Fierce, Gitaxian Librarian

BUT

I LIKED Harry Potter. I think pretending I didn’t like Harry Potter is a bad idea. Because acknowledging that I liked Harry Potter is acknowledging that things people make don’t come with labels reading “look out. I was made by a shit person.”

Look, the crux of the book and prison abolition more broadly isn’t that “people should be allowed to rape and murder, whatever” its that “the prison industrial complex doesn’t solve the problem of rape and murder, and in fact inflicts far more harm on society than good.”

A lot of people commit crimes and are never caught or charged.

Shouldn’t we as a society be trying to address that? Isn’t it better to prevent crimes from happening?

And having *all those people* incarcerated within a violent system is not a nuetral situation. It is active state violence.

We are talking about the entire prison system and the millions of people it really actually affects.

I’m saying that it is immoral, unethical, and unreasonable to continue a system that harms so so so so many people, and that we should instead fund alternative forms of justice. If your only argument is “but I’ve imagined a tiny hypothetical group of people who can ONLY be stopped by the current prison systems existence and NO proposed alternative will work for them my mind, and punishing them in the only way I think works is more important than anything else, so we cant” then…you aren’t having an open and honest discussion.

‘a few people might misuse it so no one should have it!’

Yeah?

And?

My tax dollars already go to cops and road infrastructure that is actively hostile to anything not a car, two things I would really rather not pay for.

I’d happily take every red cent that goes to both those bullshit things and put it into welfare if it was up to me. Welfare in it’s worst form is doing more good than cops and dangerous strodes on their best fucking days.

Jails and prisons don’t work and tossing more money and hope and human souls at it ain’t fucking fixing it.

People who got thrown in jail for laughably small drug charges or mental health problems don’t deserve to be raped and forced into slavery because some slimy government official thinks being poor is a moral failing or you’re concerned about the tiny percentage of harden criminals we may not be punishing properly.

We’ve already explained to you how it’s not a ‘small minority’ of innocent people being thrown into systems of intense violence @needabetternamelater, so you’re fine with a considerable chunk of the American population being forcefully removed from their families and getting gang raped over bullshit offenses?

That’s kinda fucked morally.

How about we just make the world a less shitty place for everyone simply for the sake of making it less shit for everyone?

Criminals are still people.

It’s not bad actually to treat them like people.

“Then the number of prisons should also be tiny!”

“No, it should be 0.”

“Are you sure about that?”

“Ángela Davis keeps asking me why I think it’s necessary!”

“Cool. What was your answer then, and what did it change to? Mine is still ‘some people are going to keep hurting people and the only solution is to keep those people away from others.’ I’d love to better understand the alternative.”

“You don’t understand that lots of people are in prison for minor offenses!”

We literally KNOW what the people many of us want to imprison are doing, and what the recommended sentences under the current system are. We can look them up!

But somehow when we ask abolitionists what the new process is and what we should expect to result from it they just go “stop derailing.”

My dude I have friends who would like to make art for a living and I do not want moguls drugging or even just pressuring them ever.

What evidence do we have that prisons reduce the amount of overall sexual assault in our society? (Or, given the prevalence of sexual assault within prisons, do they actually INCREASE the number of victims?)

It’s very easy to point at the absolute worst offender imaginable and go “well what about him?” It’s important to remember that it’s estimated that less than 1% of rapists ever see the inside of a prison, and in the meantime, that system is creating new victims and perpetuating wild state violence against a shit ton of people that *arent* Diddy.

So yes, when the argument is “until prison abolitionists can lay out a foolproof plan that perfectly tackles this problem that our current system is miserably failing at, we will not entertain the premise at all, regardless of all the OTHER ways it would measurably improve things” I will, in fact, call it derailing.

Especially, *especially*, when you *presuppose* that any solution other than prison would automatically fail for your worst case scenario offender. I say counseling and community service and restraining orders, I say scheduled check ins or reparation hearings, and it doesn’t matter if that WOULD work for 99% of people, because you will say “well that wouldn’t work on DIDDY” and act like there’s not merit at all to the premise on a societal level.

And I think part of that is some fundamental misimagining for what prison abolition work actually looks like. We aren’t proposing we close all the prisons tomorrow and just let people go with no structures or supports in place and hope for the best. Abolition work is the long grind to build those alternative systems, change sentencing guidelines, advocate for reforms with the long term end goal of having a prisonless society. By the time the last prison closed, the systems to replace it will be robust and comprehensive. (And yeah, it probably won’t work for everyone. But will it work for more people than the current system? Will it cause less harm than the current system? Will it lead to overall FEWER assaults and murders and violence than the current system?)

Thats where I get the idea that some people are either just not going to be rehabilitated or that some people are just going to be so incredibly difficult to convince to break a habit of harming others that people give up.

I want you to convince me. I want to believe I can do it.

I hear every day of my working life that with some people you just can’t.

Please prove me wrong. PLEASE. If you can do that, I can argue no one should ever be barred from the shelter where I work.

Here’s a point that I feel like I did make but didn’t say directly- no solution will work for 100% of people, and it’s frankly an insane standard to hold up for this kind of work. I don’t believe EVERYONE can be rehabilitated, but I also think that’s an asinine reason to support a system that does so much harm to so many people who could be.

The actual metric of success here is “would it be better than the current system” and looking at basically any country that is further in that direction than we are, even if they aren’t 100% prisonless, suggests that…yes. restorative systems, counseling and community service and reparations and social work monitoring and job training and social services and non-punitive addiction care DO lead to better outcomes than a system where any breech of law gets you chucked in a hole forever.

Why am I saying it? Because your side says there must be no prisons. If there are no prisons, then EVERYONE, REGARDLESS of what they’ve done or how rational they are about it, cannot be removed from the community.

My position is that I cannot assert that everyone is ready to be reintegrated into the community right away. I think this because I believe I have met some that are not.

