Raise the Crime Rate (2012)

That said, this article makes a large number of controversial claims that it fails to support on anything other than a rhetorical level, including:

* The moral crisis in prisons is so severe that effectively any social burden should be borne for it to be fixed.

* In time, the increased public money from eliminating prisons will turn violent felons into peaceful individuals.

* The differences between the US and UK's social situations is a function of our prisons.

Ultimately, this article's vigor outweighs its coherence; it seems to oscillate between making ontological claims and moral claims, between libertarian claims and authoritarian claims (note the advocacy for more CCTV).

That said, does anyone know what proposed solutions are? When the author talks of abolishing the prison system in exchange for higher crime rates (and potentially even more deaths by the state), does he literally mean we should close all prisons (like he seems to say near the end)? I'd love to see more articles / writing about this, and proposed solutions with specifics about how many people could be removed from the prison system, estimates for increases in capital punishment (if arguing we should have more), etc.

"[T]he first question any prison abolitionist needs to answer is what we’re supposed to do with violent criminals. An important part of that answer has to be that we must simply put up with an increased level of risk in our daily lives."

Good luck selling that idea. It drifts off-topic in any case, since up until then the article is mainly about prison reform and (for the most part) non-violent offenders themselves becoming victims of violent inmates. But wholesale release of violent offenders back into the community? It won't happen, and no politician who hopes to get elected will touch that message with a 10-foot pole.

Reading on:

"Prison abolitionists should be ready to advocate a massive expansion of the death penalty if that’s what it takes to move the discussion forward"

So now you're determined to alienate people on both the left and the right, on the dubious notion that violent offenders should be released, but the most violent should be executed?

This also links to other resources on the subject, and discusses some of the startling stats in the OP (like that in the US more men are raped than women, because of prison rape).

We can't, and we won't, abolish the prison system in the foreseeable future. What we can and what we should do is enact some drastic reforms of our criminal justice system. The old guard needs to be removed from it's duties almost to the man. The CJ system in the US has become an expensive, shameful joke and without a doubt, causes far more harm than good to our society.

But these articles always have a missing piece: why are there so many crimes committed? In the above-mentioned article, it was noted that many of the woman's neighbors would never call the police, as to do so would result in a check on possible warrants for their arrest. But with no further explanation, you've just lost the hordes of right-leaning American suburban whites. They'll think, "There are no warrants out for my arrest, because I don't go around committing crimes. Why can't these people do the same?"

Similarly, this article discusses the case of "petty thief" Roderick Johnson, who was used as a sex slave in prison, and raped daily for a year and a half. And then:

> After Johnson got out, he lodged a civil suit against six guards who he said refused to help him. In 2005, a Wichita Falls jury found in favor of the guards. In 2007, after passing a note to a clerk at a gas station that read, “I have 9 mm. Put the money in the bag,” Johnson was arrested again. This time, since Johnson was a repeat offender, he got nineteen years.

And my proverbial suburban white thinks, "If you don't want to be a sex slave, then stop pulling armed robberies of gas stations, ya moron!" And a long overdue discussion has been nipped in the bud.

This issue desperately needs to be addressed. The left isn't going to fix this problem on its own. We need broad societal support. But as it is, half the population of the U.S. has an easy argument allowing them to dismiss proposals from articles like this one.

So prisons do disproportionately imprison the lower classes and far far too many people are put in disgusting prisons to be tortured and treated like subhumans in the US but that doesn't necessarily mean it has caused the big drop in crime.

If people don't believe the government will punish people for crimes, they will do it themselves. Would that result in less hyper-hell?

The prevailing system of government in the world at present is a mix of socialism, capitalism, welfarism and the philosophically unchampioned realpolitik practices that were picked up and spread over the years.

In any case, Europe has a philosophical heritage of socialism. It's different flavors at different times in different places. There is also conservatism, capitalist liberalism. All sorts. But socialism is not a bad word in Europe. It's not like flying a swastika. It's part of the political heritage of many parties & people of the political centre.

In any case, I think that socialism including Marx's own writings read in its 1840s political context contain valuable perspectives. That is, you can think of the world as a self organizing playground for heroic, creative individuals as Ayn Rand does. I dig that perspective. You can view the economy as a mechanical ecosystem as many "modern" economists do (including Milton Friedmanesque monetarism, Keynes, and to a lesser extent Austrian School). That's valuable perspective too too, though far less poetic and invigorating.

Back to socialism, it's an important part of our heritage. The history of political, moral and philosophical thought. At the heart of it is class. Class struggle. Class Consciousness. Just thinking about societal dynamics in terms of classes.

The majority of incarcerated Americans are members of certain classes where incarceration is common. Americans, with their allergic reactions to socialist language avoid this construct or paradigm. Instead they think of it as culture, or "socio-economics" a watered down Marxist paradigm without much of the richness.

Prisons, prison complexes and such have always been a class issue. Avoiding this perspective is avoiding the clearest historical perspective of the problem. The whole modern idea of prisons is not that old. People were not incarcerated for decades in the 1600s. Modern prisons, correctional institutions came into being with the industrial age to deal with the class instability of that period. The lowest classes (beneath the working class majority) were prone to crime, drunkenness and generally antisocial lifestyle.

Public sadism solutions (public executions and torture) gave way to forced labour Forced labour gave way to public prisons. These were enabled by Bigger Government (to use an americanism) and a vernal super-sizing of public institution. Along the way, exile (eg Australian & American prison colonies) was tried and some other solutions. But it was always and still is a way of dealing with the underclass problem. Those poor bastards who get the worst of any societal system from Feudalism to Capitalism to Nordic Social Democracy.

Whenever I see American underclass issues bubble to an overflowing boil, from my removed location I see class. I see people growing up in a sector of society with certain norms and expectations. Their part of the economy and the society is mostly defined by class. The encouragement of outliers breaking out of this fate is admirable, but it does not change the realities of class. As people, we continue societies that we are born into for the most part. We also break out and rebel and redefine paradigms. But, classes are sticky. People follow the paths laid out for them from birth.

TLDR: Americans, get over your socialism allergy. Read Marx & Trotsky. Read it in context. Pay attention to the parts about classes in society and their role in history. Discard the bad parts, but read it first before you determine which parts are good and which are bad.