Conflict erupts at Minneapolis, L.A. protests over George Floyd death

[Darth Yan]

What I'm saying is we should look at other departments with better clearance rates, see why they're doing well and maybe copy THEIR style of policing

[Darth Yan]

Another issue is that police reflect the culture; they have bad rape clearances because society in general treats rape as not a big deal and not worth addressing. Corrupt hillbilly police often operate the way they do because people WANT a corrupt hillbilly department or just don't care enough to subject it to scrutiny (I was watching West of Memphis with my father and I made the point that Gary Gitchell, the lead investigator did not impress me. Dad said "true but who hired detective Gitchell?")

The police are the most visible symptom but the problem goes MUCH deeper

[Ralin]

As Wong also said on Facebook not long ago, if you have to constantly explain how no actually abolishing/defunding the police doesn't mean literally getting rid of all law enforcement then maybe that's a sign that your slogan is a bad one and you should come up with something that won't make the average person default to writing you off as a moonbat.

[Darth Yan]

That is true. Even if you can reduce the police force in a good way (by reassigning some of their duties to more competent employees) or reduce the need a lot of people will see "disband the police" and see something radical.

Critical race theory and the ontological view of whiteness is similar. The average person is going to hear "white people as a race are inherently evil" rather than white identity and privilege being a bad thing.

Some people will react in bad faith no matter how calmly the message is explained but contrary to what a lot of activists want to admit tone DOES matter, as does explaining it in a reasonable way. I only really got onboard completely with the decolonization stuff loomer was saying AFTER he laid it all out in a coherent way. Beforehand it came across as him fetishizing indigenous people and ignoring a lot of practical elements.

[loomer]

Rightist militias opened fire on people in Albuquerque. Just a little, so far, but it's still a troubling escalation.

[loomer]

As Wong also said on Facebook not long ago, if you have to constantly explain how no actually abolishing/defunding the police doesn't mean literally getting rid of all law enforcement then maybe that's a sign that your slogan is a bad one and you should come up with something that won't make the average person default to writing you off as a moonbat.

Bluntly, if people aren't willing to spend five seconds actually contemplating what it means and checking the excellent resources available with a quick google, and instead kneejerk against it as 'moonbattery' when the police are neither essential nor permanent, that's not an issue with the concept - it's an issue with the people. The conflation of 'all law enforcement' (and even the possibility of law enforcement) with 'the police' is intellectually lazy at best, dishonest at worst, and actively harmful even to the possibilities of reform.

There are other solutions, some humane others less so. One that's a bit horrific, but no more so than a US Ultramax prison, is to put those serving life without parol into a medically induced coma. It's more reversible than the death penalty and more human than 20+ hours per day without human contact.

This is in no way a viable solution on medical grounds alone, let alone justice ones. Think before you write.

Armed no. Even in the UK police don’t carry guns and they have a lower rate of needless killing and douchebaggery than the US. But some small form of patrol groups may be needed, if only for things like traffic violations or to take offenders into custody. And since we live in larger societies small militias aren’t going to cut it.

You keep saying that. You don't provide any basis or proof for it. Do so.

One of the reasons modern policing came about was because smaller informal groups weren’t cutting it in the 1800s when population boomed in large cities.

And do you think it's 'large cities' innately creating crime, or the extraordinarily brutal living conditions that early industrial cities fostered?

As for rape a large part of that is cultural stigma. Women aren’t believed in any level of society and it’s only now that things are changing. Changing that could help law enforcement take a more proactive stance on addressing it.

Okay. But, what you're still not answering is why you feel the police are the only answer to the issue or addressing the literature written by survivors of rape and sexual assault that still calls for abolition and restorative justice.

Finally some people will need to be contained and can’t be rehabilitated. Restorative justice definitely has a place but small incarceration will always endure if only to protect people from the Clarence Allens of the world

Incarceration is itself a relatively modern idea and not necessarily a given. Also, I'd like to see some evidence that there exists a class of people who are genuinely impossible to manage in any way other than incarceration. The existence of serial killers does not, in and of itself, prove that there is no possible method of control and harm-limitation that can be applied to them that is non-carceral in nature.

In short I believe in police REDUCTION. You can pull back on the police and lower the overall number of officers and circumstances they get involved in. But getting rid of all of them seems like a pipe dream

So, again, let me ask a simple question. Have you actually read Davis et al?

[Formless]

What I'm saying is we should look at other departments with better clearance rates, see why they're doing well and maybe copy THEIR style of policing

That presumes that we can find any police department in any country that has clearance rates higher than 50% for the major crimes, and yes that means taking into account under reporting and missing persons never identified as the victim of a crime like murder or kidnapping. Seriously. Do your own work and find me one example of such.