Where I agree with you is that this is a very small proportion of the people in the world, and therefore not many prisons would exist in my utopia either.

Which means we agree on most things. The one place where I don’t is I can only get to “the vast majority of prisons should be closed down.” I can’t get from that to all.

Ángela Davis apparently got you to all. How’d she do that? What convinced you?

How’d you take that last step, when like any of the rest of us you know what powerful cruel people are capable of?

I get to answer question after question after question for your ever moving goal posts, but I’ve asked 1 question, several times and worded in different ways, and not gotten an answer from you at any point.

What is your evidence that the current system reduces the amount of violent crime? What evidence do you have that a prison does more good than harm?

This is actually a legitimate public health/public safety position (legalization of drugs is essentially the identical argument - that the harm caused by recreational drug use is an acceptable price to pay for reducing the harm caused by the “war on drugs” - and so were the debates over covid lockdowns) that abolitionists could honestly discuss and debate if they were being intellectually honest about things. It’s the whole premise of harm reduction, which is about deliberately enabling and encouraging some types of harm in order to prevent greater harm.

Yes, that’s what it sounds to me like the position is, and why I disagree with it.

We can ALMOSTget rid of prison (defined, again, as “a place we put people we deem literally too unsafe to allow in our communities” which means A LOT of people who current,y get prison won’t, ideally) without telling rape victims (or other crime victims which I am) to suck it up, but we can’t totally do away with it.

So that’s my position.

You have not provided any evidence at all that prisons reduce the number of rapes or any violent crimes in our society. You acknowledged, in fact, that prisons *dont* reduce crime.

In my FIRST reply to you today, I said-

Especially, *especially*, when you *presuppose* that any solution other than prison would automatically fail for your worst case scenario offender. I say counseling and community service and restraining orders, I say scheduled check ins or reparation hearings, and it doesn’t matter if that WOULD work for 99% of people, because you will say “well that wouldn’t work on DIDDY” and act like there’s not merit at all to the premise on a societal level.

But here you are, acting as though my argument is this grotesque cavalier dismissal of victims. That Im proposing that rapists have free reign to do whatever to whomever, when that is clearly and demonstrably not what I said from the very fucking begininng.

For what? Clout? Because you think it makes you look smart to agree with someone spouting such a transparently false strawman?

This more than anything is why my strong suspicion is there’s compartmentalizing going on here. Rapists are outliers and they don’t matter—until you remind someone that most people on the planet know at least one survivor, if they’re not one themselves.

That for all that was horribly, twistedly, awfully wrong with the second wave that birthed white feminism and terfs, they were RIGHT to point out that most rapists are regular guys, and don’t think of the way they hurt people as wrong.

You remind people of all this and then… all of a sudden it’s “I never said let rapists have their freedom!”

I didn’t say rapists are outliers and don’t matter. I said that prisons do not reduce the amount of rapes that happen, only punish about 1% of rapists, and do immense harm all while being ineffectual at actually helping victims. So Ineffectual, in fact, that their existence *makes more victims*

You yourself said that prisons *dont reduce crime.* we agree that all the sorts of reforms that prison abolition advocates for *does reduce crime.* acknowledging that no solution will 100% prevent rape, but that prison abolition will do a better job of preventing rape and reducing recidivism than prisons, doesn’t mean that I “think rapists don’t count”.

Think about that story that was all over the news right after Dobbs, where a ten year old girl raped by her father needed an abortion and had to go to another state.

What should happen to that dad?

I think he should be kept away not just from his daughter, but also from society at large.

You seem to think he should be kept away from people too… but only as an interim measure. Ideally he gets… let me scroll up… “house arrest, counseling, or other intervention programs.”

How long of an interim do we take him away from people vs. not doing so? How do we know when we’re ready to make the shift?

He’s a person, regardless of the evil he’s done. No one in this discussion disputes that criminals are people. The issue is whether institutionalization is the kind of thing that’s so cruel no people should ever be subjected to it.

You’re arguing that it is, so over time it will be phased out fully. I’m arguing that while as currently constituted, prison is indeed too cruel, the basic idea of separating a dangerous person from the larger community is not inherently cruel, so we’ll still have “prisons,” meaning “places we send people we deem too threatening to let roam freely.”

Therefore, my question is: If prison is fundamentally too cruel and unusual for anyone, even someone who’s willing to rape his daughter, what do we do with him? House arrest is right out if that’s where the kid lives. How do we move him?

Where’d and when did she move the goalposts, baby boo? She didn’t; you’re a liar pure and simple!

Are you gonna ever address the topic or you just gonna make up reasons for why you’re not?

Yes, we all agree that a great many people do not belong in prison and would be better served by other solutions, as would society.

But–every time the issue of hard-core, unrepentant offenders who are dangerous to society is brought up, vigorous handwaving and whataboutism commences.

There’s always the ancient, classic, and medieval solution to such people when you don’t have prisons: execute them. Somehow I don’t think that’s what prison abolitionists are arguing for.

Where to me, “prisoner” CAN mean “young black guy who likes grass” but it can also mean “dad who molests his kid” or “cult leader who convinced all the women to put out for him” or “guy who ran the Ponzi scheme,” and those are sufficiently different that an appropriate response to the first is not going to look the same as an appropriate response to the second, which in turn is not going to look the same as an appropriate response to the third.

The one point where we disagree is that, if we do implement all their proposed measures and there remains a small population of people that continue to perpetrate violence and cannot be rehabilitated…I don’t believe imprisoning them is a non-option. I don’t believe that imprisoning someone (in a safe facility where their needs, including social and entertainment needs, are met) is so horrific that it can’t even be considered an option. I also don’t believe that prison rape is an unavoidable fact, as so many people here insist.

If there is a non box putting solution I’d like to hear it. I’m just not cool with dead mice on Kate’s porch, yannowhadimean?

