempt: https://theanarchistlibrary.org/library/prison-research-education-action-project-instead-of-prisons

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  • [–] 19 points 6 months ago (3 children)

    how would you deal with murderers, rapists, child predators

    okay... interesting question...

    and jaywalkers

    Wat? 🧐

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  • [–] 9 points 6 months ago

    One of the things is not like the others....

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  • [–] 9 points 6 months ago (1 child)

    This is the greatest bait I've ever seen. Dying laughing at jaywalkers lmao. Teach me your ways king

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    [–] 9 points 6 months ago* (1 child)

    Poverty and proximity are major factors increasing and sustaining crime, and if people don't commit crimes they don't become incarcerated prisoners. So better social systems for people who need it and forcing wealthy citizens to co-locate with poor citizens so they have to share the same goods and services instead of allowing a multi class system in everything but name. And for the US obviously outlawing for profit prisons and the prison slavery clause of the 13th amendment. No crime justifies slavery as a punishment. That'll reduce prison populations by such a large amount that you could easily manage rehabilitation and humane incarceration programs for each individual.

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    [–] 7 points 6 months ago*

    You could do what the US does and elect them into office.

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  • [–] 6 points 6 months ago* (2 children)

    Incarceration?

    My personal opinion, segregation from society isn't the issue so much as retributive segregation. Segregation from society should focus on intensive therapies, ongoing after release, if necessary, providing some sort of educational, trade, and artistic training, and supportive social services after release, alongside parole.

    Edit: https://www.bbc.com/news/stories-48885846

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  • [–] 5 points 6 months ago (1 child)

    jaywalkers

    Hahaha

    I like the cut of your jib.

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    [–] 3 points 6 months ago (2 children)

    do you want results or to enact self righteous suffering in the name of punishment 

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  • [+] [S] 2 points 6 months ago (1 child)
  • [–] 1 point 6 months ago*

    then you really don’t want US style incarceration for like 99.9% of cases

    you want therapy, job training and some form of assisted (but restricted) living, kinda like a halfway home

    but it needs to be well funded and have strong oversight

    all that to say it’ll never happen in the us because that makes it hard to extract profit from the system

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  • [–] 2 points 6 months ago (1 child)
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    [–] 2 points 6 months ago* (last edited 6 months ago)

    I think that incarceration isn't necessarily problem. It's who gets incarcerated for what, and how many innocent people mistakenly end up railroaded. Alternatively, cases of affluenza and individuals who help keep the broken system going, are often considered above the law.

    Violent offenders should be locked up. All of them, regardless of wealth or connections. But they still deserve to participate in a fair and just legal system.

    Nonviolent offenders should be fined, and the amount they're fined should be equivalent to the crime they've committed while taking their own wealth and ability to pay into consideration. If people commit a very serious nonviolent crime, but either can't or won't pay off the debt they're fined, they should have the option of volunteering in their community to pay off their debt. If they fail to pay fines or repay their community via volunteer time, then potentially they should have their wages garnished.

    Most importantly though, nobody should be getting insanely wealthy via investments in private prisons. There should be no incentive to simply pack as many people as possible into a prison while pretending that you've done something positive for society that also just happens to greatly increase your profits.

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  • [–] 2 points 6 months ago (1 child)

    Without incarceration? I don't think there is a massive anti-incarcerarion argument in the US, to a point. With the current iteration, sure, but other countries do incarceration correctly, where rehabilitation is the focus. But I don't think there is an appropriate option for those crimes (jaywalking withheld lol) that isn't some kind of separation from "polite society". Obviously grey areas exist in some cases; self-defence, crimes of passion, etc where there are mitigating details, but just in general, I wouldn't have any good options for those cut and dry convicted criminals that isn't incarceration of some form. I guess the option would be round the clock services and supervision for redirection and rehabilitation? But that has a whole host of problems and you'd likely need a dozen or so people per convict? As well as housing facilities, and specialized workers for therapy/education, etc, and then it looks a lot like prison, just without the physical walls at that point.