As Wong also said on Facebook not long ago, if you have to constantly explain how no actually abolishing/defunding the police doesn't mean literally getting rid of all law enforcement then maybe that's a sign that your slogan is a bad one and you should come up with something that won't make the average person default to writing you off as a moonbat.

Mike is many things, but he isn't necessarily an expert on propaganda and rhetoric. He's just a guy who likes to argue with people on the internet. "Abolish the police" is an easy slogan to understand, it resonates with many black communities that have literally no good experiences with the police and have every reason to feel police are their oppressors, and it helps contextualize that the police as an institution is the problem, not merely individuals within the police. Those who see it as moonbat nonsense are probably white folk with no perspective on the scale of the problem. The thing is that most people saying "abolish the police" aren't clarifying that some kind of police is exempt, they literally mean that policing as we know it has to be abolished. Whatever replaces it has to operate in a fundamentally different way. The slogan of law enforcement is "to protect and serve", which is a pathetic joke. We wish it were that way, but we all know that it isn't.

"Law enforcement" is a vague term that could encompass many systems of enforcing rule of law, but "policing" is actually more specific and relates directly to what people actually feel has become the problem. Uniformed officers armed with deadly weapons patrolling the streets looking for crimes in action, who are always eleven minutes away from any actual crime that gets reported because when they aren't eating donuts they are expected to enforce even victimless crimes. This concept is less than 200 years old, and yet somehow society functioned just fine back then. Its almost as if either its a failed experiment (given the statistics I've given above) or Marx was right and the only reason we have police is specifically to oppress minorities and the working class.

Another way of putting it, if the former is true then an overwhelming majority of cops and police commissioners need to be fired for gross incompetence or negligence. At which point we might as well call it police abolition. If its the latter, that speaks for itself, doesn't it? Abolish the police.

One last thing. We know that the problem is police culture. The police write the police reports, and the police reports are believed by people without question, including people on juries unless the defense has a very clever (and probably expensive) lawyer. When the police misbehave they are investigated by internal affairs in a non-transparent process. If no investigation happens, do we even know or hear about it? And who even does the hiring for internal affairs? If its the same people who hire the rest of the force, or worse, if members of the regular force are promoted into the internal affairs department, then there is an obvious conflict of interest. You can't reform a culture from without, you can only eliminate it from without. And of course most actions by the police are protected by Qualified Immunity unless they fuck up in very specific ways. Even police actions that are considered abusive are often technically protected by Qualified Immunity because Qualified Immunity doesn't take into account necessity or degree of force required. There is, for instance, the example of a Colorado SWAT team that blew up an innocent family's house just to get at one man who sought refuge there (not a member of the family, mind you, someone on the run). These are white victims, by the way, so rather than racism this was a case of why the fuck not? They had the explosives, and they weren't trained to protect people's property, they were trained to protect themselves. Literally. That's what all cops are trained to do. When the family sued the department for damages, it was initially denied on Qualified Immunity. When they appealed to a higher court that it was a textbook case of Eminent Domain, the appeals court sided with the cops. Their last chance for justice is the Supreme Court, and its not clear if they will bother yet. When we say "abolish the police" we also mean abolishing all the systems that protect them from consequences as well, because as reforms go its got a lot more teeth to it than little shit like choke hold bans. The cops already know choke holds kill. That's precisely why they use them, and then lie about it after. Like they did with George Floyd.

[Darth Yan]

Fun fact; incarceration in its modern form was created in part to get around capital punishment; it’s original instruction was to hold people until a punishment (flogging or execution) was carried out. Since we’re trying to move away from capital punishment I think incarceration in some form is here to stay.

And yes there are people who are just genuinely evil (Clarence Ray Allen, Mark O’Leary, Coral Eugene Watts). Hell even if underlying causes of poverty and mental health WERE addressed there would STILL be people who go around committing crimes either because they’re arrogant and entitled (all crimes committed by rich people) or assholes regardless of class.

As for restorative justice? Having done research it has merit (Though it’ll be some time before it’s widespread) but again people like Marc O’Leary are going to do it anyway because they’re sociopaths. Others might just be too proud to admit they did something awful or be in denial about it. Either way there are people restorative justice won’t work on

I tried reading Davis and felt she made fair points but also think that due to human nature there are ALWAYS going to need to be some form of arrest and incarceration. It’s like when people point out that capitalism is bad (true) and yet advocate communism (which is ALSO bad). Davis correctly points out a lot of problems but her solution is to burn something to the ground AND fail to rework it into something better in conjunction with societal reform out of a belief that societal reform is enough to fix crime as a whole.

Ps
In The NY Times article a few of the people who disagreed with it were people who had suffered violent crime. Are THEIR perspectives invalid?

[loomer]

Fun fact; incarceration In it’s modern form was created in part to get around capital punishment; it’s original instruction was to hold people until a punishment (clogging or execution) was carried out.