The difference between them and me seems to be:

Them: Violence against women is horrific! But we live in a society that’s not primed to take is seriously, so no one punishes it harshly. Since no one does that anyway, we should stop punishing everyone.

Me: We live in a society that does not take violence against women seriously! This is bad! We’re on the same page there. But if it’s bad to not take it seriously enough, I worry that no longer punishing it will make the problem worse than only half punishing it.

Not punishing it consistently sends the message that some of us kind of mind, but not very much, which supports rape culture,

Look, the crux of the book and prison abolition more broadly isn’t that “people should be allowed to rape and murder, whatever” its that “the prison industrial complex doesn’t solve the problem of rape and murder, and in fact inflicts far more harm on society than good.”

A lot of people commit crimes and are never caught or charged.

Shouldn’t we as a society be trying to address that? Isn’t it better to prevent crimes from happening?

And having *all those people* incarcerated within a violent system is not a nuetral situation. It is active state violence.

We are talking about the entire prison system and the millions of people it really actually affects.

I’m saying that it is immoral, unethical, and unreasonable to continue a system that harms so so so so many people, and that we should instead fund alternative forms of justice. If your only argument is “but I’ve imagined a tiny hypothetical group of people who can ONLY be stopped by the current prison systems existence and NO proposed alternative will work for them my mind, and punishing them in the only way I think works is more important than anything else, so we cant” then…you aren’t having an open and honest discussion.

‘a few people might misuse it so no one should have it!’

Yeah?

And?

My tax dollars already go to cops and road infrastructure that is actively hostile to anything not a car, two things I would really rather not pay for.

I’d happily take every red cent that goes to both those bullshit things and put it into welfare if it was up to me. Welfare in it’s worst form is doing more good than cops and dangerous strodes on their best fucking days.

Jails and prisons don’t work and tossing more money and hope and human souls at it ain’t fucking fixing it.

People who got thrown in jail for laughably small drug charges or mental health problems don’t deserve to be raped and forced into slavery because some slimy government official thinks being poor is a moral failing or you’re concerned about the tiny percentage of harden criminals we may not be punishing properly.

We’ve already explained to you how it’s not a ‘small minority’ of innocent people being thrown into systems of intense violence @needabetternamelater, so you’re fine with a considerable chunk of the American population being forcefully removed from their families and getting gang raped over bullshit offenses?

That’s kinda fucked morally.

How about we just make the world a less shitty place for everyone simply for the sake of making it less shit for everyone?

Criminals are still people.

It’s not bad actually to treat them like people.

“Then the number of prisons should also be tiny!”

“No, it should be 0.”

“Are you sure about that?”

“Ángela Davis keeps asking me why I think it’s necessary!”

“Cool. What was your answer then, and what did it change to? Mine is still ‘some people are going to keep hurting people and the only solution is to keep those people away from others.’ I’d love to better understand the alternative.”

“You don’t understand that lots of people are in prison for minor offenses!”

We literally KNOW what the people many of us want to imprison are doing, and what the recommended sentences under the current system are. We can look them up!

But somehow when we ask abolitionists what the new process is and what we should expect to result from it they just go “stop derailing.”

My dude I have friends who would like to make art for a living and I do not want moguls drugging or even just pressuring them ever.

What evidence do we have that prisons reduce the amount of overall sexual assault in our society? (Or, given the prevalence of sexual assault within prisons, do they actually INCREASE the number of victims?)

It’s very easy to point at the absolute worst offender imaginable and go “well what about him?” It’s important to remember that it’s estimated that less than 1% of rapists ever see the inside of a prison, and in the meantime, that system is creating new victims and perpetuating wild state violence against a shit ton of people that *arent* Diddy.

So yes, when the argument is “until prison abolitionists can lay out a foolproof plan that perfectly tackles this problem that our current system is miserably failing at, we will not entertain the premise at all, regardless of all the OTHER ways it would measurably improve things” I will, in fact, call it derailing.

Especially, *especially*, when you *presuppose* that any solution other than prison would automatically fail for your worst case scenario offender. I say counseling and community service and restraining orders, I say scheduled check ins or reparation hearings, and it doesn’t matter if that WOULD work for 99% of people, because you will say “well that wouldn’t work on DIDDY” and act like there’s not merit at all to the premise on a societal level.

And I think part of that is some fundamental misimagining for what prison abolition work actually looks like. We aren’t proposing we close all the prisons tomorrow and just let people go with no structures or supports in place and hope for the best. Abolition work is the long grind to build those alternative systems, change sentencing guidelines, advocate for reforms with the long term end goal of having a prisonless society. By the time the last prison closed, the systems to replace it will be robust and comprehensive. (And yeah, it probably won’t work for everyone. But will it work for more people than the current system? Will it cause less harm than the current system? Will it lead to overall FEWER assaults and murders and violence than the current system?)

Thats where I get the idea that some people are either just not going to be rehabilitated or that some people are just going to be so incredibly difficult to convince to break a habit of harming others that people give up.

I want you to convince me. I want to believe I can do it.

I hear every day of my working life that with some people you just can’t.

Please prove me wrong. PLEASE. If you can do that, I can argue no one should ever be barred from the shelter where I work.

Here’s a point that I feel like I did make but didn’t say directly- no solution will work for 100% of people, and it’s frankly an insane standard to hold up for this kind of work. I don’t believe EVERYONE can be rehabilitated, but I also think that’s an asinine reason to support a system that does so much harm to so many people who could be.

The actual metric of success here is “would it be better than the current system” and looking at basically any country that is further in that direction than we are, even if they aren’t 100% prisonless, suggests that…yes. restorative systems, counseling and community service and reparations and social work monitoring and job training and social services and non-punitive addiction care DO lead to better outcomes than a system where any breech of law gets you chucked in a hole forever.

Why am I saying it? Because your side says there must be no prisons. If there are no prisons, then EVERYONE, REGARDLESS of what they’ve done or how rational they are about it, cannot be removed from the community.

