What I find worse is how many Americans refuse to accept that our society can and should treat prisoners better. Like I’m not advocating for luxury hotels or unrestricted freedoms for them, just humane conditions, reasonable sentence lengths, and a focus on rehabilitation. What we’re doing isn’t working and is a stain on our collective soul.
Though I will say most Americans have odd understandings of quality of life. Owning a car is seen as so fundamental that people feel attacked at the idea of building cities where it’s not a necessity, while the idea that we should provide free meals to schoolchildren or providing medicine to prisoners is seen by many as government waste. Even our fundamental and foundational rights such as state appointed lawyers for the indigent accused of crimes are nickel and dimed to uselessness, and the idea of providing these lawyers for all accused who want them is seen as radical.
This is hardly a bright side to the fucked up cloud that is the modern prison system, but something I have found notable is that some of the most interesting stuff about restorative justice has come from American scholars and activists. It’s notable to me because whilst America seems to distill all the things I hate most about how society treats crime and prisoners, I recognise a heckton of these things in the justice systems of other countries too — including my own. However, there does not seem to be as much appetite for digging into these problematic aspects in countries where things are perceived to be on the more moderate side.
Like I say, it’s hardly a “bright side”, but I think there isn’t an easy answer to “how do we respond to people who transgress against society?”. Even if we agree that we should focus on rehabilitation, the question of how to do that is a pretty complex one. It would be wrong to say that I’m hopeful when there’s so much fucked up stuff deeply entrenched in modern justice systems (especially the American one), but I do feel bolstered by how much I have personally had my perspectives challenged by the aforementioned scholars and activists resisting unjust “justice” in the US.
Yeah I’ve been seeing a lot of folks act like all Americans are absolute barbarians who revel in our nation’s cruelty, but prison abolitionists still operate here and plenty of communities here are actually putting rubber to road for rehabilitative justice.
And as you say, it’s fucking hard. You want to give people chances but you need to prioritize victims safety and rights, and the fact is there are bad actors in every group. And that’s not even getting into situations where life is a hell of a lot easier when you keep giving one person more and more chances.
I’ve been fortunate enough to know some folks in the prison ab scene and they’re good folks trying to do right by the sorts of folks nobody else is gonna. And I’ve come to the conclusion that you can judge a society by how it treats its criminals. Who will defend the unsympathetic? Someone’s gotta, otherwise you’re a hop skip and a jump away from having a role where the worst people can get official sanction to be their worst selves. Round here the prison guards are often just as bad of people as the prisoner.
What I find worse is how many Americans refuse to accept that our society can and should treat prisoners better. Like I’m not advocating for luxury hotels or unrestricted freedoms for them, just humane conditions, reasonable sentence lengths, and a focus on rehabilitation. What we’re doing isn’t working and is a stain on our collective soul.
Though I will say most Americans have odd understandings of quality of life. Owning a car is seen as so fundamental that people feel attacked at the idea of building cities where it’s not a necessity, while the idea that we should provide free meals to schoolchildren or providing medicine to prisoners is seen by many as government waste. Even our fundamental and foundational rights such as state appointed lawyers for the indigent accused of crimes are nickel and dimed to uselessness, and the idea of providing these lawyers for all accused who want them is seen as radical.
This is hardly a bright side to the fucked up cloud that is the modern prison system, but something I have found notable is that some of the most interesting stuff about restorative justice has come from American scholars and activists. It’s notable to me because whilst America seems to distill all the things I hate most about how society treats crime and prisoners, I recognise a heckton of these things in the justice systems of other countries too — including my own. However, there does not seem to be as much appetite for digging into these problematic aspects in countries where things are perceived to be on the more moderate side.
Like I say, it’s hardly a “bright side”, but I think there isn’t an easy answer to “how do we respond to people who transgress against society?”. Even if we agree that we should focus on rehabilitation, the question of how to do that is a pretty complex one. It would be wrong to say that I’m hopeful when there’s so much fucked up stuff deeply entrenched in modern justice systems (especially the American one), but I do feel bolstered by how much I have personally had my perspectives challenged by the aforementioned scholars and activists resisting unjust “justice” in the US.
Yeah I’ve been seeing a lot of folks act like all Americans are absolute barbarians who revel in our nation’s cruelty, but prison abolitionists still operate here and plenty of communities here are actually putting rubber to road for rehabilitative justice.
And as you say, it’s fucking hard. You want to give people chances but you need to prioritize victims safety and rights, and the fact is there are bad actors in every group. And that’s not even getting into situations where life is a hell of a lot easier when you keep giving one person more and more chances.
I’ve been fortunate enough to know some folks in the prison ab scene and they’re good folks trying to do right by the sorts of folks nobody else is gonna. And I’ve come to the conclusion that you can judge a society by how it treats its criminals. Who will defend the unsympathetic? Someone’s gotta, otherwise you’re a hop skip and a jump away from having a role where the worst people can get official sanction to be their worst selves. Round here the prison guards are often just as bad of people as the prisoner.