Yes, I'm aware of the roots of the carceral state. My point is that you're again pointing to a relatively novel phenomenon and insisting it must always persist without providing a skerrick of proof as to why.

And yes there are people who are just genuinely evil (Clarence Ray Allen, Mark O’Leary, Coral Eugene Watts). Hell even if underlying causes of poverty and mental health WERE addressed there would STILL be people who go around committing crimes either because they’re arrogant and entitled (all crimes committed by rich people) or assholes regardless of class.

And the police and prisons are the only way to respond to this why? What evidence is there that these people cannot be controlled in anything but a carceral model?

As for restorative justice? Having done research it has merit (Though it’ll be some time before it’s widespread) but again people like Marc O’Leary are going to do it anyway because they’re sociopaths. Others might just be too proud to admit they did something awful or be in denial about it.

Are you under the apprehension that restorative justice models are powerless against those who won't work within them? Further, you still aren't explaining, let alone proving, why the existence of a handful of sociopaths can justify the existence of the police and a carceral state.

I tried reading Davis and felt she made fair points but also think that due to human nature there are ALWAYS going to need to be some form of arrest and incarceration. It’s like when people point out that capitalism is bad (true) and yet advocate communism (which is ALSO bad)

And this model needs to be that of the police why? Are you under the apprehension that only the police can enable any form of arrest? Further, what basis do you have to assert that incarceration is a reasonable response to the problem of the exceptional lunatic? Can you show that the risk of it is a significant deterrent factor to the handful of outright sociopaths you've nominated?

Ps
In The NY Times article a few of the people who disagreed with it were people who had suffered violent crime. Are THEIR perspectives invalid?

No, and you'll note I made no such claim. You, however, invoked rape and murder as crimes that restorative justice cannot address despite the fact that some of the loudest advocates for it have been victims of, or personally impacted by, those exact crimes.

[Darth Yan]

Fun fact; incarceration In it’s modern form was created in part to get around capital punishment; it’s original instruction was to hold people until a punishment (clogging or execution) was carried out.

Yes, I'm aware of the roots of the carceral state. My point is that you're again pointing to a relatively novel phenomenon and insisting it must always persist without providing a skerrick of proof as to why.

And yes there are people who are just genuinely evil (Clarence Ray Allen, Mark O’Leary, Coral Eugene Watts). Hell even if underlying causes of poverty and mental health WERE addressed there would STILL be people who go around committing crimes either because they’re arrogant and entitled (all crimes committed by rich people) or assholes regardless of class.

And the police and prisons are the only way to respond to this why? What evidence is there that these people cannot be controlled in anything but a carceral model?

As for restorative justice? Having done research it has merit (Though it’ll be some time before it’s widespread) but again people like Marc O’Leary are going to do it anyway because they’re sociopaths. Others might just be too proud to admit they did something awful or be in denial about it.

Are you under the apprehension that restorative justice models are powerless against those who won't work within them? Further, you still aren't explaining, let alone proving, why the existence of a handful of sociopaths can justify the existence of the police and a carceral state.

I tried reading Davis and felt she made fair points but also think that due to human nature there are ALWAYS going to need to be some form of arrest and incarceration. It’s like when people point out that capitalism is bad (true) and yet advocate communism (which is ALSO bad)

And this model needs to be that of the police why? Are you under the apprehension that only the police can enable any form of arrest? Further, what basis do you have to assert that incarceration is a reasonable response to the problem of the exceptional lunatic? Can you show that the risk of it is a significant deterrent factor to the handful of outright sociopaths you've nominated?

Ps
In The NY Times article a few of the people who disagreed with it were people who had suffered violent crime. Are THEIR perspectives invalid?

No, and you'll note I made no such claim. You, however, invoked rape and murder as crimes that restorative justice cannot address despite the fact that some of the loudest advocates for it have been victims of, or personally impacted by, those exact crimes.

Because some people WON’T be rehabilitated and as such will be a threat to others unless removed from polite society. That’s why prisons exist. And I never said restorative justice couldn’t address rape and murder, but it’s a model that depends on the criminal feeling remorse or being willing to engage in actual reflection. Same with rehabilitation. If the person isn’t willing to atone rehabilitation won’t do shit.

https://theappeal.org/sexual-assault-su ... d-options/

The guy cited on this article felt genuine guilt so in that case restorative justice is fine.

And if there are people who are violent someone will be needed to take them into custody where they can’t hurt anyone.

I’m not saying lock people up en masse (incarceration as stands is a travesty and plenty of crimes can be solved by giving a person a fine or community service) but like it or not there are people who are just too dangerous to be in society and if you don’t want to put them to death incarceration will have to be an option.