My position is that I cannot assert that everyone is ready to be reintegrated into the community right away. I think this because I believe I have met some that are not.

Where I agree with you is that this is a very small proportion of the people in the world, and therefore not many prisons would exist in my utopia either.

Which means we agree on most things. The one place where I don’t is I can only get to “the vast majority of prisons should be closed down.” I can’t get from that to all.

Ángela Davis apparently got you to all. How’d she do that? What convinced you?

How’d you take that last step, when like any of the rest of us you know what powerful cruel people are capable of?

I get to answer question after question after question for your ever moving goal posts, but I’ve asked 1 question, several times and worded in different ways, and not gotten an answer from you at any point.

What is your evidence that the current system reduces the amount of violent crime? What evidence do you have that a prison does more good than harm?

This is actually a legitimate public health/public safety position (legalization of drugs is essentially the identical argument - that the harm caused by recreational drug use is an acceptable price to pay for reducing the harm caused by the “war on drugs” - and so were the debates over covid lockdowns) that abolitionists could honestly discuss and debate if they were being intellectually honest about things. It’s the whole premise of harm reduction, which is about deliberately enabling and encouraging some types of harm in order to prevent greater harm.

Yes, that’s what it sounds to me like the position is, and why I disagree with it.

We can ALMOSTget rid of prison (defined, again, as “a place we put people we deem literally too unsafe to allow in our communities” which means A LOT of people who current,y get prison won’t, ideally) without telling rape victims (or other crime victims which I am) to suck it up, but we can’t totally do away with it.

So that’s my position.

You have not provided any evidence at all that prisons reduce the number of rapes or any violent crimes in our society. You acknowledged, in fact, that prisons *dont* reduce crime.

In my FIRST reply to you today, I said-

Especially, *especially*, when you *presuppose* that any solution other than prison would automatically fail for your worst case scenario offender. I say counseling and community service and restraining orders, I say scheduled check ins or reparation hearings, and it doesn’t matter if that WOULD work for 99% of people, because you will say “well that wouldn’t work on DIDDY” and act like there’s not merit at all to the premise on a societal level.

But here you are, acting as though my argument is this grotesque cavalier dismissal of victims. That Im proposing that rapists have free reign to do whatever to whomever, when that is clearly and demonstrably not what I said from the very fucking begininng.

For what? Clout? Because you think it makes you look smart to agree with someone spouting such a transparently false strawman?

This more than anything is why my strong suspicion is there’s compartmentalizing going on here. Rapists are outliers and they don’t matter—until you remind someone that most people on the planet know at least one survivor, if they’re not one themselves.

That for all that was horribly, twistedly, awfully wrong with the second wave that birthed white feminism and terfs, they were RIGHT to point out that most rapists are regular guys, and don’t think of the way they hurt people as wrong.

You remind people of all this and then… all of a sudden it’s “I never said let rapists have their freedom!”

I didn’t say rapists are outliers and don’t matter. I said that prisons do not reduce the amount of rapes that happen, only punish about 1% of rapists, and do immense harm all while being ineffectual at actually helping victims. So Ineffectual, in fact, that their existence *makes more victims*

You yourself said that prisons *dont reduce crime.* we agree that all the sorts of reforms that prison abolition advocates for *does reduce crime.* acknowledging that no solution will 100% prevent rape, but that prison abolition will do a better job of preventing rape and reducing recidivism than prisons, doesn’t mean that I “think rapists don’t count”.

Think about that story that was all over the news right after Dobbs, where a ten year old girl raped by her father needed an abortion and had to go to another state.

What should happen to that dad?

I think he should be kept away not just from his daughter, but also from society at large.

You seem to think he should be kept away from people too… but only as an interim measure. Ideally he gets… let me scroll up… “house arrest, counseling, or other intervention programs.”

How long of an interim do we take him away from people vs. not doing so? How do we know when we’re ready to make the shift?

He’s a person, regardless of the evil he’s done. No one in this discussion disputes that criminals are people. The issue is whether institutionalization is the kind of thing that’s so cruel no people should ever be subjected to it.

You’re arguing that it is, so over time it will be phased out fully. I’m arguing that while as currently constituted, prison is indeed too cruel, the basic idea of separating a dangerous person from the larger community is not inherently cruel, so we’ll still have “prisons,” meaning “places we send people we deem too threatening to let roam freely.”

Therefore, my question is: If prison is fundamentally too cruel and unusual for anyone, even someone who’s willing to rape his daughter, what do we do with him? House arrest is right out if that’s where the kid lives. How do we move him?

Where’d and when did she move the goalposts, baby boo? She didn’t; you’re a liar pure and simple!

Are you gonna ever address the topic or you just gonna make up reasons for why you’re not?

Yes, we all agree that a great many people do not belong in prison and would be better served by other solutions, as would society.

But–every time the issue of hard-core, unrepentant offenders who are dangerous to society is brought up, vigorous handwaving and whataboutism commences.

There’s always the ancient, classic, and medieval solution to such people when you don’t have prisons: execute them. Somehow I don’t think that’s what prison abolitionists are arguing for.

Where to me, “prisoner” CAN mean “young black guy who likes grass” but it can also mean “dad who molests his kid” or “cult leader who convinced all the women to put out for him” or “guy who ran the Ponzi scheme,” and those are sufficiently different that an appropriate response to the first is not going to look the same as an appropriate response to the second, which in turn is not going to look the same as an appropriate response to the third.

The one point where we disagree is that, if we do implement all their proposed measures and there remains a small population of people that continue to perpetrate violence and cannot be rehabilitated…I don’t believe imprisoning them is a non-option. I don’t believe that imprisoning someone (in a safe facility where their needs, including social and entertainment needs, are met) is so horrific that it can’t even be considered an option. I also don’t believe that prison rape is an unavoidable fact, as so many people here insist.