    I would agree the US version would not be helpful though, aside from attempting to give society some kind of satisfaction of "justice served".

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  • [–] 2 points 6 months ago

    I guess the option would be round the clock services and supervision for redirection and rehabilitation? But that has a whole host of problems and you'd likely need a dozen or so people per convict? As well as housing facilities, and specialized workers for therapy/education, etc, and then it looks a lot like prison, just without the physical walls at that point.

    That's still less expensive than building, maintaining, and staffing massive prison systems.

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  • [–] 2 points 6 months ago

    I just want shorter sentences. On second offences we give them reincarnation.

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  • [–] 2 points 6 months ago (1 child)

    Did you mean incarceration?

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    [–] 3 points 6 months ago

    Tell the murderers and child molesters: We’re letting you go with a warning this time. But if you even think about anything reprehensible again, we’ll lock you up with the JAYWALKERS.

    /s

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  • [–] 3 points 6 months ago

    Make them live with vegans

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  • [–] 1 point 6 months ago

    Jaywalkers? Fix urban planning to where people don't have to jaywalk to begin with, ie. start de-emphasizing stroads and car dependence already...

    Murderers, rapists, and pedos? Those are a genuine threat to public safety and actually need to be locked away for that reason.

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  • [–] 1 point 6 months ago

    I'd do a Royal Rumble. Throw them all in the ring together and let it sort itself out.

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  • [–] 1 point 6 months ago

    anti incarceration

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  • [–] 1 point 6 months ago* (last edited 6 months ago) (3 children)
  • [+] [S] 1 point 6 months ago* (2 children)
  • [–] 1 point 6 months ago (12 children)

    I trust victims and the local community to deal with such issues on a case by case basis.

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  • [+] [S] 3 points 6 months ago (3 children)
  • [–] 1 point 6 months ago (2 children)

    I have a friend who is a public defender. As he tells it, 99% of the people he defends are 100%, without a doubt, indisputinly guilty. The guy getting accused of beating his wife and kids was, in fact, beating his wife and kids. And the guy making death threats to his former employer will, predictably, also start making death threats towards his former lawyer when he gets convicted.

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  • [–] 2 points 6 months ago (7 children)

    That's a world nobody wants to live in.

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  • [–] 0 points 6 months ago (6 children)
  • [–] 1 point 6 months ago (5 children)

    What happens when the nearest community to yours is full of "bad neighbors" who decide they want your shit?

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  • [–] 1 point 6 months ago (4 children)

    as i said, we would deal with shit like that on a case-by-case basis.

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  • [–] 2 points 6 months ago (3 children)

    Can you please give examples for how communities would deal with serious crimes? cops and judges on the take?

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  • [–] 3 points 6 months ago* (2 children)

    I imagine councils headed by the victims, sometimes. or maybe just elders concerned about safety. they might decide on shunning or excommunication or branding or exile or any combination. or more extreme measures, but, as I said, I'd prefer things be handled on a case by case basis.

    stare decisis is bullshit, and so are laws.

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  • [–] 1 point 6 months ago (1 child)

    Thank you for detailing your answer, I appreciate that. That said, this sounds more like anarchist rather than "commie."

    Shunning had really bad psychological effects, branding seems cruel, especially if exculpatory evidence is found after the fact. I'm afraid to ask what more extreme measures may be. But I do very much appreciate your reply.

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  • [–] 0 points 6 months ago

    I know of no such argument. Maybe to much incarceration unnecessarily or bad conditions.

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  • [–] -2 points 6 months ago* (last edited 6 months ago) (2 children)

    Death penalty on the spot, no exceptions.

    EDIT: Just realized I wasn't clear. I meant for the jay walkers.

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  • [+] [S] 2 points 6 months ago* (last edited 6 months ago) (1 child)
  • [–] 2 points 6 months ago

    While I don't have a problem with executions, the evidentiary standards to prevent innocent deaths make the practice essentially arbitrary. It's better and more affordable to just lock them away forever. Some countries do go so far as to always allow a possibility of parole, but I don't think their methods would translate as well to other nations.

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