[Agent Fisher]

Rightist militias opened fire on people in Albuquerque. Just a little, so far, but it's still a troubling escalation.

I've just finished watching the cell phone video posted on Twitter of the shooting. It doesn't appear to be one of the 'New Mexico Civil Guard'. It's a guy in shorts and a t-shirt that had been climbing up on the statue, either pushes or knocks over a woman, and then everyone starts accusing of being a cop and attacking him. He starts retreating, crowd follows him yelling to get his license plate. Black mask rushes him, grabbing his shirt and throwing him to the ground, going down with him. At that point, he's getting back to his feet, drawing his concealed pistol and blackmask starts to swing a skateboard at his head. Shots fired.

[loomer]

Fun fact; incarceration In it’s modern form was created in part to get around capital punishment; it’s original instruction was to hold people until a punishment (clogging or execution) was carried out.

Yes, I'm aware of the roots of the carceral state. My point is that you're again pointing to a relatively novel phenomenon and insisting it must always persist without providing a skerrick of proof as to why.

And yes there are people who are just genuinely evil (Clarence Ray Allen, Mark O’Leary, Coral Eugene Watts). Hell even if underlying causes of poverty and mental health WERE addressed there would STILL be people who go around committing crimes either because they’re arrogant and entitled (all crimes committed by rich people) or assholes regardless of class.

And the police and prisons are the only way to respond to this why? What evidence is there that these people cannot be controlled in anything but a carceral model?

As for restorative justice? Having done research it has merit (Though it’ll be some time before it’s widespread) but again people like Marc O’Leary are going to do it anyway because they’re sociopaths. Others might just be too proud to admit they did something awful or be in denial about it.

Are you under the apprehension that restorative justice models are powerless against those who won't work within them? Further, you still aren't explaining, let alone proving, why the existence of a handful of sociopaths can justify the existence of the police and a carceral state.

I tried reading Davis and felt she made fair points but also think that due to human nature there are ALWAYS going to need to be some form of arrest and incarceration. It’s like when people point out that capitalism is bad (true) and yet advocate communism (which is ALSO bad)

And this model needs to be that of the police why? Are you under the apprehension that only the police can enable any form of arrest? Further, what basis do you have to assert that incarceration is a reasonable response to the problem of the exceptional lunatic? Can you show that the risk of it is a significant deterrent factor to the handful of outright sociopaths you've nominated?

Ps
In The NY Times article a few of the people who disagreed with it were people who had suffered violent crime. Are THEIR perspectives invalid?

No, and you'll note I made no such claim. You, however, invoked rape and murder as crimes that restorative justice cannot address despite the fact that some of the loudest advocates for it have been victims of, or personally impacted by, those exact crimes.

Because some people WON’T be rehabilitated and as such will be a threat to others unless removed from polite society. That’s why prisons exist

I asked you for evidence. Are you incapable of providing it?

And I never said restorative justice couldn’t address rape and murder,

Really, now? Because buddy...

4.) While restorative justice has virtues there are some things it just can’t fix (Rape, murder).

You did.

but it’s a model that depends on the criminal feeling remorse or being willing to engage in actual reflection.

Incorrect. Reconciliation is one component of restorative justice, but it is not the only one, and there are methods for attaining restorative justice where no remorse is available or where a person is genuinely incapable of reflection.

Same with rehabilitation. If the person isn’t willing to atone rehabilitation won’t do shit.

Atonement isn't actually necessary for meaningful rehabilitation and control. The goal of rehabilitation is not to get people to admit they were wrong, but to remedy the underlying cause of a problem. If you can do that without 'atonement', then you have a successful rehabilitation.

https://theappeal.org/sexual-assault-su ... d-options/

The guy cited on this article felt genuine guilt so in that case restorative justice is fine.

Great. So, you realize this article is focused on the barriers created by a carceral-punitive model towards alternative pathways, right?

And if there are people who are violent someone will be needed to take them into custody where they can’t hurt anyone.

Yes, and? Abolitionists don't believe otherwise.

I’m not saying lock people up en masse (incarceration as stands is a travesty and plenty of crimes can be solved by giving a person a fine or community service) but like it or not there are people who are just too dangerous to be in society and if you don’t want to put them to death incarceration will have to be an option.

Again, prove it's an effective model.