If there is a non box putting solution I’d like to hear it. I’m just not cool with dead mice on Kate’s porch, yannowhadimean?

Turns out you can roll a 7 on a d6

...so Ghislaine is fine?

Oh it’s definitely complicated! I just think (having studied true crime a bit though I’m definitely not an expert) that people who talk like this often don’t seem to be thinking about all the different pieces of the legal system that go into deciding what punishments fit a particular crime.

I don’t know all the details, and of course just because someone is SUPPOSED to do a certain thing doesn’t mean they’re certain to do it. But part of the sentencing process is m at least some of the time, specifically about whether the offender is likely to reoffend.

And I feel like when people say “I just don’t know that we can sentence anyone to anything and still be committed and compassionate leftists,” I REALLY want them to say at least some things about whether we think they’re going to stop or not.

Like, Epstein died. No one knows for certain how or why. I’m not going to get into what I think on that.

But! It seems highly likely that if he HADN’T died, he’d seek ways to go back to offending. He didn’t, at least not from what I could tell about him, have the kinds of factors that we see when someone commits a crime but won’t do it again: remorse, acceptance of responsibility, compassionate awareness of what his actions did to those he acted upon.

Given that… yes, it’s a LITTLE sad to keep someone like that in a prison (or to take his money, or give him a bad reputation, or whatever the case may be.) Institutionalization, which is essentially what putting someone in prison is, ALWAYS harms the institutionalized. That counts and should count in our decisions whether to use it!

But the idea that deciding that we sometimes SHOULD use it when we think that the potential for recidivism is high makes us cruel, sadistic, or uncommitted leftists seems to me like a truly massive leap.

And the idea of "deserving" is one of the fundamental pillars of any system of justice created by our species.

As well as the one the pillars for our own ethical frameworks. And our sense of fairness.

But. We can't forget that it, at it's core, is built up on feelings. And each person can have different reactions to the same thing.

What do people deserve, on their own. What are the human rights that should be universal.

Do people deserve thanks for the help they give others? What are the things we consider basic human decency and respect.

Do people deserve death, loss of freedom, or a chance to reform, for doing things we have collectively agreed are "bad".

And What do their victims deserve, in turn. Compensation? Assurance of safety? What would be justice to them.

All those things have to be considered. And they are so many, too many variables to consider.

What makes the decision "cruel" or "sadistic" is the why the decision is being made.

“Punishment for crimes is always wrong” strikes me as… something people are repeating without thinking through.

It’s not that no one could hold this view! It’s that it’s a profoundly extreme position, and people seem to not understand that. If you say something is always wrong, you’re saying that even in the most exaggerated, thought experiment on purpose circumstance, you still have to come down on the side of refusing to punish.

That’s why I choose examples like Epstein and Maxwell. Because if someone really has thought it through and decided that it’s always wrong, their answer will be “yeah, that’s an uncomfortable bullet to bite, but I’m biting it. This is a matter of principle. We cannot punish even people who do something like that. We can only attempt to rehabilitate, even if this is profoundly uncomfortable to admit.”

I remember taking a logic class in college, and we went from stuff like “if P then Q” to stuff like “All As are B.” And the professor very vehemently said, “This is important to teach you, but it’s easy to lose sight of what it means. You’re just manipulating letters for a homework assignment. But if you really want to make good arguments, you need to realize that ‘All As are B’ or ‘no As are B’ are *very rarely* true. ‘All swans are white’ and ‘No swans are black’ is disproven the moment anyone encounters a single black swan.”

Which is why I’m suspicious of this logic. To me, it seems like cult think, emotional and/or thought control. You can’t just agree that most people don’t get what they deserve, or that we should err on the side of mercy most of the time and not give people what they actually deserve, or nuanced things like that. You’re told to never think it at all. To do work to make sure you WON’T think it.

That’s brainwashing.

Which we do a LOT on the left when people get extreme enough. “Unlearn racism.” Uh… what? How? Over what period of time? How do i verify it’s gone? Instructions unclear.

So I steer away from absolutes unless I’m very very sure.

In the case of crimes, or even vigilante justice like shooting your rapist or punching a Nazi, I’m not sure I can say punishment is never deserved. If you didn’t want to get punched, don’t wear that red armband. Etc.

It’s so strange. The way you prove we shouldn’t punish anyone is to imagine the worst possible person doing the worst possible thing, and then successfully argue we’re all better off not responding.

From a Christian point-of-view, one could make the same argument: God hands out grace whether people deserve it or not. Stop thinking crap like "they don't deserve forgiveness" or "I don't deserve good things".

From a legal system point-of-view: the only legitimate purpose of punishment is deterrence. If punishment doesn't deter people, it's just vengeful lashing out in fear, anger and grief, and is wrong.

Also, restraint is not punishment. Keeping someone from hurting other people by confining them or putting other restrictions on them is not the same as intentionally inflicting pain and distress to make that someone suffer.

The other purposes of legal penalties can be restitution to the victims or society, or rehabilitation, to encourage the offender to do better and not offend.

(And honestly if we’re taking about theism, I’m boring. Is there a God? I think not. Moving right along. Maybe we can talk about what humans use the idea of gods for?)

When I think of punishment, I think of crime. I think of, like, what kind of shit do I want the guy on the county board to be able to get away with?

And I think we’re often really doing society a disservice when we give powerful people who misbehave a pass, which is something we’re really, really good at doing. People like the social order to be stable, and will often prefer to keep a malefactor around to finding filling the void. (I may be wrong here, but I suspect this is part of why Trump was reelected.)

The idea of moral dessert is just a hair's breadth away from the Just World Fallacy. JWF is what makes people say stuff like, "He wouldn't have gotten cancer if he wasn't such a negative person," and "I won't get cancer because I'm vegan." It's also one of the roots of the pervasive notion that rich people must be smart, or they wouldn't be rich.

