The fact that the author presumably believes more (it’s not that clear what they do believe, which is a weakness) doesn’t make what they do directly advocate “not a position”.
In that case what does he mean by “Having prisons is undesirable”?
It’s possible that they would agree that the immediate outcome of abolishing prisons would be bad (in the same way that the immediate outcome of abolishing slavery hurt some people) and they might even agree that they shouldn’t be abolished all at once. It’s not clear that they wouldn’t agree, anyway.
The actual statement just means that a utopia wouldn’t have prisons.
It’s not clear they would disagree with that. But if we think prisons are suboptimal, we’re more likely to support measures that reduce them. I think this is what is meant by
Abolition makes sense, though, only if we see prisons as a site of injustice in and of themselves.
and
In abolishing prison, we force ourselves to answer the difficult question: How do we provide safety and security for all people?
and
An abolitionist framework makes us consider not only reducing mandatory minimums but eliminating them altogether. An abolitionist framework would call for us to decriminalize possession and sale of drugs. Abolition would end the death penalty and life sentences, and push the maximum number of years that can be served for any offense down to ten years, at most.
With these reforms in place, we as a society would have a huge incentive to rehabilitate those in prison, and we would ensure the incarcerated are capable of socialization when they are released. And without being able to depend on prison as a site of retribution, we would have to find new ways to address things like gender-based violence, sexual assault, and domestic violence. And we could then start making the kinds of investments in alleviating poverty that Gottschalk calls for.
But we can’t do that so long as prison exists as a fail-safe.
In other words, abolishing or severely reducing prisons would force us to come up with other ways to ensure safety, and the author can’t imagine one worse than prisons.
But if we think prisons are suboptimal, we’re more likely to support measures that reduce them.
Suboptimal relative to what. I would prefer replacing them with mote corporal and capital punishment, but somehow I doubt that’s what you want. Judging by what you latter wrote, you seem to prefer “replacements” that not only won’t help with the problem prisons are designed to solve but create their own problems.
In abolishing prison, we force ourselves to answer the difficult question: How do we provide safety and security for all people?
Yes, it’s amazing how any question can be made “difficult” by refusing the answer for no good reason.
In other words, abolishing or severely reducing prisons would force us to come up with other ways to ensure safety, and the author can’t imagine one worse than prisons.
See my comment above on corporal punishment. If you abolish not just prisons but all punishment for crimes, then people start taking the law into their own hands. If the law won’t punish someone for committing crimes against me, it won’t punish me for retaliating.
If the title of the article is at all indicative of its contents, the author is an even bigger moron then I thought. Hint: the communists tried instituting full economic equality, didn’t turn out so well.
Edit: reading the article it is about as stupid as I expected. For example, the author says:
However, more frightening than [the shooting itself] is the fact that nearly every night since the shooting there has either been a police car, parked across the street with its lights flashing, or two cops posted outside my building, right at the steps, standing guard.
He never gives a rational reason why this is more frightening, the closest he comes is listing some well publicized incidents of cops shooting blacks (many of which were justified by the actions of the black in question). However, notice that the original shooting occurred in his apartment complex, whereas the police shooting were reported by the media from all over the country. This suggests that the former are much more common and the author is false alieving otherwise due to a media distortion filter.
I was going to go over the rest of the article this way, but now that I think about it, a good exercise for you to improve your rationality would be to go over the rest of this article looking for the remaining fallacies, biases, and idiocies. (It’s not a particularly hard exercise.)
An abolitionist framework makes us consider not only reducing mandatory minimums but eliminating them altogether. An abolitionist framework would call for us to decriminalize possession and sale of drugs.
It’s interesting that he calls for decriminalization and not for legalisation. Very odd for someone who calls for not focusing on what’s politically possible.
In other words, abolishing or severely reducing prisons would force us to come up with other ways to ensure safety, and the author can’t imagine one worse than prisons.
The Sharia calls for cutting off hands of thieves instead of putting them in prison. Is the author clueless, doesn’t know that and lack imagination or is he in favor of cutting of hands because it’s less bad than putting people in prison?
The way to signal LW ingroupness would be to say “signaling progressiveness”, but that does cover it fairly well.
I suspect the logic is roughly that our current prison system (imprisoning people for 12 years for a 1st time drug offense) is bad in the direction of imprisoning far too many people, so opposing our current prison system is good, so opposing the current prison system more is even better, and the most you can oppose the prison system is to support abolishing all prisons.
