I don’t think I understand. When someone mass murders people, what do we do with them if we don’t have prisons?
My partner studies criminology, and a guest lecturer came to speak about prison abolition. I was curious about what should happen to serial killers, so she sent him and email and this was his response:
"Thanks for getting in touch - I’m glad you’ve been talking with your friends about abolition! Believe it or not, this is probably the most common question abolitionists get and I think it’s an important one. Prison abolition isn’t about opening the prison doors overnight. It’s a long-term strategy that aims to prevent the creation of future ‘serial killers’ by creating a less violent society in the first place. However, even in more peaceful society without prisons, people will continue to hurt each other and sometimes quite seriously. For people who pose a serious and immediate threat to the lives of others, they would need to be securely detained and/or supervised. This would not need to be in a prison, however. A prison involves collecting up all those people. An abolitionist alternative would be for that small number of people to be managed in the communtiy, with pretty strong supervision so that they don’t get the opportunity to commit the kind of violence you’re talking about. They would also get consistent access to habilitation programmes that are consistently found to be more effective in reducing violence than in-prison programme.
Of course, this is a miniscule group of people and the group of people who cause far more death and destruction are on the boards of corporations that contribute to issues like pollution. An estimated 3,300 people die from pollution in NZ every year - compared to about 50 for murder. https://www.ehinz.ac.nz/indicators/air-quality/health-effects-of-air-pollution/#more-than-3300-deaths-from-human-made-air-pollution-in-2016"
I thought this could answer your question as well. I hope you find it useful
Thanks for the explanation. While I definitely agree that offenses exist that should not result in prison time, I cannot agree with the above. This assumes that people are reasonable and can at least learn to be considerate of others.
For example, in the case of white-collar crime where psychopathic CEO/Shareholders/etc consistently find ways to increase profits at the expense of everyone else, I think prison is the only place they should ever be. There’s a difference between a guy selling tinnies and a guy who offloads HIV infected blood to poorer countries and infects thousands of people.
Until we have a societal shift that eliminates the possibility of being solely profit (or selfishly) motivated, I would like to keep the prisons.
Maybe white collar criminals could be disallowed from positions of power or authority. I don’t know if they would be able to do much harm stacking shelves at Countdown. It’s fair to think they deserve prison because of the horrible things they’ve done, but I think they could still be useful to the community in certain roles.
But I’m not too familiar with all the arguments. I’m not studying criminology
Yeah this seems like a relatively simple problem to fix in the grand scheme of abolition. Also worth noting that not having prisons doesn’t mean not having a justice system. There would still be ways of identifying people that are doing bad things, and confirming that they are indeed doing those things. All that could remain as public as it is now (or more so), so folks would know who the white-collar crims are.
That last note on the larger group of people causing death & destruction is one I find really interesting. I watched a video a year or so ago from Philosophy Tube that among other things talked about what violence is, or can be. Which in a way flips the narrative on violent crime - at least the narrative you read in our major dailies or see on TV.
There’s a lot of talk about the impact of violent crime, but if you start thinking about what violence is first, you realise violent crime is just a very narrow subset of violence that our system chooses to address. The same system ignores all sorts of other violence - or in some cases even supports it.
So then when you think, ‘well why is this subset a crime, but all this other stuff isn’t?’, its not a long road to realising that a lot of stuff that isn’t crime are activities that by design or not service to reinforce power & privilege. Which then starts to make you wonder about a whole bunch of other crime & justice issues in general, eg when a welfare recipient might get hounded for desperately grabbing some cash they weren’t entitled to, but some rich person can fleece millions and get away with it.
I love Philosophy Tube! I saw that video, too. I agree; it’s an eye-opening perspective
That’s fantastic, thanks! The original article doesn’t really tackle the subject of prison abolition, just that TPM want it. That email tells me a lot about how the system would work.
It didn’t take much to convince me, but now I’m a fan of this approach (ok, to be fair I was already keen on a better system than putting all the minor criminals in a big group together to reenforce the behavior). Unfortunately we wouldn’t see societal results within a couple of election cycles so it’s hard to see how this could actually become reality without the risk of getting cut at the next government change. But this is the kind of future-thinking policy I like to see.
Seriously? Because one of the big advantages of prisons is that these people aren’t being “managed in the community”, they’re kept away from the community for our safety.
Yes, seriously.
Remember, our society created these people because of the existing structure . The idea is not to let them out tomorrow, it’s to work towards this as an end goal. As an example, Scandinavia already has murderers rehabilitating by being carefully monitored while being integrated with the community.
Also, we start out on the journey with a rough idea of how we think it will go. 100% chance it will not go exacly to plan, but we respond to change, and the end goal is feasible even if we have to adjust the path as we learn.
And lastly, what does it cost to put someone in prison? It’s well over $100k a year per person. We could hire personal security details for everyone based on risk, and the cost would come out the same. Some people would need a couple of bodyguards, some would need one, and most would only need checkins more like parole.
