What are alternatives to Prisons and Penal System?

Question

As a prison abolitionist i am opposed to any form of penal system, and i do have ideas on how to go about in the society without any prisons. However, i am very interested in what other people think. (Serious answers only please)

Answer 1

stealing =loss of hand  murder =death by the same means pedophilia=loss of genitalia   vandalism=caning              get the drift?

Answer 2

Execution.

Answer 3

I know I am not answering your question, and I apologize; however, attempting to answer at this point would be largely redundant.  You have already gotten the best answer.

Pardon the chat: Mustard, I am intrigued.  Contact me?

Answer 4

Chaos.

Answer 5

Good question, Volodya. As you probably already know, prison increases your likelihood of "re-offence". If we are really concerned about social problems, the worst way to deal with violent behaviour is the prison system. If our agenda is just revenge, then prison might be a good solution. (Interestingly enough, in those countries that have reduced or abolished prison for most crimes, the crime rate is very low).

To address any kind of crime we need to look at the root causes or contributing factors, which will be different for different kinds of crimes. For example, some kinds are committed in order to self-help, out of poverty (like theft), and some crimes are committed as a moral or political act (like forest defenders, or in some cases theft). I don't think we should find it surprising that people will try to support themselves and their communities now that almost all of the "commons" are owned by somebody and protected through the law, concentrating wealth in the hands of the few. So in some cases we just have to be willing to accept that other people have different political perspectives and learn how to live with people who are acting in accordance with their conscience.

So I don't think there is great difficulty in immediately abolishing prison for most crimes.

I think the crime rate can also be very quickly reduced if we lived in the kind of society which properly dealt with social disadvantage (or didn't create it in the first place!)

In other cases (and this is probably what your question is geared at), violent and other crimes are committed for mental/psychological reasons, out of pure callousness, or in a desire for revenge.

1) Mental/psychological: Quite obviously imprisoning people who have committed illegal acts as a result of their psychological health will do nothing good for them or for the community. These people need support (as well as their victims), and mental illness needs to be demystified. People can recover from mental illness if they want to, but stereotyping or imprisonment will not help this process. (This includes dependence on alcohol and other mind-altering substances, but this requires the good will of the person involved).

2) Callousness: A tiny minority of crimes are committed out of hatred or complete disregard for other people. This has no quick fix. We need to create a more compassionate and a more social society. We are very quickly to identify the person who has committed the act as "responsible", without taking responsibility for our own creation of a disconnected and hateful world (just look at some of the other posts on this page, for example). But if we are also responsible for these acts of callousness by the society we have created, should we put ourselves in jail too? Much better that we work to create better and safer communities, through community activities, workshops, calling in on people and noticing isolation. If this fails we need to put more effort into it.

3) Revenge: Some people commit crimes out of revenge for something that somebody else has done. You just need to look at the prison system to see how accepted this is.

Will these responses eliminate undesirable or violent behaviour? Of course not. The prison system is even worse at controlling undesirable or violent behaviour, and in many ways creates it. We cannot condemn the use of violence on one hand and condone it on the other. We need to learn to live in a society where we will be unable to control what happens (even the most horrible things), because usually when we try to stop bad things from happening, they get worse. One of the best ways to minimise crime is by abolishing the prison system.

You might be unsatisfied with this solution, and say that there are still some very rare cases where it is necessary to isolate somebody from the rest of the community, at least for a period of time. So be it. But if we want to have a positive effect, any facility that detains somebody for a short period of time should be the most beautiful place in the world, with the best health/psychiatric/social/physical care, and with trust that that person can get themselves to a point where they can leave. For me this still creates a moral dilemma - who is going to directly regulate this facility? I certainly couldn't see myself doing it, but then I also couldn't ask somebody else to do something that I couldn't do myself (even the government). The solution that we've come up with is that governments, under pressure from voters, create rules for prisons that they will never have to implement themselves, instead ordering or paying somebody else to do the work. This quite obviously creates a moral hazard. Anybody who thinks that "social deviants" should be imprisoned should build the thing themselves, hunt or trap the person involved, put in them in the prison, lock the door and manage the facility. I don't think many people would put their hand up to do that, even those who scream most loudly for prison to become harsher or more widely used.

I have a question to ask back to you - how do you deal with horrible behaviour happening in your own life? De-abstractifying things helps.

Answer 6

Put them on off shore drilling sites, where they will have to work to get a sandwich dispensed.

Answer 7

I'd like to hear your ideas on what you would do with a child predator or hardend gang member who has been arrested for a drive by that kills a 4 yr old. Short of putting them to sleep permanently, what have you got in mind?

Answer 8

Some middle Eastern countries didn't fool around with prison.  You get caught stealing, off with your right hand (your left hand is for toilet duty).  You get caught stealing again, they flip a coin - head or left hand.  It's actually better to off their head.  If you're running around in those countries with no hands...  no one will touch you or help you because they know you messed up twice.  So your death is long and slow.  Yeah, that's better than prisons, EH?