(actually there might be something of an argument to be made that in order to fight a policy way too far to one side of good policy, it can be useful in some cases to overcompensate and bring a policy too far to the other side into the discussion, although I think in a politically polarized environment like the US that’s bad overall- the overwhelming majority people who hear such an argument will be people who were already convinced of a decent policy and will be sent too far to one side by it, while the people who actually would have their beliefs brought closer to a good policy by hearing the counter-narrative either won’t hear it, or will use it to strawman the opposition.)
In that case what does he mean by “Having prisons is undesirable”?
It’s possible that they would agree that the immediate outcome of abolishing prisons would be bad (in the same way that the immediate outcome of abolishing slavery hurt some people) and they might even agree that they shouldn’t be abolished all at once. It’s not clear that they wouldn’t agree, anyway.
The actual statement just means that a utopia wouldn’t have prisons.
Motte and Bailey? So there no problem with having prisons in today’s day and age because our society is very far from utopia anyway?
It’s not clear they would disagree with that. But if we think prisons are suboptimal, we’re more likely to support measures that reduce them. I think this is what is meant by
and
and
In other words, abolishing or severely reducing prisons would force us to come up with other ways to ensure safety, and the author can’t imagine one worse than prisons.
For what it’s worth, the same author wrote https://www.thenation.com/article/abolish-police-instead-lets-have-full-social-economic-and-political-equality/.,
Do you think the author is suffering from a severe lack of imagination or he is lying through his teeth?
Suboptimal relative to what. I would prefer replacing them with mote corporal and capital punishment, but somehow I doubt that’s what you want. Judging by what you latter wrote, you seem to prefer “replacements” that not only won’t help with the problem prisons are designed to solve but create their own problems.
Yes, it’s amazing how any question can be made “difficult” by refusing the answer for no good reason.
See my comment above on corporal punishment. If you abolish not just prisons but all punishment for crimes, then people start taking the law into their own hands. If the law won’t punish someone for committing crimes against me, it won’t punish me for retaliating.
If the title of the article is at all indicative of its contents, the author is an even bigger moron then I thought. Hint: the communists tried instituting full economic equality, didn’t turn out so well.
Edit: reading the article it is about as stupid as I expected. For example, the author says:
He never gives a rational reason why this is more frightening, the closest he comes is listing some well publicized incidents of cops shooting blacks (many of which were justified by the actions of the black in question). However, notice that the original shooting occurred in his apartment complex, whereas the police shooting were reported by the media from all over the country. This suggests that the former are much more common and the author is false alieving otherwise due to a media distortion filter.
I was going to go over the rest of the article this way, but now that I think about it, a good exercise for you to improve your rationality would be to go over the rest of this article looking for the remaining fallacies, biases, and idiocies. (It’s not a particularly hard exercise.)
It’s interesting that he calls for decriminalization and not for legalisation. Very odd for someone who calls for not focusing on what’s politically possible.
The Sharia calls for cutting off hands of thieves instead of putting them in prison. Is the author clueless, doesn’t know that and lack imagination or is he in favor of cutting of hands because it’s less bad than putting people in prison?
Welling judging from the other article by the same author ike linked to, he is either a total idiot or at least “plays one on TV”.
He means that he is progressive and compassionate and forward-thinking and stands up to the man and stuff.
The way to signal LW ingroupness would be to say “signaling progressiveness”, but that does cover it fairly well. I suspect the logic is roughly that our current prison system (imprisoning people for 12 years for a 1st time drug offense) is bad in the direction of imprisoning far too many people, so opposing our current prison system is good, so opposing the current prison system more is even better, and the most you can oppose the prison system is to support abolishing all prisons.
(actually there might be something of an argument to be made that in order to fight a policy way too far to one side of good policy, it can be useful in some cases to overcompensate and bring a policy too far to the other side into the discussion, although I think in a politically polarized environment like the US that’s bad overall- the overwhelming majority people who hear such an argument will be people who were already convinced of a decent policy and will be sent too far to one side by it, while the people who actually would have their beliefs brought closer to a good policy by hearing the counter-narrative either won’t hear it, or will use it to strawman the opposition.)
From comments at Marginal Revolution: “People will only tolerate so much bad policy before they start demanding bad counter-policy”.