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there's a bit of an abolitionist vibe among prison critics and fucking foucault in the fucking 80s had already debunked their arguments one by one it's incredible but also gross
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oh yeah i can’t imsgine doing any analysis of prisons, especially one based on human constructs like culture without using the panopticon. but like you said it’s inescapable because he really just Did That
and idk im fully in favor of prison abolition but not under capitalism... obviously nonviolent offenders don’t need to be in prisons. especially not private prisons in the US which are nothing more than slave factories. but the conditions that create violent crime and violent criminals will continue as long as capitalism allows exploitation of marginalized groups and allows individuals to internalize and reinforce that exploitation. but i think we can move away from fully punitive based justice even now. but that’s not what ur paper is about lol!
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foucault's big problem with abolitionism was exactly that it proposed abolishing prisons while not adressing punishment, which in his mind meant extending prison mechanisms to the community
and I'd add that there's a big problem with abolition which is that of prison as detainment - prison is punishment but sometimes it's also protecting the victim from the agressor (d.v. or sexual assault cases for example). detainment is a very murky area because perceived risk is wildly speculative and subject to political nuance (black people may be seen as a risk to the community so arresting them is not punishment but detainment/containment). there's this abolitionist stance which says that yeah, do prevention if you want actual solutions (which I think is correct) but ironically this tends to overshadow "proactive" detention (incarceration to protect victims), focusing only on "reactive" detention (incarceration as punishment)
I say ironically because abolition should also be against proactive detention but then the whole thing falls apart because the issue is so absurdly complex
I hate prisons, they're a monster, and I vibe with the abolitionist sentiment, and honestly you could cut prison population in about 3/4 of its size without real harm coming to society. it's just that the theory often doesn't add up, which is nobody's fault, the whole thing is ineffable and I'm glad there are people adressing it in the first place
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it may be wishful thinking but i think without structures imposed by capitalism far less people will need to be actually punished. will there still be people who rape and murder? absolutely. i don’t know if i believe someone can be born evil but i think that you can be predisposed to violent acts. but i think the main motivation behind those crimes behind everything else is entitlement and exploitation, both of which would be drastically reduced if not eliminated
in cases of sexual assault and things like that yeah the perpetrator needs to be isolated. id like to say i think rapists can be rehabilitated. intellectually i know it’s possible. emotionally idk. either way the victim shouldn’t be forced to encounter the person who hurt them just so the person could potentially be rehabilitated.
yeah proactive detainment is fucking goofy you can’t just assume someone is gonna commit a crime. prevention is a social thing that everyone should take part in, everyone should make sure others know to respect people’s bodily autonomy and that violations of that won’t be accepted (of course this is just about violent crime again. i won’t ever believe that petty thieves or like drug users deserve any type of significant state punishment) but of course my solution to this is also communism lmao
idk about over there but here im sure you already know all about the school to prison pipeline and how slavery is allowed in prisons via the constitutional amendment that “outlawed” slavery. bet u can guess why i think the theory is incoherent from most people (ill tell u it’s because there’s no deeper analysis of capitalism involved in it)
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is their a difference between being a slave in prison as punishment from ''rehabilitation'' or ''re education'' into becoming a wage cattle outside of prison ? i think only idiots dont commit crimes (kjære pst æ har aldri gjort no ulovlig og æ elsker å betale skatt og staten e større enn GUD amen)
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(07-13-2018, 07:25 PM)risbolla Wrote: is their a difference between being a slave in prison as punishment from ''rehabilitation'' or ''re education'' into becoming a wage cattle outside of prison ? i think only idiots dont commit crimes (kjære pst æ har aldri gjort no ulovlig og æ elsker å betale skatt og staten e større enn GUD amen)
lmao this is actually foucault in a nutshell
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07-13-2018, 08:48 PM
(This post was last modified: 07-13-2018, 08:54 PM by grue.)
(07-13-2018, 03:28 PM)fat lesbian Wrote: it may be wishful thinking but i think without structures imposed by capitalism far less people will need to be actually punished. will there still be people who rape and murder? absolutely. i don’t know if i believe someone can be born evil but i think that you can be predisposed to violent acts. but i think the main motivation behind those crimes behind everything else is entitlement and exploitation, both of which would be drastically reduced if not eliminated
in cases of sexual assault and things like that yeah the perpetrator needs to be isolated. id like to say i think rapists can be rehabilitated. intellectually i know it’s possible. emotionally idk. either way the victim shouldn’t be forced to encounter the person who hurt them just so the person could potentially be rehabilitated.
