How should a just society deal with abusers?

[hash tag]

How can we exixts in a world where robbers get longer sentences than rapists?

I get what you say but that's not the be all and end all of it. There are people who have been scammed out of money and have committed suicide.

 

[hash tag]

On the current prison front probably 80% shouldn't be there. 5% are probably in the right place for the right time, 5% should be there longer and 5% should never be let out.


Trouble is often communities and individuals just need a break from people who have been locked up, and whilst our current prison system only offeres this human warehousing for probably 75/80% of people it is also important to remember the rights of others to be protected from harm . And we have almost completely cut adrift many people living with mental ill health and the criminal 'justice' system is the only place left for them.

Hardly anyone cares though.

This, unfortunately depends on the society you live in, what the consensous of opinion is and what is demanded.
There are societies in both the East and the West who demand retribution and there are others who would call for compassion, education and rehabilitation. Surely, trying, where possible to help someone be a more useful member of society is the way forward. This is as opposed to sending someone to their maker.
I used to work with someone who believed that anyone who spoke out against their government was committing treason and should be executed.

 

[BigMoaner]

Retributive justice is a thoroughly stupid idea. We've seen where it leads in the USA. It causes crime, it does not prevent crime. Indeed it is generally advocated by politicians with a vested interest in increasing petty crime, the better to capture the votes of the sadists and racists who slaver over the thought of punishment.

What should happen to rapists or child batterers then or war criminals? Group therapy and walks in the park? Throw the ball and whoever catches it express how they feel? I think even post the revolution there will still be a need for jails. Jails also make victims feel safer, knowing the state have interviened to remove them (in the best possible outcome). I really see no need for the left to be so aghast at forms of punishment and incarceration whilst also improving society structures that create the crime in the first place. Why can’t both exist? There are people who just deserve to be removed from society, fully or temporarily, and always probably will be.

 

[BigMoaner]

It’s often said by people with experience of prisons that most of the inmates should never have been inside but that most of the rest should never be let out. Nothing wrong with locking people up for the right reasons.

Yeah my point exactly

 

[Puddy_Tat]

I don't want to come over all alarmist but according to your post 5% of prisoners are missing

 

[Rob Ray]

It really depends on what stage of society you're talking about.

Capitalism is prone to creating the conditions and mindsets for monstrous behaviour, and this in turn creates the conditions for mass incarceration in conjunction with the methodology of a centralised State. As posted by various people above, there are certainly examples of best practice to try and maximise just outcomes even within this situation, and there's fairly extensive evidence that properly-managed social safety nets enormously reduce the need for prisons (while badly-run or neglected ones end up with the "just one more prison bro" approach, and the revolving doors of the university of crime).

If talking about the "post-revolutionary" model though it becomes much more difficult to say because we have no real idea how much of the abusive behaviour we see today is nurture, and now much nature/happenstance which can't be stopped. Would a post-patriarchal society in which constantly battling for primacy as a Social Good is no longer fetishised eliminate a bit, some, most or all of the paths down which people fall?

I think very few people would say "all" but quite a lot of socialists might say "most".

In that latter case, then, you do still have a very small number of people who are a continued danger to others for whatever reason. But how does protecting everyone else work? I'm not a fan of the exile method, personally, because it simply ends up with abusive people either being isolated to the point where it becomes nearly as cruel as prison, or they are unmonitored and free to simply show up elsewhere and damage more lives. I do not, however, think that establishing central facilities is a good idea, either for them or for the people guarding them.

Kropotkin's solutions involved two possibilities. One, that you find ways to semi-integrate such people in the community where you can while keeping them in hand, aiming to re-establish their connection to society and retrain them to abide within it (eg. you warn the community about them, make sure they're kept an eye on, but also allow them to eg. work outdoors growing things, while interacting as constructively as possibly with others, likely volunteers who are good at/trained in that sort of thing). Two, that you isolate but don't guard them (he claimed he'd seen a colony of exiled murderers in Siberia who, freed from the desperation of Moscow and St Petersburg, turned their lives around completely). I think the first is 'an' option, the second a perhaps overoptimistic position but maybe depending on circumstance. And both could potentially fall short where it comes to the worst of the worst. But I do think he has the right idea when it comes to not banging damaged people up en masse behind big walls where they can be forgotten about by most everyone else and have no opportunity to change at all. And in a world where we've eliminated most of the problem through changes to social norms, Kropotkin's basic vision of intensive, holistic consideration for each case becomes much more realistic to do.