The issue is that if you catch someone dealing weed and put them in prison, you make all their friends convicts. They lose their job (and almost any chance of ever getting another). You make their kids grow up with one parent, and you make your partner struggle to raise their kids on their own. This changes the path their life is on, and their kids.
If you instead got everyone to stay in the community (to start with, just those convicted of nonviolent offenses), they can keep their job, be there for their partner and kids, keep most of their friends.
Over time this changes the cycle producing criminals, cuts out a gang recruitment channel, and raises kids less likely to commit crimes themselves. It’s a multigenerational change. Each step would not be a big jump, but I think an end goal of having no prisons is feasible. If it’s truly not, we would work that out over the next few decades as we worked towards it. The worst thing that can come out of trying is a lower crime rate with a small number of very dangerous people still needing to be locked up.
Plus we have private companies running prisons, who very much don’t want to see the cycle broken.
And I just want to reiterate that we don’t just stop locking people up overnight. It’s likely decades of small steps.
That is an absolutely massive jump from “let’s not lock up stoners” to “let’s not put murderers in prison” though.
Which definitely won’t backfire at all.
The idea is to have it as an end goal. When all the non-violent prisoners are integrated in society and breaking the cycle, it may not seem like such a big jump. Plus, we will simply have a lot less violent criminals if people aren’t locked up with others who think it’s appropriate behaviour. Having a person that murdered someone living in a house with a 24/7 security detail isn’t really that farfetched - and in 20 years is probably even more feasible, with newer technology.
That’s very interesting, and it makes sense.
My flippant response is to ask why such a commonly asked question isn’t part of the lecture. Though maybe it was touched in briefly and easily forgotten.
Well to be fair they said its the most commonly asked question they get, which I think they meant in general. Probably people see a headline in stuff then post ‘but whaddabout the muderers?’.
Most people in this country are too stupid, too racist, too cruel and too venegeful to even listen to somebody say something like this let alone accept it as policy.
They simply want prisoners to be hurt as much as humanly possible. If you told them you were going to torture them by peeling their skin off they would vote for you.
These people are genuinely completely out of touch with reality, aren’t they?
I don’t think the idea of people who have committed absolute atrocities being “managed in the community” will be a popular one with the voting public.
The only reason those people even go to prison is because we can’t be 101% certain they’re guilty. If we could we’d just execute them. Then this might work.
A perfect society where we could manage low level criminality through empathy, rehabilitation in the community, and take mass murderers and slowly dissolve them in acid. A beautiful dream.
It just shows a lack of political understanding, in my view. If they talked about making societal changes and making more effort to rehabilitate prisoners, in order to lower our prison population, they would have a lot of support.
But this is just madness.
Surely you don’t object to mass executions of criminals though.
That was my thought. There’s plenty of people who don’t deserve prison, but then there’s pedos and the guy who shot up the mosque.
Oh I have a follow up question that you may or may not know the answer to. On rereading, I noticed they used the term “habilitation”, not “rehabilitation”. Is there significance in this distinction?
I think the idea behind habilitation is that people who’ve spent most of their lives in the prison system were never properly integrated into society in the first place- rehabilitation implies return to a prior level of fitness that wouldn’t apply here.
Ah thanks! This is the kind of think I thought might have been implied by using that term.
I’m not sure, sorry
Thanks for the answer it’s naïveté is astounding.
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TPM isn’t trying to get votes from the general population. They are trying to get votes from Māori.
Over 50% of the prison population are Māori. There’s a high chance that Māori voters know someone that has been to prison, and there’s a good chance that many believe they never should have been there.
I think TPM have been around long enough to do some opinion polling and testing of waters before announcing a policy like this. There’s a good chance it’s a popular policy with the voters they are targeting.
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Personally I’d like to see three or four parties on either side of the spectrum get enough votes to hold seats. so that parties have options to form a government. The idea that if you don’t want Labour then you have to vote National/Act is damaging I think, and is pushing many people to vote against their own beliefs.
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Oh, it most definitely is.
Labour needs to nut up and rule out working with them, in my view, or else they will drag the whole left down with them. I don’t think it will happen with Chippy in charge though.
Sorrry Ma’am, we know your ex husband is trying to kill you but it would be inhumane to lock him in prison. We can offer you a place in our maximum security safehouse though, it has armed guards, windows barred and lockdown every night.
Have a read of this: https://lemmy.nz/comment/2326509
It’s not about ruling out detaining people. It’s that prison is a terrible answer to the problem. Some person thinks that crime is acceptable. Let’s put them in a building full other other people who think that crime is acceptable, so the only people the associate with are criminals. It’s a system that makes more criminals, and it will be seen as obviously a bad idea in 100 years.
Yeah, prisons are a waste of money. Better to compost criminals instead, thus they will be able to provide some benefit to the society.