As far as things like crime and punishment go... a good framework would be quarantine. This person's harming others, so let's take measures to prevent them from doing so. Then we check them for signs of continuing sickness. Are they still a public hazard? Well, they have to stay. Can they be treated? If so, treat them. If they got quarantined by mistake, it's fine, because they didn't suffer much harm for having been in quarantine.

Let's flip this so we're talking about rewards rather than punishments (or perceived rewards and punishments). Most of us have tons of resources that our ancestors would have killed for. A lot of that is things we don't even think about often. What did we do to earn those resources? Nothing but be born in the right time and place.

For someone who insists on the "earning/deserving" model, this can only lead to two conclusions: either you come up with some self-serving rationalization of why you did earn this, or conclude that because you didn't earn it, you having it is a bad thing for which you should atone, or at the very least feel guilty.

That’s exactly why this discussion is so frustrating for me. In the main I agree that the system is too punitive, so it’s weird to me to talk to people and hear them talk like they think I’m gung ho about punishment when I’m just saying never doing it is going to make things worse not better. (Which I can’t imagine is even controversial, but here we are. The internet is wild, man.)

My problem with the quote is that I think it’s cult logic hidden in plain sight.

Have you ever heard of Steven Hassan? He’s a former member of the Moonies who after leaving the cult became an expert on coercive control and how it works.

Long story short, he came up with what he calls the BITE model, for techniques high control groups use to reprogram you and keep you subservient:

Behavior control

Information control

Thought control

Emotional control

“Free your mind of the concept of deserving” is T and E.

Let me illustrate why:

I’m a survivor of some really messed up medical stuff. I had major surgery, everything possible went horribly wrong, I had several other surgeries to fix the damage. It only fixed so much and I am in pretty much constant physical pain.

I can’t argue well for it here, but my belief is that some of this wasn’t chance. I believe there are things that surgeon did that were incorrect or at least unnecessarily risky, and that switching surgeons is… probably the reason I still have legs, honestly.

Periodically, something happens that reminds me that this surgeon is still practicing, and is still considered an expert on pediatric orthopedics locally.

This makes me angry, queasy, sad, disconnected… essentially, it triggers me. (Yes I can use that word, I have an actual PTSD diagnosis.)

When this happens, I often have the thought, “that man deserves to lose his license!” or “that man doesn’t even deserve to keep his license, much less be considered expert!”

Now is this true? I think I have good reason to think it is, but I could be wrong. It’s not important.

But when that thought enters my head, understandable as I would say it is (whether correct or not), it shows that I have not “freed my mind of the concept of desert.”

What would I need to do to try to stop having this thought?

I’d have to exercise very rigid control of my thoughts: “you don’t know all the relevant facts, it might still have been a fluke, every doctor has failures alongside his successes,” etc. I’d also have to control my emotions: “you can be angry, but you can’t be righteously indignant. No one deserves anything, so your desire to see him lose his license is an irrational desire.”

Where if I let myself have this thought, I don’t have to exercise rigid control over myself in an attempt to make it go away.

I can think things like, “yes, he deserves that, but the fight it would take to prove it isn’t worth the effort. Instead, you should let yourself be angry and, when it passes, do something that you think is more likely to help someone else.”

The former requires me to feel shame for very normal emotions and reactions many survivors have because those responses aren’t ideal.

(That is, assuming it’s possible at all. I don’t think it is, but that’s a different topic.)

It seems to ME like your comfort with the quote comes from seeing it as hyperbolic. You seem to be agreeing with me that taken literally, it’s both impossible and would do harm (because it would, as you seem to also be saying now, encourage us to give a pass to injustice.)

Any time someone tells me a whole concept is negative or harmful or useless, the first thing I ask myself is: Are people using that? If they are, what are they using it for? If I take it away, what breaks?

I briefly knew someone who was enslaved to the idea of earning and deserving; he was constantly worrying and feeling guilty because he didn't think he'd earned anything good, and couldn't conceive of any social system that "just gives people things for free".

It's a bit like hatred. Some people argue that hatred is inherently evil, and that you should feel guilty for ever feeling it. I disagree: sometimes hatred is exactly what you need to draw firm boundaries and refuse to tolerate abuse.

But we can also agree that feeling hatred constantly, seeking out things to arouse that feeling in you, "making up a guy to get mad at" etc. are unhealthy.

If you focus narrowly on deserving, you can become very bitter. Especially if you’re not just making judgments like “Susan deserves to be rewarded for her years of service to the community” or “Considering all the factors in the case, I’d say Brad deserves six months in prison for that offense, not the ten originally proposed” but lamenting that society doesn’t agree with you or immediately implement what you think.

But deserving is what tells you it was wrong for someone or something to hurt you: I didn’t deserve that! (Very often: and neither does anyone else.) If you take away the concept that enables survivors to say “I didn’t deserve it,” more often than not what we survivors do is internalize that we DID deserve it. That if everything is unfair, it might as well be us.

Where if we allow ourselves to listen to the part of ourselves that says it wasn’t fair, we learn how to stand up for ourselves.

And hence: Le Guin. Telling people like me to get desert out of our heads tells me… she’s lived a sheltered life. She’s never sat awake at night going “but what happened to me was just plain wrong! I can’t excuse it away!”

To me, that’s pretty smug. Also insufferable.

The notion that anyone could live their life without having experiencing at least one moment of blistering unfairness that keeps them up at night? Unlikely to the point of impossible.

It's also very weird to me to hear someone who was an extremely outspoken advocate for disenfranchised people called "sheltered" and "smug".

So all I can say is: I’m going to continue to be suspicious of people who say “free yourself” from normal human responses, even writers like Le Guin who I adored as a kid.

I’m going instead to gravitate to people who talk in nuanced ways about when a response is productive and when it isn’t, and who help me learn how to put the thoughts I already do have into more productive paths to make the world more just.