We tend to forget that today's prison system is a direct reflection of our priorities as a society - dump the troublemakers somewhere, as cheaply as possible and in a way that serves as a threat to the rest, for the sake of a smoother productive process. It's an industrial solution to what's actually a human problem. The existence of "irredeemable" humans is used, systemically, as the justification for an abdication of humanity.

 

[BigMoaner]

It really depends on what stage of society you're talking about.

Capitalism is prone to creating the conditions and mindsets for monstrous behaviour, and this in turn creates the conditions for mass incarceration in conjunction with the methodology of a centralised State. As posted by various people above, there are certainly examples of best practice to try and maximise just outcomes even within this situation, and there's fairly extensive evidence that properly-managed social safety nets enormously reduce the need for prisons (while badly-run or neglected ones end up with the "just one more prison bro" approach, and the revolving doors of the university of crime).

If talking about the "post-revolutionary" model though it becomes much more difficult to say because we have no real idea how much of the abusive behaviour we see today is nurture, and now much nature/happenstance which can't be stopped. Would a post-patriarchal society in which constantly battling for primacy as a Social Good is no longer fetishised eliminate a bit, some, most or all of the paths down which people fall?

I think very few people would say "all" but quite a lot of socialists might say "most".

In that latter case, then, you do still have a very small number of people who are a continued danger to others for whatever reason. But how does protecting everyone else work? I'm not a fan of the exile method, personally, because it simply ends up with abusive people either being isolated to the point where it becomes nearly as cruel as prison, or they are unmonitored and free to simply show up elsewhere and damage more lives. I do not, however, think that establishing central facilities is a good idea, either for them or for the people guarding them.

Kropotkin's solutions involved two possibilities. One, that you find ways to semi-integrate such people in the community where you can while keeping them in hand, aiming to re-establish their connection to society and retrain them to abide within it (eg. you warn the community about them, make sure they're kept an eye on, but also allow them to eg. work outdoors growing things, while interacting as constructively as possibly with others, likely volunteers who are good at/trained in that sort of thing). Two, that you isolate but don't guard them (he claimed he'd seen a colony of exiled murderers in Siberia who, freed from the desperation of Moscow and St Petersburg, turned their lives around completely). I think the first is an option, the second a perhaps overoptimistic position but maybe depending on circumstance. And both could potentially fall short where it comes to the worst of the worst. But I do think he has the right idea when it comes to not banging damaged people up en masse behind big walls where they can be forgotten about by most everyone else and have no opportunity to change at all. And in a world where we've eliminated most of the problem through changes to social norms, Kropotkin's basic vision of intensive, holistic consideration for each case becomes much more realistic to do.

We tend to forget, in society as it stands, that the prison system is a direct reflection of our priorities as a society - dump the troublemakers somewhere, as cheaply as possible and in a way that serves as a threat to the rest, for the sake of a smoother productive process. It's an industrial solution to what's actually a human problem. The existence of "irredeemable" humans is used, systemically, as the justification for an abdication of humanity.

i like your points nad agree with them in many regards but you're forgetting one core human value that i believe is probably innate and inbuilt to a greater or lesser extent: a sense of justice, which will apply to a lot of people who are victims of crime.

someone terrible abused by someone as an instance, you have to as a society create a sense of justice. you cannot say to that person who has been raped/tortured - "we are not going to lock this person away, we are going to put him in a theraputic supportive setting and try and understand his social economic conditions that caused him to do that." that is an afront to a sense of justice.

honest and open question - why do you think victims often break down crying on hearing a "guilty" verdict. this is not an unusual occurance. some collapse with a sense of relief. some scream with joy. is it because they are just sadistic and like lokcing people away or is because their fundemental sense of justice has been affirmed? that they have been validated, that their pain has been recognised fully and finally?

in an idea wolrd you do both - you help the abuser by providing rehibilitiation, all the while, and importantly to the victim, removing him from society.

as said, the above only applies to a certain amount of crimes. it is ridiculous that prisons are even full up in the first place. as you say there should be so many better ways to deal with the majority of crimes.

 

[Rob Ray]

someone terrible abused by someone as an instance, you have to as a society create a sense of justice. you cannot say to that person who has been raped/tortured - "we are not going to lock this person away, we are going to put him in a theraputic supportive setting and try and understand his social economic conditions that caused him to do that." that is an afront to a sense of justice.

I didn't address it, that's not the same thing as forgetting it. My focus was on the practicalities of rehabilitation as a method of minimising the continuation of the problem. What you're talking about is punishment and vengeance, which yes are potent concepts, but have no practical use in terms of reducing the number of dangerous individuals in a society.