No, you don’t get it. We’re going to rehabilitate them with the power of understanding, and something about decolonisation. And then keep a really close eye on them.
I mean, there’s a argument to be made for better rehabilitation and training for prisoners, but this is ridiculous.
Your first sentence mocks and derides anybody who advocated for rehabilitation and training of prisoners. What a sleazy way to doublespeak.
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Too soon.
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Ah, fair enough then.
Sounds good, I would want this to be available to everyone.
Question, genuine. Looking for discussion.
What does it cost society to imprison a person? Including opportunity costs and recidivism costs.
What would it cost to have them monitored 24/7?
What I’m thinking is if a convicted violent offender had a police minder(s) effectively 24/7 what are the costs to society compared to maintaining prisons, prisoners of which tend to reoffend?
What kind of minding would be necessary? At least three officers within 100m at all times? Clever/smart braclets/tags? We already have community, home, and periodic detention. Is this so different?
IMHO these is still a need for physical incarceration of irredeemably violent crimes. That terrorist, rapists, murderers, etc.
A good question. The recidivism costs I guess are what most, me included, will view as a valid reason to continue imprisonment for serious offences.
Me too.
Society has a limit to how much of “crime X” they’ll tolerate.
Some should be exactly one: murder, rape, toture, etc. I’d argue that provable attempts at those count as one, so the threshold is actually less than one.
I feel like pretty much everything else can be “civil” consequences:
- financial crimes: forbidden from holding a position with fiduciary responsibility, repayment, punitive damages.
- theft: restitution, punitive damages, restraining orders
What I’m really unsure about is, arguably, progenitors to violence:
- drink driving? Lose license, curfew? What happens when they do it again and hurt someone?
- harassment? Restraining orders? What happens when it escalates?
Just to throw a few into discussion.
It’s a tough call in deciding the seriousness of an offence when deciding the consequences, especially when it is a repeat. The costs of incarceration are huge, yet it seems to be needed to hopefully discourage the more serious crimes.
This is actually the key reason I will likely be voting ACT this time around, this party cannot be allowed to be part of our government with these goals.
This is a by Māori, for Māori, according to Māori solution and we will not compromise."
They will not be allowed to divide this country.
I cannot support Act policies, no matter how much I dislike the other parties. Here are some scary Act policies:
- They want to abolish the Human Rights Commission
- Allow unregulated overseas investment from OECD countries
- Sell all or part of many state owned enterprises (e.g. sell 49% of KiwiRail).
- Sell public hospital buildings to private investors
- Water pollution would be managed by letting companies bid for the right to pollute up to the allowed pollution levels
- They want to repeal the zero carbon (by 2050) act
- They will abolish the building act, replacing it with mandatory insurance. The idea is if it’s not built to a good standard then insurers won’t insure.
And here are some others (some seem to overlap with National):
- They want to abolish fair pay agreements
- They want to abolish rules that protect valuable natural areas
- They want to decrease tax for higher earners, and increase tax for lower earners
- They would re-allow live exports of animals
- They oppose any laws banning hate speech
- They would abolish ministries for Pacific people, Ethnic communities, Women, Māori development, etc.
- Reduce the rate superannuation increases each year, and stop putting money in the super fund
- Remove the Matariki public holiday
- Reintroduce the 90 day fire at will period
- Remove or reduce government kiwisaver contributions for most workers
- They want to increase the prison population (see my other comment about private prisons)
- They want to introduce privately owned toll roads
- They want to pay emissions trading scheme revenue back to everyone as a tax credit, instead of spending it on reducing emissions
- They want to stop contractors from challenging their status, to allow employers to bully employees into being paid as a contractor to avoid paying leave entitlements and other protections
- Make a literacy test a requirement to get parole (again, private prisons want people to stay longer)
- Hold a referendum to introduce a rule that allows anyone to take the government to court if they think new laws don’t fit a set of standards
- Abolish the climate emergency response fund
- I’m gonna quote this one: “This party says that the current government requires councils to review speed limits and reduce them in high-risk areas like school zones. This party believes that this is slowing people down and making society less productive.”
- Create a new state owned enterprise to manage roads, being required to return a profit via charging people for the use of roads (no current plans stated to sell off 49% but I think it’s implied)
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Act is the party that represents the idea that regulation messes with a system, and the best system has almost no regulation. Any tampering causes unintended consequences so we shouldn’t tamper. Which is silly, and I believe the only reason they support the idea is because they benefit from it.
I have issues with this specific policy of TPM but I wouldn’t touch ACT with a 10 foot pole if my life was on the line.
Yep this is pretty much my position. There are definitely issues with the details of this proposal. In general, I like the idea of steps towards abolition of prisons (learning from each step and adjusting expectations as we go). But I can’t imagine a world where I’d vote for Act. Their views are fundamentally against my lived values.
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