yeah proactive detainment is fucking goofy you can’t just assume someone is gonna commit a crime. prevention is a social thing that everyone should take part in, everyone should make sure others know to respect people’s bodily autonomy and that violations of that won’t be accepted (of course this is just about violent crime again. i won’t ever believe that petty thieves or like drug users deserve any type of significant state punishment) but of course my solution to this is also communism lmao
idk about over there but here im sure you already know all about the school to prison pipeline and how slavery is allowed in prisons via the constitutional amendment that “outlawed” slavery. bet u can guess why i think the theory is incoherent from most people (ill tell u it’s because there’s no deeper analysis of capitalism involved in it)
I think it's fair to say that imprisonment goes hand in hand with the rise of capitalism yes, as with the modern state. it's the whole demographic control thing, structures of discipline spread through society (school / hospital / factory / prison) to organize people in discrete arrangements
as for the psychology of violence, there's yet another can of worms; actually one of the reasons why I like this subject so much is that it intersects so many areas that you simply can't go at it alone - I can personally say I've met some particularly vicious people and it's some eerie shit, it's hard to distance yourself emotionally from the evil in the other person, absolutely. and I'm thoroughly uneducated on the subject, and gladly so, it must be so brutally taxing to be a psychologist in this field I can only admire ones who go for it
BUT criminologists do keep hammering that there's a lot of nurture in dissident behaviours, though not necessarily as one would expect. one perspective that I like to entertain is to adress violent areas as extensions of capitalism on a thoroughly unregulated level. there was a french sociologist that said delinquency is ultimately a pure form of comformity - it's being a part of a market economy but outside of the access to its regulations. so gang violence, drug trade, human traffic can be seen as extreme forms of engaging in capitalism. of note here is how prisons don't do anything to curb these markets but instead act as a check or damper that prevents lower classes from going "up"
which though, doesn't adress the fundamental concern of "evil people" and what to do with them. I... don't know. and it's hard to sympathise with them, which shouldn't affect how one thinks of these issues but I can't lie and say it doesn't. but I at least think that punishment doesn't really solve any problem either. we need to think outside of this, I guess christian, mentality that says "bad thing + punishment = balance". It's simply not true that extended punishment solves the initial problem - there's the instant gratification of sending a bad guy to jail, and the comfort of anulling a threat, but we're missing the "what to do with this person" part of the equation. it's an open question, and the debate is hardly being had
also just to clarify my point, when I mention proactive detainment I don't mean arresting without a crime (I don't see how that could ever be a good thing); instead, it's the delivering of proportionally harsher sentences and incarcerating by default, usually to target certain behaviours. there are some areas where that's a good thing - in domestic violence cases, it's common practice here to arrest the agressor even before trial, because there's a sense of urgency; but the same processes are used to incarcerate minorities at higher rates than others, because there's the bias of perceived risk. note how "tough on crime" lawmakers that defend the harsh policing (and killing!) of black people all default in explaining that by them being "more criminal" than others. there's a cold rationality to it, like they're not working on bias, just numbers (the numbers that fit that narrative, that is). it's some muddy shit I agree
edit: there aren't talks around here of a school-to-prison pipeline but there are direct relations between prison populations and certain urban neighbourhoods - the Bairros - where if you're born there you're very likely to end up in jail or at the very least visit it very frequently. but again, our proportion of incarcerated people pales in comparison with the USA. the USA's prison system is a very unique beast, last time I checked there were more prisoners in the USA than in the rest of the world, both in absolute numbers and relative to its size. to put it in perspective, there are more people in prison, like the actual number of prisoners, in the USA than in India or China, though these have triple the population. it's insane
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if you know the name of that sociologist id love to read it, me and other local leftists have been trying to deal with predators in our community and how/whether it’s worth it to deal with it ourselves or turn him into the state. not all of them know or think very much about why people behave the way they do tho, so while some of us are trying to isolate him others are trying to rehabilitate. i don’t think it’s gonna work.
and yeah prisons have an enormous recidivism rate in the US because they don’t really even do anything to address the problem. it’s like if a little kid screams and you smack it. how is smacking it gonna help? you just pissed it off and now it’s gonna end up worse than before
and ohhh ok ya that makes more sense i don’t think I’d ever seen the term before. people are generally in jail before trail here too, and certain crimes have very high or no bail, but it’s also arbitrary and can be set by a judge so obviously a bigoted judge setting your bail can end up pretty badly even for a minor non violent crime. same with sentencing. the whole process here is really entirely up to very few people which leads to people having life sentences for possessing the crack that the Reagan administration introduced into their neighborhoods ! it’s all a fuckin scam
the “cold rationality” people make me rethink being in stem tbh because they’re everywhere... ppl don’t understand that you can MAKE numbers fit your narrative. people here say “oh well there’s more black people in prison so they must commit more crime” but it doesn’t fucking work like that lol. it’s shit that’s so entrenched that fighting it and arguing against it w normies is overwhelming.
here school funding is determined by the property tax of the area because America is seriously fucking dystopian and kids with poor parents end up in shitty schools in areas the police deem as “bad” (you can get arrested just for being in them! it happened to me driving five minutes from my house in a “bad area” and I was arrested and charged with loitering). a lot of the time in places like that you have to turn to crime for any type of support system or even just to survive bc you were denied the kind of education that actually gives you any mobility, and for most people from these areas college is out of reach because the interest rate on loans will end up having you owe like hundreds of thousands of dollars by the time you’re done. sucks here
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Earnest question, did you ever think of migrating to Europe? I'm not sure how hard it is to get employment as an American citizen, but once you do you're covered. I've comically witnessed a bunch of people traveling to the usa to "make something of their lives" only to have 10x worse working conditions and get brutalized on every step while I've only ever met one American immigrant in Berlin who left because the drugs are better here or something along the lines. How the fuck do you stop people from ditching everything and leaving?