[Formless]

By the way, as to the "moonbat" accusation, that really is just Mike's bias or ignorance speaking. Its not unprecedented for cities to disband their police department entirely; but usually its because the city is small and cannot afford a police department financially. Police salaries have to come from somewhere, after all. In one case that I am aware of (but can't find a reference to; they might have reinstated the department at some point) a Colorado department had to be disbanded because of all the lawsuits against them for excessive force and civil liberties violations. They were literally sued into oblivion, at least for a time. Fort Collins police seem headed in the same direction with some high profile cases where the victims were women. We'll see if the 22 lawsuits against them can do enough damage to force the city to reform or disband them. Another interesting case is Colorado City, Arizona, where the State and Federal governments and their law enforcement arms had to dismantle both its police department and the department of the city right next door in Utah because the police there had literally degenerated into an armed wing of the local Mormon fundie groups who still practice polygamy and child marriage, and openly discriminated against anyone who wasn't mormon. These are real grade a assholes who even the mainstream LDS church refuses to acknowledge. Of course, this also happened because of lawsuits preceding the government investigating the town, so take that for what its worth.

But perhaps the most interesting case of all is the city that disbanded its police department... and it wasn't because of funding, it wasn't lawsuits, and it wasn't an external investigation by a higher level government agency. The city's police department was beyond reform... so they got rid of them. That city is Camden, New Jersey, and while they do have a police department now, that department is completely different not only from the corrupt fuckup it was before, but just in general from how most police departments operate in the country. From what I've read, they have gone for the kind of community oriented, public protection oriented law enforcement paradigm that people actually want. They also noticeably lowered the city's crime rate in the process, which is no mean feat-- this was one of the more crime ridden cities in the nation at the time. It wasn't getting better because the police were part of the problem, and the city officials knew it. The ONLY way to meaningfully reform the department was to treat every son of a bitch who worked there as a "bad apple" by default, and start over from scratch. And it worked. Police abolition isn't "moonbat nonsense", its a tactic that has actually been tried and shown to be possible. It may be a smaller city than Minneapolis, but the theory is the same. If the problem is the police culture, reform is best implemented after disbanding the existing force and getting everyone who used to work there out of the profession.

[Darth Yan]

Yes, I'm aware of the roots of the carceral state. My point is that you're again pointing to a relatively novel phenomenon and insisting it must always persist without providing a skerrick of proof as to why.



And the police and prisons are the only way to respond to this why? What evidence is there that these people cannot be controlled in anything but a carceral model?



Are you under the apprehension that restorative justice models are powerless against those who won't work within them? Further, you still aren't explaining, let alone proving, why the existence of a handful of sociopaths can justify the existence of the police and a carceral state.



And this model needs to be that of the police why? Are you under the apprehension that only the police can enable any form of arrest? Further, what basis do you have to assert that incarceration is a reasonable response to the problem of the exceptional lunatic? Can you show that the risk of it is a significant deterrent factor to the handful of outright sociopaths you've nominated?



No, and you'll note I made no such claim. You, however, invoked rape and murder as crimes that restorative justice cannot address despite the fact that some of the loudest advocates for it have been victims of, or personally impacted by, those exact crimes.

Because some people WON’T be rehabilitated and as such will be a threat to others unless removed from polite society. That’s why prisons exist

I asked you for evidence. Are you incapable of providing it?

And I never said restorative justice couldn’t address rape and murder,

Really, now? Because buddy...

4.) While restorative justice has virtues there are some things it just can’t fix (Rape, murder).

You did.

but it’s a model that depends on the criminal feeling remorse or being willing to engage in actual reflection.

Incorrect. Reconciliation is one component of restorative justice, but it is not the only one, and there are methods for attaining restorative justice where no remorse is available or where a person is genuinely incapable of reflection.

Same with rehabilitation. If the person isn’t willing to atone rehabilitation won’t do shit.

Atonement isn't actually necessary for meaningful rehabilitation and control. The goal of rehabilitation is not to get people to admit they were wrong, but to remedy the underlying cause of a problem. If you can do that without 'atonement', then you have a successful rehabilitation.

https://theappeal.org/sexual-assault-su ... d-options/

The guy cited on this article felt genuine guilt so in that case restorative justice is fine.

Great. So, you realize this article is focused on the barriers created by a carceral-punitive model towards alternative pathways, right?

And if there are people who are violent someone will be needed to take them into custody where they can’t hurt anyone.

Yes, and? Abolitionists don't believe otherwise.

I’m not saying lock people up en masse (incarceration as stands is a travesty and plenty of crimes can be solved by giving a person a fine or community service) but like it or not there are people who are just too dangerous to be in society and if you don’t want to put them to death incarceration will have to be an option.

Again, prove it's an effective model.

Okay I’ll concede the “never said” part. I honestly had forgotten but I won’t argue with the facts. My bad.

The impression I got was that abolitionists sincerely think crime won’t be an issue if we address root causes, and that there won’t be an incident when force is necessary. Angela Davis certainly have that impression

Even if prisons don’t stop crime where are people who have shown themselves beyond rehabilitation and active danger supposed to go? Back into society? Be watched 24/7?

