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this post was submitted on 17 Oct 2023
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chapotraphouse
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i think these are decisions that would probably be made on a level higher than a locality, but who can say their shape just yet. my personal opinion is pretty hands off (i.e. if they really democratially decide to kill someone, i'm fine with it) but the party or region could most certainly forbid it
but something like a prison system has to be centrally organized, and it's not popping up overnight if one neighborhood wants to put a murderer in it. the 'state' or whatever regional/national organization ought to have the alternatives to prison already organized so cases people might want to apply 'prison' to would be much simpler to put there instead of recreating prisons from scratch
I think we're on different pages to an extent. I'm talking about how this actual case, today, should be handled. Or very similar cases in the near future. I think you're talking more about how things should work after we've created a leftist society.
Isn't that just lynching? That's how it would play out in most places today or in the near future, which is what got me thinking we're not exactly talking about the same thing.
What alternative would be appropriate here? And what do you do with the guy if he does not voluntarily participate?
the dude will go to jail, probably. what's the point of this diagnostic? we don't have a say in how this is going to be done, and if we aren't imagining "how things should work" there's nothing more to say. prison abolition is not an actually existing social system we can sub in for capitalist prisons, and the praxis right now is focused on prisoners' rights & trying to keep people out of prisons.
I'm not asking what is likely to happen, I'm asking what you, as a prison abolitionist, think should happen. The only constraint I'm adding is that we have to work with people as they are today, not hypothetical people educated in a possible leftist state, who we can postulate would be open to all sorts of radical things.
If you let the immediate community decide on what to do with him, the community of today will likely decide to kill or imprison him. I don't want to put words in your mouth, but it seems like an abolitionist would oppose both of those. So to me, "let the community decide" is not a satisfactory answer.
You bring up alternatives to prison. OK, what sort of specific alternative should be on the table? Put yourself in the shoes of the state, with the state's resources. Is it something you could get people today on board with? I'm not asking facetiously; you can get today's people on board with prison alternatives for lesser offenses.
And what do you do with the guy if he does not voluntarily participate? Can he be held in custody for any amount of time, even if he says he will flee if released?
i don't know if you're trying to catch me in a contradiction or what, prison reform is unrealistic and largely unpopular while people are still so indoctrinated and blind to alternatives. people's minds have to be changed. even my optimistic instincts would not be confident that making this guy pay reparations and work for the community the rest of his life would be acceptable to the victims' community, maybe they'd take exile as an option that wasn't confinement or death. i think we should expect to make concessions to expedience and lingering retributive justice-brain in transitional stages---like in Cuba
the state would not expropriate a murderer-landlord's property & employ the guy building public housing or teaching anti racism, these are fundamental things to capitalism. you've got to appreciate that moving the needle on one issue requires moving others, we can't do prison abolition without abolishing capitalism, we can't abolish colonialism without abolishing capitalism. having difficulty imagining or rectifying contradictions in the conditions for one thing under capitalism does not mean it is unworkable, it means we've got a lot of work to do.