Edit: One of my beefs with right-wing thinking on this topic is actually that they focus very hard on the punishment, while essentially dismissing the rehabilitation. Which forgets that (unless someone's locked up forever) the prisoner is one day getting out, sentence served, punishment done. What do they do next? What has our behaviour (involving the paying/training of others to brutalise them on our behalf) taught this person? For a supposedly pragmatic creed this seems to be lacking in terms of hard-headed appraisals.

 

[8ball]

Vindictiveness isn't attractive imho. Nor moral neither.

Nietzsche said a couple of useful things on this topic.

 

[existentialist]

i like your points nad agree with them in many regards but you're forgetting one core human value that i believe is probably innate and inbuilt to a greater or lesser extent: a sense of justice, which will apply to a lot of people who are victims of crime.

someone terrible abused by someone as an instance, you have to as a society create a sense of justice. you cannot say to that person who has been raped/tortured - "we are not going to lock this person away, we are going to put him in a theraputic supportive setting and try and understand his social economic conditions that caused him to do that." that is an afront to a sense of justice.

honest and open question - why do you think victims often break down crying on hearing a "guilty" verdict. this is not an unusual occurance. some collapse with a sense of relief. some scream with joy. is it because they are just sadistic and like lokcing people away or is because their fundemental sense of justice has been affirmed? that they have been validated, that their pain has been recognised fully and finally?

in an idea wolrd you do both - you help the abuser by providing rehibilitiation, all the while, and importantly to the victim, removing him from society.

as said, the above only applies to a certain amount of crimes. it is ridiculous that prisons are even full up in the first place. as you say there should be so many better ways to deal with the majority of crimes.

I don't entirely agree.

There will be all kinds of elements that make up that sense you call "justice" - some of them are revenge, safety, the need for punishment, things like that.

But that's only a part of it. Many people probably don't get past those things, but there are people who want to see the bigger picture - perhaps they think of a society where we work to prevent the crime occurring in the first place, whether that's by a better understanding of what makes people go down that route, or looking at how they can be rehabilitated.

Typical right wing government rhetoric tends to keep quiet about the rehabilitative aspects, because it doesn't sell well to the less developed thinkers, but pretty much anyone involved in the criminal justice system knows that just locking people up doesn't make them all that much less likely to go straight - it takes more than that. Quite often it takes stuff like really basic education, learning skills, even psychological interventions. None of which goes on nearly enough.

It's not a question of "put him in a theraputic supportive setting and try and understand his social economic conditions that caused him to do that", as if that's some kind of soft option, either. There have been plenty of interviews with ex-inmates of Grendon prison, which was run as a therapeutic community, where they quite frankly said they'd have had an easier time in a conventional prison, because what Grendon did was to get them to confront their past behaviour and work towards changing it. It's not a soft option.

 

[BigMoaner]

i also think another reasons victims will break down on "guilty" verdicts is because to be traumatised by someone (and I write from personal experience, too, somewhat) is to feel fundementally and horribly unsafe, it kind of follows you around, even in your own dreams and nightmares - it can goes into the body and the brain and swim around there. therefore to literally remove the sense of danger must be freeing, to a greater or lesser extent.

i do think there is some scope for the left to address somewhat the usual and mostly lazy criticism of "not considering the victims" you hear coming rightward. any justice system should consider them, their sense of justice, there sense of safety, as well as adressing the factors that contribute to the crime in the first place.

 

[BigMoaner]

I don't entirely agree.

There will be all kinds of elements that make up that sense you call "justice" - some of them are revenge, safety, the need for punishment, things like that.

But that's only a part of it. Many people probably don't get past those things, but there are people who want to see the bigger picture - perhaps they think of a society where we work to prevent the crime occurring in the first place, whether that's by a better understanding of what makes people go down that route, or looking at how they can be rehabilitated.

Typical right wing government rhetoric tends to keep quiet about the rehabilitative aspects, because it doesn't sell well to the less developed thinkers, but pretty much anyone involved in the criminal justice system knows that just locking people up doesn't make them all that much less likely to go straight - it takes more than that. Quite often it takes stuff like really basic education, learning skills, even psychological interventions. None of which goes on nearly enough.

It's not a question of "put him in a theraputic supportive setting and try and understand his social economic conditions that caused him to do that", as if that's some kind of soft option, either. There have been plenty of interviews with ex-inmates of Grendon prison, which was run as a therapeutic community, where they quite frankly said they'd have had an easier time in a conventional prison, because what Grendon did was to get them to confront their past behaviour and work towards changing it. It's not a soft option.

i don't really disagree tbh.