It’s an honest question. What plans do you have for people who are too dangerous to be left in society and who won’t recognize that they did something wrong (in my mind rehabilitation only works if a person recognizes they did something wrong. If they don’t there’s a chance they’ll reoffend.)

And yet abolitionists seem to think that any form of incarceration is bad. It’s the same naive idealism that promotes communism and the reflection of the bloody minded eye for an eye views that lead to mass incarceration and capital punishment

[loomer]

Unfortunately, while Camden's model is an improvement, my understanding is there's still a lot of problems with their police force. We can think of them as kind of a 'best outcome' for reform - it's better, but there's still issues with police brutality, uneven enforcement, and rehiring policies that resulted in making the Camden police force less representative of the community in all meaningful dimensions, both in terms of demographics and with fewer people actually living in the area than when it was under local control.

[Agent Fisher]

It wasn't so much a tear it out root and stem in Camden, it was cutting the staffing by more than half, which then resulted in the county level law enforcement absorbing it and replacing the local PD. Which, like Loomer said, did lead to less officers living inside the area they were patrolling because the county did not require their officers/deputies to live within the city.

[Darth Yan]

It’s still an improvement and if things like SWAT teams were abolished (formless made a post about how they’re basically useless and how a lot of what people hate are related to SWAT teams) more reform could be done.

[loomer]

Okay I’ll concede the “never said” part. I honestly had forgotten but I won’t argue with the facts. My bad.

The impression I got was that abolitionists sincerely think crime won’t be an issue if we address root causes, and that there won’t be an incident when force is necessary. Angela Davis certainly have that impression

You are incorrect on both counts. Abolitionists do not believe 'crime' will vanish - they believe that 95% of crime is purely socioeconomic in nature, and the rest is split between untreated mental illness and crimes of passion. Resolve the socioeconomic factors and you massively reduce the amount of crime by extension; provide better social support structures and you help resolve those caused by untreated mental illness. This leaves you with people who are still committing crimes anyway, who come under the ambit of justice systems just like they presently do, with the central difference that the justice system involved is now laser focused on solutions to specific issues and not a sprawling behemoth charged with the complete regulation of every act people take.

There is no consensus in abolitionism that self-defence will not be necessary, nor that first responders capable of breaking up fights or intervening in violence will not be necessary - in fact, I'd say that insofar as a consensus exists, it's to the precise opposite. And it is certainly not the case that Angela Davis is under that impression.

How much of her work did you read before you gave up?

Even if prisons don’t stop crime where are people who have shown themselves beyond rehabilitation and active danger supposed to go? Back into society? Be watched 24/7?

Again, you haven't actually shown that there exists a class of people that are genuinely beyond rehabilitation or non-carceral control. Please do so.

It’s an honest question. What plans do you have for people who are too dangerous to be left in society and who won’t recognize that they did something wrong (in my mind rehabilitation only works if a person recognizes they did something wrong. If they don’t there’s a chance they’ll reoffend.)

Again, you're mistaken that rehabilitation can only function if people concede wrongdoing. Rehabilitation achieved through the inducement of good behaviour is still rehabilitation.

Now, my personal position for dealing with the handful of exceptional lunatics - and, incidentally, they're an incredibly small number, which would render bespoke solutions tailored to the control of each individual exceptional lunatic feasible - is simple: outlawry and exile. Others prefer an approach that involves constant supervision and ongoing efforts at rehabilitation, which is probably more humane than my preferred solution.

And yet abolitionists seem to think that any form of incarceration is bad. It’s the same naive idealism that promotes communism and the reflection of the bloody minded eye for an eye views that lead to mass incarceration and capital punishment

Yan, by now I'd have thought you'd have learned not to talk shit about communism without understanding it in the slightest. Evidently you haven't, and you've transferred the same behaviour to abolitionism. Yes, abolitionists think incarceration is bad. This does not mean they are universally opposed to very stringently restricted protective custody arrangements that are centered on the respect for the dignity of the person involved.

Further, I'd suggest that there exists a field between 'prisons are universally bad' and 'because of serial killers, prisons are good actually'.

[Formless]

Sure, its not perfect, but its proof that a city can abolish a department as a path towards meaningful reform. I'm not saying Camden is the blueprint for other cities to follow, its more the proof of concept for those who automatically assume police abolition is nonsense.

[Darth Yan]

Okay I’ll concede the “never said” part. I honestly had forgotten but I won’t argue with the facts. My bad.

The impression I got was that abolitionists sincerely think crime won’t be an issue if we address root causes, and that there won’t be an incident when force is necessary. Angela Davis certainly have that impression

You are incorrect on both counts. Abolitionists do not believe 'crime' will vanish - they believe that 95% of crime is purely socioeconomic in nature, and the rest is split between untreated mental illness and crimes of passion. Resolve the socioeconomic factors and you massively reduce the amount of crime by extension; provide better social support structures and you help resolve those caused by untreated mental illness. This leaves you with people who are still committing crimes anyway, who come under the ambit of justice systems just like they presently do, with the central difference that the justice system involved is now laser focused on solutions to specific issues and not a sprawling behemoth charged with the complete regulation of every act people take.

