Even if you use lighter measures for most crimes, focus on rehab, and get rid of cells, prison's still prison. How are you going to lock up nobody?
Other countries seem to manage with a vanishingly smaller percentage of prisoners and without the dehumanization the US routinely employs. So yes, maybe try ending it; it’s not clear the other extreme is any worse and it’s certainly cheaper. One of those “just build permanent houses” moments.
It's no more useless than the post it's responding to.
> it’s not clear the other extreme is any worse
What a bad way to plan things.
I think few people would argue that those classes of law breakers are allowed off the hook.
From my perspective in the UK, we seem to have this obsession with trying to invent everything ourselves instead of looking (primarily at the continent, but also elsewhere) at what other countries have tried and trying to apply what works while being appropriate to our context here. You see it with healthcare, justice (people say that we should copy Scandinavia, but there's never any more analysis), education (we seem to believe our system is the only one there ever has been or ever could be), and so many other places.
And there seems to be this fallacy that because somebody offers excellent critique of a system their solutions are automatically at that level of excellence. You can see it in this thread: We all agree that prisons, particularly in the US, have a lot of problems - and solutions are presented without any regard for if they're actually any good.
Thank you for the book recommendation. I've added it to my reading list - I doubt I'll agree with it, but it seems to be an interesting perspective.
The US - which is the topic of this thread - has a larger incarcerated population than anywhere else by absolutes and percentages; by a rather high number. Other countries seem to do just fine and spend a lot less in the process. So - similar to ending cash bail and various decriminalizing efforts - it’s not clear that prison abolition would actually be net negative to “public safety”.
What I'm saying is that when we change things we need to have some careful analysis and precise implementation to ensure things are actually improving for the better, and that preferably of the possible alternatives we aren't just choosing a better one, we're choosing the best one. The status quo being awful (and I agree - the US prison system seems pretty awful) does not automatically make all proposed solutions a good (or the best) idea.
We didn’t land on the current extreme via well-reasoned debate and there’s a permanent human cost to allowing it to continue. Waiting for the best solution is a luxury and it’s easy for the average commenter here - statistically not affected - to do exactly that.
> I'm not supporting the status quo.
I believe that you do not intend to, but arguments against change inherently support the current state of things, and it’s quite hard to parse out intent and effect at 4am, so apologies there.
I'm aware that opposing radical solutions is in a way conserving the existing solution - and I'm using "solution" generally, I'm not implying that they're any good. I don't want to conserve the current system (though I'm in the UK, so it's less immediately relevant), but I don't want to rashly change it if it means not considering the consequences of those changes.
I've got my own perspective here - I was attacked at school and kicked in the head. A year and a half later, I've had a lot of recovery but it's still completely changed my life.
From my perspective, it was entirely preventable if schools were more willing to expel violent individuals (they had attacked my friend just days before). It may have been deterred if our justice system was less lenient towards under-18s (I was offered "restorative justice" - "talking it through" rings a bit hollow when you've spent the last 4 months off school, barely awake). There is no scenario where talking to him would have been beneficial to me, regardless of how controlled the surroundings were.
That's why this is the one political subject that I consistently talk about when it comes up on HN: It's one where there are a lot of strong emotions both ways, and I see a lot of sentiment that ignores the real human cost of allowing (particularly violent) criminals to continue their actions. There are a lot of strong emotions about radical solutions like abolishing prisons (and hampering schools ability to expell), and there are a lot of strong emotions dehumanising criminals (and treating expulsion as the solution to any problem). People are quick to recognise the harm that one of those positions causes, but rarely see that they're both harmful when done in excess.
So I also feel that it's easy for the average commenter to talk about how "conservative approaches just mean excess harm". From my perspective, overly rash, poorly-thought-out and poorly-implemented approaches also cause excess harm. I'd much prefer this tug-of-war about moving the overton window through extreme policies was put aside so that we can talk about more realistic solutions. And they don't need to be invented in isolation: The world is filled with alternative systems to learn from.
Ultimately putting forward suggestions like "simply abolish prison" is just going to make people dismiss you entirely, not become sympathetic to your cause.
As for why I'm speaking from a UK perspective on a US-centric thread: We tend to import your culture due to a shared language and a lot of shared culture, so in the long run what the US thinks, says, and does is very relevant to me.
1. Guarantee safety for the imprisoned. No more fear of physical / sexual violence. The way people joke about "don't drop the soap" is maddening.
2. No forced labor, no unpaid / barely paid labor. All work must be paid at least prevailing market rates
3. Free of cost essentials - food, clothing, air conditioned shelter, no roommates
4. No price gouging - anything not considered essentials must not cost more than market rate, allow multiple third party vendors in case of disagreement
This is the bare minimum. If we can't meet these, we absolutely must abolish prisons.
Why? Someone needs to pay the cost to imprison people and it's unfair to not make the guilty party at least partially responsible for that cost
If we cannot afford it, we don't have any business running a prison.
On a more selfish note, I don't want (let's call it like it is) slave labor to dilute the value of my labor.
One can just get 'radicalized' merely by observing what going on around, like Ted Kaczynski. Version 1.0 of humans collectively don't meet the bar of standards for a civilized society, if a civilized society did exist then it's by fluke of a confluence of factors and fleeting one at that.