(One last note: I am baffled by your claim above that I subscribe to the just world theory. That theory says that the world already IS just, that things come out in the end.

I get the sense that a lot of this weird way of talking is a response to evangelicals, who tend to think that everyone deserves hell.

Which is in itself very different from “desert results from the actions you choose to take, possibly plus considerations of what you intended or whether you should have predicted the consequences accurately, possibly plus considerations of whether you’ve done this before, etc.”

Might bake your noodle, but I think the evangelical idea of desert is actually incoherent. If we all deserve hell anyway, there’s really no point in carefully considering and applying appropriate consequences at all, because ultimately The One True Consequence is hell. And good people get out of it by Believing In Jesus, so only one of two consequences are possible and neither of them has anything to do with how bad or good what someone did was anyway.

Look, the crux of the book and prison abolition more broadly isn’t that “people should be allowed to rape and murder, whatever” its that “the prison industrial complex doesn’t solve the problem of rape and murder, and in fact inflicts far more harm on society than good.”

A lot of people commit crimes and are never caught or charged.

Shouldn’t we as a society be trying to address that? Isn’t it better to prevent crimes from happening?

And having *all those people* incarcerated within a violent system is not a nuetral situation. It is active state violence.

We are talking about the entire prison system and the millions of people it really actually affects.

I’m saying that it is immoral, unethical, and unreasonable to continue a system that harms so so so so many people, and that we should instead fund alternative forms of justice. If your only argument is “but I’ve imagined a tiny hypothetical group of people who can ONLY be stopped by the current prison systems existence and NO proposed alternative will work for them my mind, and punishing them in the only way I think works is more important than anything else, so we cant” then…you aren’t having an open and honest discussion.

‘a few people might misuse it so no one should have it!’

Yeah?

And?

My tax dollars already go to cops and road infrastructure that is actively hostile to anything not a car, two things I would really rather not pay for.

I’d happily take every red cent that goes to both those bullshit things and put it into welfare if it was up to me. Welfare in it’s worst form is doing more good than cops and dangerous strodes on their best fucking days.

Jails and prisons don’t work and tossing more money and hope and human souls at it ain’t fucking fixing it.

People who got thrown in jail for laughably small drug charges or mental health problems don’t deserve to be raped and forced into slavery because some slimy government official thinks being poor is a moral failing or you’re concerned about the tiny percentage of harden criminals we may not be punishing properly.

We’ve already explained to you how it’s not a ‘small minority’ of innocent people being thrown into systems of intense violence @needabetternamelater, so you’re fine with a considerable chunk of the American population being forcefully removed from their families and getting gang raped over bullshit offenses?

That’s kinda fucked morally.

How about we just make the world a less shitty place for everyone simply for the sake of making it less shit for everyone?

Criminals are still people.

It’s not bad actually to treat them like people.

“Then the number of prisons should also be tiny!”

“No, it should be 0.”

“Are you sure about that?”

“Ángela Davis keeps asking me why I think it’s necessary!”

“Cool. What was your answer then, and what did it change to? Mine is still ‘some people are going to keep hurting people and the only solution is to keep those people away from others.’ I’d love to better understand the alternative.”

“You don’t understand that lots of people are in prison for minor offenses!”

We literally KNOW what the people many of us want to imprison are doing, and what the recommended sentences under the current system are. We can look them up!

But somehow when we ask abolitionists what the new process is and what we should expect to result from it they just go “stop derailing.”

My dude I have friends who would like to make art for a living and I do not want moguls drugging or even just pressuring them ever.

What evidence do we have that prisons reduce the amount of overall sexual assault in our society? (Or, given the prevalence of sexual assault within prisons, do they actually INCREASE the number of victims?)

It’s very easy to point at the absolute worst offender imaginable and go “well what about him?” It’s important to remember that it’s estimated that less than 1% of rapists ever see the inside of a prison, and in the meantime, that system is creating new victims and perpetuating wild state violence against a shit ton of people that *arent* Diddy.

So yes, when the argument is “until prison abolitionists can lay out a foolproof plan that perfectly tackles this problem that our current system is miserably failing at, we will not entertain the premise at all, regardless of all the OTHER ways it would measurably improve things” I will, in fact, call it derailing.

Especially, *especially*, when you *presuppose* that any solution other than prison would automatically fail for your worst case scenario offender. I say counseling and community service and restraining orders, I say scheduled check ins or reparation hearings, and it doesn’t matter if that WOULD work for 99% of people, because you will say “well that wouldn’t work on DIDDY” and act like there’s not merit at all to the premise on a societal level.

And I think part of that is some fundamental misimagining for what prison abolition work actually looks like. We aren’t proposing we close all the prisons tomorrow and just let people go with no structures or supports in place and hope for the best. Abolition work is the long grind to build those alternative systems, change sentencing guidelines, advocate for reforms with the long term end goal of having a prisonless society. By the time the last prison closed, the systems to replace it will be robust and comprehensive. (And yeah, it probably won’t work for everyone. But will it work for more people than the current system? Will it cause less harm than the current system? Will it lead to overall FEWER assaults and murders and violence than the current system?)

Thats where I get the idea that some people are either just not going to be rehabilitated or that some people are just going to be so incredibly difficult to convince to break a habit of harming others that people give up.

I want you to convince me. I want to believe I can do it.

I hear every day of my working life that with some people you just can’t.

Please prove me wrong. PLEASE. If you can do that, I can argue no one should ever be barred from the shelter where I work.

Here’s a point that I feel like I did make but didn’t say directly- no solution will work for 100% of people, and it’s frankly an insane standard to hold up for this kind of work. I don’t believe EVERYONE can be rehabilitated, but I also think that’s an asinine reason to support a system that does so much harm to so many people who could be.

