NY Times: Is Prison Necessary? Ruthie Gilmore Might Change Your Mind

[mastermind]

She was preparing her talk when someone told her that the kids wanted to speak with her. She went into the room where they were gathered. The children were primarily Latino, many of them the sons and daughters of farmworkers or other people in the agriculture industry. They ranged in age, but most were middle schoolers: old enough to have strong opinions and to distrust adults. They were frowning at her with their shoulders up and their arms crossed. She didn’t know these kids, but she understood that they were against her.

“What’s going on?” she asked.

“We hear you’re a prison abolitionist,” one said. “You want to close prisons?”

Gilmore said that was right; she did want to close prisons.

But why, they asked. And before she could answer, one said, “But what about the people who do something seriously wrong?” Others chimed in. “What about people who hurt other people?” “What about if someone kills someone?”

Whether from tiny farm towns or from public housing around Fresno and Bakersfield, these children, it was obvious to Gilmore, understood innately the harshness of the world and were not going to be easily persuaded.

“I get where you’re coming from,” she said. “But how about this: Instead of asking whether anyone should be locked up or go free, why don’t we think about why we solve problems by repeating the kind of behavior that brought us the problem in the first place?” She was asking them to consider why, as a society, we would choose to model cruelty and vengeance.

As she spoke, she felt the kids icing her out, as if she were a new teacher who had come to proffer some bogus argument and tell them it was for their own good. But Gilmore pressed on, determined. She told them that in Spain, where it’s really quite rare for one person to kill another, the average time you might serve for murdering someone is seven years.

“What? Seven years!” The kids were in such disbelief about a seven-year sentence for murder that they relaxed a little bit. They could be outraged about that, instead of about Gilmore’s ideas.

Gilmore told them that in the unusual event that someone in Spain thinks he is going to solve a problem by killing another person, the response is that the person loses seven years of his life to think about what he has done, and to figure out how to live when released. “What this policy tells me,” she said, “is that where life is precious, life isprecious.” Which is to say, she went on, in Spain people have decided that life has enough value that they are not going to behave in a punitive and violent and life-annihilating way toward people who hurt people. “And what this demonstrates is that for people trying to solve their everyday problems, behaving in a violent and life-annihilating way is not a solution.”

The children showed Gilmore no emotion except guarded doubt, expressed in side eye. She kept talking. She believed her own arguments and had given them many years of thought as an activist and a scholar, but the kids were a tough sell. They told Gilmore that they would think about what she said and dismissed her. As she left the room, she felt totally defeated.

At the end of the day, the kids made a presentation to the broader conference, announcing, to Gilmore’s surprise, that in their workshop they had come to the conclusion that there were three environmental hazards that affected their lives most pressingly as children growing up in the Central Valley. Those hazards were pesticides, the police and prisons.

“Sitting there listening to the kids stopped my heart,” Gilmore told me. “Why? Abolition is deliberately everything-ist; it’s about the entirety of human-environmental relations. So, when I gave the kids an example from a different place, I worried they might conclude that some people elsewhere were just better or kinder than people in the South San Joaquin Valley — in other words, they’d decide what happened elsewhere was irrelevant to their lives. But judging from their presentation, the kids lifted up the larger point of what I’d tried to share: Where life is precious, life is precious. They asked themselves, ‘Why do we feel every day that life here is not precious?’ In trying to answer, they identified what makes them vulnerable.”

More in the link

 

[jj23]

More in the link

Wow. Very very interesting. But is it a chicken and egg situation where with society the way it is currently you simply cant change? How do you educate society where you get to the point where people value life again. And how do you deal with the outliers like psychopaths?

 

[mastermind]

Wow. Very very interesting. But is it a chicken and egg situation where with society the way it is currently you simply cant change? How do you educate society where you get to the point where people value life again. And how do you deal with the outliers like psychopaths?

Read more of the article. The headline is misleading.

 

[jj23]

Read more of the article. The headline is misleading.

I did, my questions remain. I understand that investing into areas in society can make the changes necessary and that prison is a blunt object that in the long term doesn't fix the problem.

But a lot of this is political, politicians know that fear garners votes tough on crime will always appeal to a set of voters. I guess I understand the utopia but it is difficult for me to see it becoming practical in society as it stands. Too many people willing to cut off their nose to spite their face.

 

[Pressure]

Yea. No.

 

[Secure Da Bag]

Wow. Very very interesting. But is it a chicken and egg situation where with society the way it is currently you simply cant change? How do you educate society where you get to the point where people value life again. And how do you deal with the outliers like psychopaths?

Society has to trade stigmatization for counseling and therapy, first, before getting to the point of 7 years for a murder.

 

[mastermind]

I did, my questions remain. I understand that investing into areas in society can make the changes necessary and that prison is a blunt object that in the long term doesn't fix the problem.

But a lot of this is political, politicians know that fear garners votes tough on crime will always appeal to a set of voters. I guess I understand the utopia but it is difficult for me to see it becoming practical in society as it stands. Too many people willing to cut off their nose to spite their face.