There is no consensus in abolitionism that self-defence will not be necessary, nor that first responders capable of breaking up fights or intervening in violence will not be necessary - in fact, I'd say that insofar as a consensus exists, it's to the precise opposite. And it is certainly not the case that Angela Davis is under that impression.

How much of her work did you read before you gave up?

Even if prisons don’t stop crime where are people who have shown themselves beyond rehabilitation and active danger supposed to go? Back into society? Be watched 24/7?

Again, you haven't actually shown that there exists a class of people that are genuinely beyond rehabilitation or non-carceral control. Please do so.

It’s an honest question. What plans do you have for people who are too dangerous to be left in society and who won’t recognize that they did something wrong (in my mind rehabilitation only works if a person recognizes they did something wrong. If they don’t there’s a chance they’ll reoffend.)

Again, you're mistaken that rehabilitation can only function if people concede wrongdoing. Rehabilitation achieved through the inducement of good behaviour is still rehabilitation.

Now, my personal position for dealing with the handful of exceptional lunatics - and, incidentally, they're an incredibly small number, which would render bespoke solutions tailored to the control of each individual exceptional lunatic feasible - is simple: outlawry and exile. Others prefer an approach that involves constant supervision and ongoing efforts at rehabilitation, which is probably more humane than my preferred solution.

And yet abolitionists seem to think that any form of incarceration is bad. It’s the same naive idealism that promotes communism and the reflection of the bloody minded eye for an eye views that lead to mass incarceration and capital punishment

Yan, by now I'd have thought you'd have learned not to talk shit about communism without understanding it in the slightest. Evidently you haven't, and you've transferred the same behaviour to abolitionism. Yes, abolitionists think incarceration is bad. This does not mean they are universally opposed to very stringently restricted protective custody arrangements that are centered on the respect for the dignity of the person involved.

Further, I'd suggest that there exists a field between 'prisons are universally bad' and 'because of serial killers, prisons are good actually'.

1.) Even if it were 95% addressing poverty isn't going to make it go away. Many of histories crimes were committed by the WEALTHY not the poor and even before capitalism existed people wanted what other people had (Crassus of Rome, any european monarch, hell Bernie Madoff). They can be REDUCED and the solutions you suggest will help but get rid of? No. For all humanity's virtues we have a lot of built in flaws and those are going to be in play no matter how hard you address society's problems.

2.) I mentioned Clarence Ray Allen. Cyril Smith and the Westminster pedophiles were rich assholes who preyed on children. Jimmy Saville was a predatory monster. Coral Eugene Watts was a depraved kid from the very beginning and became a monstrous serial killer. Marc O'Leary was a depraved serial rapist who claimed hundreds of victims before he was finally stopped. There are people who are simply evil. They're not the majority but they exist and there need to be some ways of dealing with them (And making them outlaws is foolish since they'll just continue their crimes in that case).

3.) Maybe that works for some people; personally I think that rehabilitation is only sincere if someone genuinely realizes what they did was wrong and wants to make amends.

4.) Every single attempt to put communism into practice on a large scale (outside a family or small commune) has been a miserable failure. I'm entirely comfortable dissing that ideology as a worthless failure (though I will concede that abolitionism is more complicated and has far more merit). Playing down the failures as "not true communism" is a No True Scottsman fallacy and rather Trumpian in that it denies association with a failure.

PS

My stance is "Serial killers and evil people exist, therefore completely getting rid of prisons is impossible." They can be reduced but eliminated? No. Not gonna happen.

[loomer]

1.) Even if it were 95% addressing poverty isn't going to make it go away. Many of histories crimes were committed by the WEALTHY not the poor and even before capitalism existed people wanted what other people had (Crassus of Rome, any european monarch, hell Bernie Madoff). They can be REDUCED and the solutions you suggest will help but get rid of? No. For all humanity's virtues we have a lot of built in flaws and those are going to be in play no matter how hard you address society's problems.

Yes, and? The fact remains that the vast majority of crime is currently constructed along socioeconomic grounds that disproportionately affect the poor, and that the majority of thefts are petty theft to support drug habits or out of economic opportunism. No one is saying that anything but a perfect utopia would eliminate crime - just that, as you note, it can be reduced. Under the current scheme, they can be reduced rather enormously, and pointing to the fact that monarchy is theft does nothing to refute this, nor to justify the existence of a police force.

