Principia Discordia > Aneristic Illusions
I think it's time to write off the progressive demographic.
shamelessPuck:
--- Quote from: Cainad (dec.) on August 18, 2018, 03:19:04 am ---
--- Quote from: Hoopla on August 17, 2018, 06:23:03 pm ---I’ve also noticed recently that there is a slice of the progressive left who don’t seem to be willing to accept when someone has done their time. Does the legal system mean anything anymore? How does a society rebuild something like a legal system? Is that idea as infeasible as the libertarians who want to rebuild the government?
--- End quote ---
I think it stems from a deep distrust of the legal system's ability to redress certain grievances.
Our society in general has a really hard time digesting the concept of someone having done their time, or having repaid their debt to society. What crimes exactly someone is most concerned about varies, but lots of people feel the need to twist the knife on anyone who's ever fucked up. Being a felon in the USA is practically second-class citizen status, no matter how much you're punished.
OTOH, the only voices I've heard (lol perception bias) calling most strongly for justice reform and rehabilitation are progressive voices. The ways in which the USA's penal system in particular is perverted by private interests and profit are especially strong rallying points.
--- End quote ---
Our legal system is premised on exacting by vengance on those who we perceive as having done wrong, which really makes it hard to forgive those who have gone through the system and reaccept them into society. Prison isn’t about making you a better person or working to overcome the circumstances that encouraged or allowed for the behavior that landed you there, and it certainly isn’t about finding reconciliation between the involved parties. Sure, we are doing better now than we used to, implementing some education and training programs in prison, and some crazy places even help people returning to society find jobs and housing, which it turns out massively reduces recidivism. We have made some improvements, but the basic premise of our prison system (and the law enforcement and court systems that funnel people there) is to punch back at people we think have hurt us, and lock them away so we don’t have to think about them.
Just because you kick someone in the shins doesn’t mean you’ve forgiven them for kicking you first. The fact that so many would be criminals can just ignore this whole system if they are sufficiently rich/white/male/et cetera makes it that much harder to have any faith that prison can allow for true reintegration.
Cainad (dec.):
I think you're 75% correct. The missing 25% is the profit motive from privatized prisons and cheap prison labor.
Text of the 13th Amendment: "Neither slavery nor involuntary servitude, except as a punishment for crime whereof the party shall have been duly convicted, shall exist within the United States, or any place subject to their jurisdiction."
This was the amendment that prohibited the practice of slavery in the United States after the Civil War. Notice the bolded exception, and consider who the United States tends to put in prison a LOT more than everyone else.
Taken from that angle, it starts to make much more sense as to why thing are the way they are. Criminal justice in the United States is deeply warped by profit motive (and, y'know, racism). It meshes nicely with "Get Tough On Crime" and "Zero Tolerance" attitudes: indulge people's gut-level desire to punish wrongdoers and spend effort on scooping people up to exploit, rather than spending effort on improving standards of living or community health.
shamelessPuck:
--- Quote from: Cainad (dec.) on August 18, 2018, 03:24:16 pm ---I think you're 75% correct. The missing 25% is the profit motive from privatized prisons and cheap prison labor.
Text of the 13th Amendment: "Neither slavery nor involuntary servitude, except as a punishment for crime whereof the party shall have been duly convicted, shall exist within the United States, or any place subject to their jurisdiction."
This was the amendment that prohibited the practice of slavery in the United States after the Civil War. Notice the bolded exception, and consider who the United States tends to put in prison a LOT more than everyone else.
Taken from that angle, it starts to make much more sense as to why thing are the way they are. Criminal justice in the United States is deeply warped by profit motive (and, y'know, racism). It meshes nicely with "Get Tough On Crime" and "Zero Tolerance" attitudes: indulge people's gut-level desire to punish wrongdoers and spend effort on scooping people up to exploit, rather than spending effort on improving standards of living or community health.
--- End quote ---
Of course profit has something to do with it, this is ‘Murica after all. Tied with that is enforcing and reinforcing current power structures. The police are there to ensure that the rules those at the top want are followed by those at the bottom. Nixon took this to another level by creating the never ending war on drugs as a way to disenfranchise the predominantly democratic voting minorities who were using the substances most heavily targeted by his administration. Racism with a purpose!
Doktor Howl:
--- Quote from: Cainad (dec.) on August 18, 2018, 03:24:16 pm ---I think you're 75% correct. The missing 25% is the profit motive from privatized prisons and cheap prison labor.
Text of the 13th Amendment: "Neither slavery nor involuntary servitude, except as a punishment for crime whereof the party shall have been duly convicted, shall exist within the United States, or any place subject to their jurisdiction."
This was the amendment that prohibited the practice of slavery in the United States after the Civil War. Notice the bolded exception, and consider who the United States tends to put in prison a LOT more than everyone else.
Taken from that angle, it starts to make much more sense as to why thing are the way they are. Criminal justice in the United States is deeply warped by profit motive (and, y'know, racism). It meshes nicely with "Get Tough On Crime" and "Zero Tolerance" attitudes: indulge people's gut-level desire to punish wrongdoers and spend effort on scooping people up to exploit, rather than spending effort on improving standards of living or community health.
--- End quote ---
Now the ICE detainees are being put to work. Totally called it.
It's just small stuff now, cleaning the facilities they are housed in (to include offices, etc), but it is only "voluntary" in the Sergeant Detritus manner. "It's voluntary only you gotta do it."
Chelagoras The Boulder:
--- Quote from: Doktor Howl on August 14, 2018, 05:36:41 am ---
--- Quote from: Chelagoras The Boulder on August 14, 2018, 05:25:36 am ---What pisses me off more than Gunn being fired in particular is the notion that this is the test run for a never-ending campaign of hitjobs like this.
And what pisses me off even more than that is that nobody wants to own up to the fact that this was always a flaw of call-out culture, and that while trying rapists and abusers in the court of public opinion is all well and good for people who otherwise would be untouchable, but can we all agree that shouldn't be the end goal? Like, isn't it time we started, y'know, fixing the legal system so victims can actually get justice? No? Just keep dragging celebrities cuz it makes us feel good? Well alright then.
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That's not a flaw of call-out culture, it is the logical end result of call-out culture. You may remember what went on here a couple of years ago. That was basically a working model of what happened in the "real" world. It was never, ever about justice. It was about who the king-shit caller-outer was. Who was the most morally pure tumblrista.
It took quite some time for me to stop being bitter about that.
--- End quote ---
Yea, at the time i figured the aftermath of that scenario would be the typical result, a kind of "crabs in a bucket" thing, where the biggest King-shit Caller-outer would eventually get too big for their britches and get called out themselves, and a sort of self-regulatory equilibrium would occur. But to see the whole business completely hijacked by Nazis, and seeing some people I had a bit more respect for continue on with their witch hunt even after they've learned who started it, has brutally crushed that illusion
I've come up with a term for this particular subsection of SJWs, btw. Mob Justice Warriors, or MJWs. Those for whom the feigned desire for social justice is just a means of getting more heads in the guillotine.
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