 

[BigMoaner]

Edit: One of my beefs with right-wing thinking on this topic is actually that they focus very hard on the punishment, while essentially dismissing the rehabilitation.

yes, and leftist thinking is the reverse

but agree fully that a focus on rehabillitation is fundemental, especially for the future health of any society.

 

[8ball]

yes, and leftist thinking is the reverse

but agree fully that a focus on rehabillitation is fundemental, especially for the future health of any society.

Well, if you plan on ever letting offenders out again, then yeah.

 

[Rob Ray]

It's difficult politically because it's counter-intuitive. Less focus on punishment = better long-term outcomes sounds bloodless, and isn't as satisfying or immediate a concept as "that's what you get for being a pos." It also runs counter to the vast majority of our cultural output, in which instant vengeance is cast as being both just and effective. In the end you get Batman being criticised for not being violent enough in his vigilante stalking of the streets of Gotham.

 

[existentialist]

It's difficult politically because it's counter-intuitive. Less focus on punishment = better long-term outcomes sounds bloodless, and isn't as satisfying or immediate a concept as "that's what you get for being a pos." It also runs counter to the vast majority of our cultural output, in which instant vengeance is cast as being both just and effective. In the end you get Batman being criticised for not being violent enough in his vigilante stalking of the streets of Gotham.

And, of course, it leaks into parenting - so a lot of kids grow up in a purely punishment-oriented environment, which isn't exactly great.

 

[8ball]

In the end you get Batman being criticised for not being violent enough in his vigilante stalking of the streets of Gotham.

I can't say I've noticed him being pulled up on this.

 

[Rob Ray]

You clearly hang out in salubrious social media circles, it's pretty common. Usually attached to some line about how he keeps locking Joker up, Joker escapes and kills more people yadayada. Fans of the Punisher are particularly prone (which is of course ironic given what he's meant to represent).

 

[8ball]

You clearly hang out in salubrious social media circles, it's pretty common. Usually attached to some line about how he keeps locking Joker up, Joker escapes and kills more people yadayada. Fans of the Punisher are particularly prone (which is of course ironic given what he's meant to represent).

Tbf, yeah, the subject of Batman doesn't come up that often.

 

[littlebabyjesus]

I get what you say but that's not the be all and end all of it. There are people who have been scammed out of money and have committed suicide.

They exist in this society. In a more just society, people wouldn't rely on their personal savings for their wellbeing, so the scope of damage by scammers would be more limited.

The more social security (in its broadest meaning) is privatised, the further there is for everyone to fall, and the greater the appeal and potential damage of scammers.

 

[existentialist]

i also think another reasons victims will break down on "guilty" verdicts is because to be traumatised by someone (and I write from personal experience, too, somewhat) is to feel fundementally and horribly unsafe, it kind of follows you around, even in your own dreams and nightmares - it can goes into the body and the brain and swim around there. therefore to literally remove the sense of danger must be freeing, to a greater or lesser extent.

i do think there is some scope for the left to address somewhat the usual and mostly lazy criticism of "not considering the victims" you hear coming rightward. any justice system should consider them, their sense of justice, there sense of safety, as well as adressing the factors that contribute to the crime in the first place.

My experience was that the most important thing about the verdict was that he had finally admitted to what he had done. I wasn't much interested in the sentence or the retributive aspect.

 

[likesfish]

The Prison service knows what works but nobody listens to them. Some Home secretary's were disappointed to find out out the prison service doesn't "arrange" for padeophiles to be murdered by inmates . With that level of ignorance at the level of people who hold the purse strings and dictate policy most reform is doomed.
Punishment doesn't work never has go back over century and execution was nealry the default setting and society was much more violent.
people do crime because they either don't think full stop. Or think they will get away with it.
some people need to be in jail they are either a danger to others or society just needs a break from their chaos.
Ideally prision would be clean safe and secure given the age of a lot of the estate the third is done the 2nd mostly and the 1st often fails without the basics done all the nice little pilots schemes of better ideas are going to fail.

 

[hash tag]

How can we exixts in a world where robbers get longer sentences than rapists?

We also live in a country where a robber can get a longer custodial sentence than someone who kills another person eg a car driver whilst using their phone or speeding etc.

 

[existentialist]

We also live in a country where a robber can get a longer custodial sentence than someone who kills another person eg a car driver whilst using their phone or speeding etc.

'twas ever thus. Crimes against property have historically been more significant than crimes against the person.