2.) I mentioned Clarence Ray Allen. Cyril Smith and the Westminster pedophiles were rich assholes who preyed on children. Jimmy Saville was a predatory monster. Coral Eugene Watts was a depraved kid from the very beginning and became a monstrous serial killer. Marc O'Leary was a depraved serial rapist who claimed hundreds of victims before he was finally stopped. There are people who are simply evil. They're not the majority but they exist and there need to be some ways of dealing with them (And making them outlaws is foolish since they'll just continue their crimes in that case).

I'm sorry, but a list of awful people is not evidence that they can't be rehabilitated or controlled in non-carceral settings. Please actually address the point. Also, what exactly do you think outlawry does?

3.) Maybe that works for some people; personally I think that rehabilitation is only sincere if someone genuinely realizes what they did was wrong and wants to make amends.

And you are incorrect.

4.) Every single attempt to put communism into practice on a large scale (outside a family or small commune) has been a miserable failure. I'm entirely comfortable dissing that ideology as a worthless failure (though I will concede that abolitionism is more complicated and has far more merit). Playing down the failures as "not true communism" is a No True Scottsman fallacy and rather Trumpian in that it denies association with a failure.

Of course, no one introduced the idea of 'not true communism' in this thread, nor argued that there has been a successful implementation of communism. It's one of your annoying tics that you insist on raising the idea of communism as naive at every opportunity without realizing that it's not an effective rhetorical device in any way.

PS

My stance is "Serial killers and evil people exist, therefore completely getting rid of prisons is impossible." They can be reduced but eliminated? No. Not gonna happen.

You still haven't demonstrated that prisons are an effective response to 'evil people'. Please do so.

[Darth Yan]

Basically I think that if someone is dangerous they need to be contained in some form or other. If someone's an outlaw it means anyone can kill or persecute them....which often leads to them committing crimes. I don't see how constant round the clock monitoring is going to help either. As such I do feel some form of containment away from society is necessary.

I'm not even saying have the massive prison complex we have now or jail people for minor crimes (again I'm all in favor of community service for minor shit, agree that decriminalizing drugs would lower arrestwr offenses ; I'm simply saying that there are a few rare cases when incarceration will have to be done. What I don't understand is why so many abolitionists are all or nothing when it comes to prisons; the idea that ANY Incarceration at all is necessary seems to baffle them.

I really don't get it.

[loomer]

Basically I think that if someone is dangerous they need to be contained in some form or other. If someone's an outlaw it means anyone can kill or persecute them....which often leads to them committing crimes. I don't see how constant round the clock monitoring is going to help either. As such I do feel some form of containment away from society is necessary.

Constant round the clock control is the point of containment. As for outlawry - bingo. So no, they won't tend to just repeat their crimes, because they will no longer be able to show their face in the society without being killed.

I'm not even saying have the massive prison complex we have now or jail people for minor crimes (again I'm all in favor of community service for minor shit, agree that decriminalizing drugs would lower arrestwr offenses ; I'm simply saying that there are a few rare cases when incarceration will have to be done. What I don't understand is why so many abolitionists are all or nothing when it comes to prisons; the idea that ANY Incarceration at all is necessary seems to baffle them.

I really don't get it.

You're saying that abolitionists are idiots, and then failing to justify your premises. Again - explain why prisons are the model to deal with these problems.

[Darth Yan]

1.) Outlaws often waylaid people on the road and stole their stuff. What's to stop them from doing THAT

2.) Not entirely; I'm pointing out that containment of some kind is necessary, and I don't see how surveillance the entire time is going to work. Prisons for all their flaws DO contain people and ensure they won't hurt others again, while also (if done differently) open up the possibility of rehabilitation.

Maybe saying they're all idiots is wrong. That was strong. I DO think that in some cases their proposed solutions are unworkable and that some of their ideas are naive.

[loomer]

1.) Outlaws often waylaid people on the road and stole their stuff. What's to stop them from doing THAT

The part where we no longer live in a world where that's a viable occupation. You know, the same 'the world is bigger now' line you've been trotting out?

2.) Not entirely; I'm pointing out that containment of some kind is necessary, and I don't see how surveillance the entire time is going to work.

Here's how: You hire a few people to come and work around the clock doing it, just like you do in a prison, but for a specific person rather than a mass of people.

Prisons for all their flaws DO contain people and ensure they won't hurt others again, while also (if done differently) open up the possibility of rehabilitation.

Again, you aren't demonstrating any way that the carceral model is either, a, better suited to preventing harm and fostering rehabilitation, or b, the only route to achieving these goals. Your position requires that this be the case to hold up.

Maybe saying they're all idiots is wrong. That was strong. I DO think that in some cases their proposed solutions are unworkable and that some of their ideas are naive.

And that's great, except you can't actually demonstrate why beyond vague appeals to human nature and the existence of 'evil people'.