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07-14-2018, 11:10 PM
(This post was last modified: 07-14-2018, 11:12 PM by fat lesbian.)
if you’re asking me im also working on a degree here, ive got most things including grad school planned out (and my undergrad tuition here is free, so it would be dumb to leave right now) but ive consisted postdoc research in Germany
there’s lots concerning about Europe right now too. the rise of fascism seems to be a thing just in the West, not just in America
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(07-14-2018, 03:43 AM)fat lesbian Wrote: if you know the name of that sociologist id love to read it, me and other local leftists have been trying to deal with predators in our community and how/whether it’s worth it to deal with it ourselves or turn him into the state. not all of them know or think very much about why people behave the way they do tho, so while some of us are trying to isolate him others are trying to rehabilitate. i don’t think it’s gonna work.
and yeah prisons have an enormous recidivism rate in the US because they don’t really even do anything to address the problem. it’s like if a little kid screams and you smack it. how is smacking it gonna help? you just pissed it off and now it’s gonna end up worse than before
and ohhh ok ya that makes more sense i don’t think I’d ever seen the term before. people are generally in jail before trail here too, and certain crimes have very high or no bail, but it’s also arbitrary and can be set by a judge so obviously a bigoted judge setting your bail can end up pretty badly even for a minor non violent crime. same with sentencing. the whole process here is really entirely up to very few people which leads to people having life sentences for possessing the crack that the Reagan administration introduced into their neighborhoods ! it’s all a fuckin scam
the “cold rationality” people make me rethink being in stem tbh because they’re everywhere... ppl don’t understand that you can MAKE numbers fit your narrative. people here say “oh well there’s more black people in prison so they must commit more crime” but it doesn’t fucking work like that lol. it’s shit that’s so entrenched that fighting it and arguing against it w normies is overwhelming.
here school funding is determined by the property tax of the area because America is seriously fucking dystopian and kids with poor parents end up in shitty schools in areas the police deem as “bad” (you can get arrested just for being in them! it happened to me driving five minutes from my house in a “bad area” and I was arrested and charged with loitering). a lot of the time in places like that you have to turn to crime for any type of support system or even just to survive bc you were denied the kind of education that actually gives you any mobility, and for most people from these areas college is out of reach because the interest rate on loans will end up having you owe like hundreds of thousands of dollars by the time you’re done. sucks here
I want to say the sociologist was Alain Touraine, because it fits, but truthfully I read that 10years ago while doing my masters and I lost the refference. tried to find it so many times, and even though im confident it was Touraine I just don't know the source anymore because I'm an idiot that didn't save it
you've never heard of "proactive sentencing" because it's something I made up here to cover up for the fact that I forgot its actual name lol but yeah, it's a thing and it's been a thing ever since prisons as the major form of punishment started to exist. you've probably heard of Loïc Wacquant but if you haven't I can't oversell his book Punishing the Poor enough, it's about the american prison system, the school-to-prison pipeline etc. it's so good that it's honestly infuriating how everything didn't come crumbling down after he published it. why don't people read
there's a whole chapter on sex offenders also, worth a look https://libcom.org/files/Lo%C3%AFc%20Wac...20Poor.pdf
I sometimes watch iqsquared debates because I tell myself that I like to hear different sides of a debate when in reality my life is a dumpster fire and I like to hurt myself by participating on the lie that there's any intellectual value coming out of sitting in a room for an afteroon watching pundits peddle their trade and then participating in a sham voting scheme that's so obviously broken oxford shoul just call it a day. anyway there was one debate about whether or not the police was systematically racist, and the "no" side were all about how this is false, and that the truth is that black people commit more crimes. and it was infuriating how the other side just failed to point out the glaring fucking Post hoc ergo propter hoc (that's right fuckers I googled it); that criminals are MADE as much as they make themselves (just like how niki got arrested); that you can be a racist AND do your job right at the same time; that this isn't a debate when people who know their shit already pointed it out as established fact
"IS the sun a star? here are three astronomers debating three people with a blog! marketplace of ideas everyone"
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i don’t know v much about the actual history of prisons themselves, i mostly just know the history of law enforcement in both Europe and the US. definitely need 2 read more about it
and yeah it’s been on my to read list for a little bit since someone local brought it up!!
and speaking of history the police in the US are descended from/modeled off slave catching patrols... idk how it’s possible for anyone to know that and argue that it’s not a racist institution. bootlickers are weird
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abolish prisons, abolish police, abolish government, abolish money
only then will we know peace
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unfortunately it’s impossible to fully abolish the state as a central planning entity until outside threats to a socialist nation cease to exist
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abolish all humen lifes alley oop
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