The actual metric of success here is “would it be better than the current system” and looking at basically any country that is further in that direction than we are, even if they aren’t 100% prisonless, suggests that…yes. restorative systems, counseling and community service and reparations and social work monitoring and job training and social services and non-punitive addiction care DO lead to better outcomes than a system where any breech of law gets you chucked in a hole forever.

Why am I saying it? Because your side says there must be no prisons. If there are no prisons, then EVERYONE, REGARDLESS of what they’ve done or how rational they are about it, cannot be removed from the community.

My position is that I cannot assert that everyone is ready to be reintegrated into the community right away. I think this because I believe I have met some that are not.

Where I agree with you is that this is a very small proportion of the people in the world, and therefore not many prisons would exist in my utopia either.

Which means we agree on most things. The one place where I don’t is I can only get to “the vast majority of prisons should be closed down.” I can’t get from that to all.

Ángela Davis apparently got you to all. How’d she do that? What convinced you?

How’d you take that last step, when like any of the rest of us you know what powerful cruel people are capable of?

I get to answer question after question after question for your ever moving goal posts, but I’ve asked 1 question, several times and worded in different ways, and not gotten an answer from you at any point.

What is your evidence that the current system reduces the amount of violent crime? What evidence do you have that a prison does more good than harm?

This is actually a legitimate public health/public safety position (legalization of drugs is essentially the identical argument - that the harm caused by recreational drug use is an acceptable price to pay for reducing the harm caused by the “war on drugs” - and so were the debates over covid lockdowns) that abolitionists could honestly discuss and debate if they were being intellectually honest about things. It’s the whole premise of harm reduction, which is about deliberately enabling and encouraging some types of harm in order to prevent greater harm.

Yes, that’s what it sounds to me like the position is, and why I disagree with it.

We can ALMOSTget rid of prison (defined, again, as “a place we put people we deem literally too unsafe to allow in our communities” which means A LOT of people who current,y get prison won’t, ideally) without telling rape victims (or other crime victims which I am) to suck it up, but we can’t totally do away with it.

So that’s my position.

You have not provided any evidence at all that prisons reduce the number of rapes or any violent crimes in our society. You acknowledged, in fact, that prisons *dont* reduce crime.

In my FIRST reply to you today, I said-

Especially, *especially*, when you *presuppose* that any solution other than prison would automatically fail for your worst case scenario offender. I say counseling and community service and restraining orders, I say scheduled check ins or reparation hearings, and it doesn’t matter if that WOULD work for 99% of people, because you will say “well that wouldn’t work on DIDDY” and act like there’s not merit at all to the premise on a societal level.

But here you are, acting as though my argument is this grotesque cavalier dismissal of victims. That Im proposing that rapists have free reign to do whatever to whomever, when that is clearly and demonstrably not what I said from the very fucking begininng.

For what? Clout? Because you think it makes you look smart to agree with someone spouting such a transparently false strawman?

This more than anything is why my strong suspicion is there’s compartmentalizing going on here. Rapists are outliers and they don’t matter—until you remind someone that most people on the planet know at least one survivor, if they’re not one themselves.

That for all that was horribly, twistedly, awfully wrong with the second wave that birthed white feminism and terfs, they were RIGHT to point out that most rapists are regular guys, and don’t think of the way they hurt people as wrong.

You remind people of all this and then… all of a sudden it’s “I never said let rapists have their freedom!”

I didn’t say rapists are outliers and don’t matter. I said that prisons do not reduce the amount of rapes that happen, only punish about 1% of rapists, and do immense harm all while being ineffectual at actually helping victims. So Ineffectual, in fact, that their existence *makes more victims*

You yourself said that prisons *dont reduce crime.* we agree that all the sorts of reforms that prison abolition advocates for *does reduce crime.* acknowledging that no solution will 100% prevent rape, but that prison abolition will do a better job of preventing rape and reducing recidivism than prisons, doesn’t mean that I “think rapists don’t count”.

Think about that story that was all over the news right after Dobbs, where a ten year old girl raped by her father needed an abortion and had to go to another state.

What should happen to that dad?

I think he should be kept away not just from his daughter, but also from society at large.

You seem to think he should be kept away from people too… but only as an interim measure. Ideally he gets… let me scroll up… “house arrest, counseling, or other intervention programs.”

How long of an interim do we take him away from people vs. not doing so? How do we know when we’re ready to make the shift?

He’s a person, regardless of the evil he’s done. No one in this discussion disputes that criminals are people. The issue is whether institutionalization is the kind of thing that’s so cruel no people should ever be subjected to it.

You’re arguing that it is, so over time it will be phased out fully. I’m arguing that while as currently constituted, prison is indeed too cruel, the basic idea of separating a dangerous person from the larger community is not inherently cruel, so we’ll still have “prisons,” meaning “places we send people we deem too threatening to let roam freely.”

Therefore, my question is: If prison is fundamentally too cruel and unusual for anyone, even someone who’s willing to rape his daughter, what do we do with him? House arrest is right out if that’s where the kid lives. How do we move him?

Where’d and when did she move the goalposts, baby boo? She didn’t; you’re a liar pure and simple!

Are you gonna ever address the topic or you just gonna make up reasons for why you’re not?

Yes, we all agree that a great many people do not belong in prison and would be better served by other solutions, as would society.

But–every time the issue of hard-core, unrepentant offenders who are dangerous to society is brought up, vigorous handwaving and whataboutism commences.

There’s always the ancient, classic, and medieval solution to such people when you don’t have prisons: execute them. Somehow I don’t think that’s what prison abolitionists are arguing for.

Where to me, “prisoner” CAN mean “young black guy who likes grass” but it can also mean “dad who molests his kid” or “cult leader who convinced all the women to put out for him” or “guy who ran the Ponzi scheme,” and those are sufficiently different that an appropriate response to the first is not going to look the same as an appropriate response to the second, which in turn is not going to look the same as an appropriate response to the third.