She talked about not necessarily ending punishment, but I’m with you in that it’s a tough sell.

Saying that, I see it as a goal and not necessarily practical. We should start asking how can we create a society that doesn’t need prison? Let’s start working towards that instead of doubling down on prison, or even solely focusing on nonviolent offenders, which Gilmore critiqued.

 

[Dr. Acula]

There are some people beyond rehabilitation but I wouldn't say they make up the majority. But despite that, these are individuals who should not be let back into society under any circumstances. Individuals who even if you asked them that if you let them back into society despite best efforts, if they were given the chance to commit their crime again, they state they would because even they realize the danger they present to society. This includes pedophiles, serial rapists, and serial murders. Peoples who have a biological imperative or malfunction that makes it where they have to commit a crime to satisfy a biological urge, usually sexual.

Until think pieces such as this can address that without hand-waving and glossing over it, prison is necessary.

Tell me how you'd rehabilitate people like in this link and fix the root cause of their issues at the ages they committed their crimes

https://www.thecoli.com/threads/the...he-most-evil-murderers-ive-read-about.552622/

 

[Professor Emeritus]

The number of people who have already replied with their opinion without even reading the article in the link.

The article is about how you orient yourself to the question of prisons as a solution, not about any actual plan or proposal to close every last prison and have everyone just roaming on the streets. The use the word abolitionist to avoid the compromises that others always end up getting mired in - they want to see fewer people in prison, full stop, not just a reshuffling of the deck like most of the measures taken so far.

Wow. Very very interesting. But is it a chicken and egg situation where with society the way it is currently you simply cant change? How do you educate society where you get to the point where people value life again. And how do you deal with the outliers like psychopaths?

There actually are therapies being developed to work with psychopaths which are showing some positive fruit. I'm not saying that everyone can be let back into society, but a lot fewer people are irredeemable than we might think.

When Your Child Is a Psychopath

There are some people beyond rehabilitation but I wouldn't say they make up the majority. But despite that, these are individuals who should not be let back into society under any circumstances. Individuals who even if you asked them that if you let them back into society despite best efforts, if they were given the chance to commit their crime again, they state they would because even they realize the danger they present to society. This includes pedophiles, serial rapists, and serial murders. Peoples who have a biological imperative or malfunction that makes it where they have to commit a crime to satisfy a biological urge, usually sexual.

Until think pieces such as this can address that without hand-waving and glossing over it, prison is necessary.

How common do you actually think this is? Like, how many people in the entire US population do you think are unable to even exist in society without committing horrendous crimes?

And if it's biological, why is it so rare in some countries? Why do countries as different as Iceland, Japan, and Qatar have just 1 murder for every 300-400,000 people?

 

[Yapdatfool]

When half of the freed prisoners go right back to prison, its worth a look IMO .

Gotta put them somewhere sure, but why call it a 'prison' why have bars and cages like zoo aminals?
Prison reform is very much needed, but where does one start, because there's a LOT of factors that impact it and those same factors people can and do benefit from it too

 

[jj23]

When half of the freed prisoners go right back to prison, its worth a look IMO .

Gotta put them somewhere sure, but why call it a 'prison' why have bars and cages like zoo aminals?
Prison reform is very much needed, but where does one start, because there's a LOT of factors that impact it and those same factors people can and do benefit from it too

The idea is to retard growth of the business of prisons and policing. Then you chip away at shaping society to a point where you can make informed and honest decisions.

America is quite a unique case study in my opinion but it would be great if progress was made.

 

[Dr. Acula]

The number of people who have already replied with their opinion without even reading the article in the link.

The article is about how you orient yourself to the question of prisons as a solution, not about any actual plan or proposal to close every last prison and have everyone just roaming on the streets. The use the word abolitionist to avoid the compromises that others always end up getting mired in - they want to see fewer people in prison, full stop, not just a reshuffling of the deck like most of the measures taken so far.




There actually are therapies being developed to work with psychopaths which are showing some positive fruit. I'm not saying that everyone can be let back into society, but a lot fewer people are irredeemable than we might think.

When Your Child Is a Psychopath




How common do you actually think this is? Like, how many people in the entire US population do you think are unable to even exist in society without committing horrendous crimes?

And if it's biological, why is it so rare in some countries? Why do countries as different as Iceland, Japan, and Qatar have just 1 murder for every 300-400,000 people?

I read ops excerpt but not the full article and despite perhaps I probably still missed the intent of the author.

When I said biological I'm not saying these are individuals who are innately bad but that somewhere in their development usually due to dysfunction during childhood have tied biological impulses to criminality whether it's an attraction to children or only finding sexual arousal in abusing others. I did state it was not the majority of criminals and fairly rare but these are explicit cases where prison is the only solution. Obviously, if you can minimize the upfront criminality of someone by addressing the dysfunction in childhood that's preferable, but this isn't some new paradigm shifting thinking. I think you can minimize the amount of people who fall through the cracks but there will always be those who do and after a certain age depending on how bad the situation is, they may be beyond saving. Again these are extreme cases. But there is a spectrum here. There are some dudes who no matter what can't stop doing dirt that may not be as dangerous as a sexual sadist but a life of crime is all they know.

As far Japan and Qatar, I can't speak to Qatar but one thing about Japan's famous low crime rate is that while it's not a complete lie, how they report crimes is very much different than the US and may not be as low as people commonly think.

For example, the Japanese government is well aware of it's image as a low crime place and aims to keep it that way. Quite a few of murders in Japan are surprisingly classified as suicides when murder is obvious because oddly due to the lobbying efforts of life insurance companies in Japan because suicide is cheaper to payout for than murder. So autopsies of suspicious deaths are discouraged and suicide of unknown cause is encouraged as being listed as cause of death. Not to mention it helps keep murder rates stay low.

Los Angeles Times - Page unavailable in your region

Japan's suicide statistics don't tell the real story | The Japan Times

No doubt they have a lower rate than most countries though but while extreme cases like I first mentioned aren't the norm, and its higher in the US than Japan, it exists all the same. The US is a much more sparsely populated and individualistic society and so the lack of close proximaty a lot of people live in allows isolation and independent pockets of dysfunction in a household to fester where as in Japan people are highly encouraged into conformity and this may be the difference in the rate this stuff happens in the US. The individualistic nature of American society also helps promote individuals to think more selfishly about themselves more than anyone else which can lead to antisocial behavior more. Of course this is just my opinion which is worth shyt.

 

[Dr. Acula]

Edit: double post

 

[mc_brew]

I read ops excerpt but not the full article and despite perhaps I probably still missed the intent of the author.

When I said biological I'm not saying these are individuals who are innately bad but that somewhere in their development usually due to dysfunction during childhood have tied biological impulses to criminality whether it's an attraction to children or only finding sexual arousal in abusing others. I did state it was not the majority of criminals and fairly rare but these are explicit cases where prison is the only solution. Obviously, if you can minimize the upfront criminality of someone by addressing the dysfunction in childhood that's preferable, but this isn't some new paradigm shifting thinking. I think you can minimize the amount of people who fall through the cracks but there will always be those who do and after a certain age depending on how bad the situation is, they may be beyond saving. Again these are extreme cases. But there is a spectrum here. There are some dudes who no matter what can't stop doing dirt that may not be as dangerous as a sexual sadist but a life of crime is all they know.

As far Japan and Qatar, I can't speak to Qatar but one thing about Japan's famous low crime rate is that while it's not a complete lie, how they report crimes is very much different than the US and may not be as low as people commonly think.

For example, the Japanese government is well aware of it's image as a low crime place and aims to keep it that way. Quite a few of murders in Japan are surprisingly classified as suicides when murder is obvious because oddly due to the lobbying efforts of life insurance companies in Japan because suicide is cheaper to payout for than murder. So autopsies of suspicious deaths are discouraged and suicide of unknown cause is encouraged as being listed as cause of death. Not to mention it helps keep murder rates stay low.

Los Angeles Times - Page unavailable in your region

Japan's suicide statistics don't tell the real story | The Japan Times

No doubt they have a lower rate than most countries though but while extreme cases like I first mentioned aren't the norm, and its higher in the US than Japan, it exists all the same. The US is a much more sparsely populated and individualistic society and so the lack of close proximaty a lot of people live in allows isolation and independent pockets of dysfunction in a household to fester where as in Japan people are highly encouraged into conformity and this may be the difference in the rate this stuff happens in the US. The individualistic nature of American society also helps promote individuals to think more selfishly about themselves more than anyone else which can lead to antisocial behavior more. Of course this is just my opinion which is worth shyt.

this plus race relations have to be considered... ruth wilson's refrain is where life is precious, life is precious... however white society doesn't see black life as precious in the slightest, and black people make a large chunk of the prison population.... it's easy for white people to lock up black people without a care in the world regardless of the crime committed because white society doesn't view black lives as having any importance worth valuing....

 

[Professor Emeritus]

this plus race relations have to be considered... ruth wilson's refrain is where life is precious, life is precious... however white society doesn't see black life as precious in the slightest, and black people make a large chunk of the prison population.... it's easy for white people to lock up black people without a care in the world regardless of the crime committed because white society doesn't view black lives as having any importance worth valuing....

Ruthie Gilmore pushes back against that to a degree in the article though. She points out that White people in America haven't hesitated in the slightest to lock up large numbers of White people either. For example, Oklahoma, Arkansas, Kentucky, South Dakota, Wyoming, and Idaho all have higher incarceration rates than South Carolina.

Mass incarceration has definitely harmed the Black community far more than the White community, and Black incarceration rates are much higher than White incarceration rates. But American culture is such that they'd still be locking up way too many people even if there weren't a single Black person in the country.