#punitive justice
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Tbh I think literally everyone who is heavily invested in the call-out sphere needs to hear this
Also wow who would've figured that a trans woman would have a nuanced view on fervent persecution and punitive justice I wonder why that could possibly be
#transmisogyny#callout culture#its almost like those who are dedicated to obsessing over callouts always frame it as bettering the community by rooting out bad actors#when in reality they are nigh invariably the one doing the most harm to the space 🤭#youd really think after years of callouts failing to actually better the community people would realize#that maybe this is the wrong approach#and that it takes a lot more than publicly shaming and ostracizing an individual to make a community more safe for those in it#hot allostatic load#punitive justice
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I dunno man something about telling rapists and child molesters 'oh you poor angel, none of the crimes you did were in any way your fault and anyone trying to say otherwise is a poopy head that's literally worse than Hitler, have some tea and a hug!!!'1111 doesn't quite sit right with me. If anything, letting them off the hook like that seems likely to make them think they can get away with it so they'll do it more.
I can only assume this is because you recently ran across one of my posts about restorative justice, so I'm going to pretend for a minute this ask is in any way good faith and tell you: that's not what restorative justice is.
There are two equally necessary parts to moving away from a punitive justice system: prevention and restoration. Prevention is identifying the root causes of crime in society and addressing those to stop more crimes from ever happening, and restoration is addressing the crimes that do happen in a way that focuses primarily on helping the victim recover and secondarily on making sure the perpetrator doesn't re-offend.
And the thing is, we have copious evidence that punitive justice does not deter crime, help victims recover, or make criminals less likely to re-offend. Just look up any study whatsoever on the subject. If it did, the U.S. would have the lowest crime rate in the world, because we punish more of our citizens than basically any other country on earth.
But in fact, our crime rates are pretty bad. Our incarceration rate is ridiculously high. Our prisons are largely for-profit, which means they are actually incentivized to keep people longer and create conditions that guarantee that people re-offend. Which is what happens. People who've been to prison in the U.S., even for a non-violent crime, are far more likely to end up back there, and to become violent, because of the conditions they endure in prison.
Not only that, but the people actually in prison are not, by and large, murderers or rapists. Most of them are there for non-violent crimes such as drugs, or petty theft. Lots of them are there for "crimes" such as existing while black. Less than 2% of rapes are actually punished in the U.S. already. So we're already effectively telling rapists, with our current system, that they can get away with it. They are getting away with it.
And murderers? Look into the number of unsolved murders in the U.S. Or hell, read up on basically any American serial killer. You'll find that the reason they were able to kill so many people is not, as cop shows would have you believe, because they're evil geniuses who are hard to catch. It's because our current system didn't work to stop the crimes until they had piled up so high they couldn't be ignored any longer. Because our current system is not actually structured around preventing crime or protecting anyone except those in power.
And most victims are not restored by our criminal justice process. They are re-traumatized by it. Again, look at any study. Or, you know, talk to someone who's actually been through the legal process from that perspective.
And once you've done that, ask yourself: Are you really worried about restorative justice letting rapists and murderers get away with it? Or are you simply unable to imagine anything else, because punitive justice, while completely ineffective and in fact counterproductive, is all you've ever known?
#punitive justice#restorative justice#crime prevention#punitive justice is not justice it's revenge and control#ask box#anonymous
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punitive "justice" (ex: carceral system) will not save us and is a quite depressing stance on human nature and life. people can change. people can grow. people deserve basic rights, period. none of us benefit from a world where people who have done wrong are given no option but severe (and often permanent) punishment... especially not on a sociopolitical level. this is a bad thing, even putting aside the fact many of the people punished have not done anything wrong, or "wrong enough." people shouldn't have to be innocent for you to care, or at least acknowledge punitive measures don't actually change anything.
#softspoonie#rehabilitative justice#prison abolition#abolition#abolish prisons#carceral state#punitive justice#justice#antipsych#antipsychiatry#<- cause ykno. psych wards as punishment#abolish the police#acab
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It is extremely apparent that the politics of the majority of Western left are based far more on finding acceptable targets than any interest in learning about and uplifting the downtrodden.
The Second World War was never about rescuing Jews or opposing Nazism; that was a happy side effect that has since been used to rewrite history with the Allied as liberators of the oppressed rather than self-interested genociders themselves who were responsible for the rise of Nazism. Your "punch Nazis" rhetoric is simply buying into the mythology of USAmerican imperialism that conveniently glosses over the fact that they never gave a single shit about Jews before or since, that their beef was with the Japanese, and that they nuked 200,000 human beings and disabled their children for generations.
Protecting, decentering, learning, uplifting the vulnerable, and practicing compassion instead of pursuing punitive justice, is the project of social justice. If you're in it to "punch Nazis", "eat the rich", and "fuck terfs", you're just a useless self-serving shithead who just wants an excuse to visit violence on somebody without consequence. By the time the only defence against Nazis is to punch them, it's already too late for their victims.
#social justice#anti-semitism#genocide#world war ii#nazism#colonialism#american imperialism#propaganda#racism#classism#trans rights#western leftists#punitive justice#restorative justice#knee of huss
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“I'm sorry that we have a society that doesn't provide adequate support to people like you. I'm sorry our justice system is not oriented toward the needs of victims.” What I need is people to do things like that behind fucking bars so no one else has to experience it. What I need is a justice system that brings people who do those things to justice. Not to let them roam free and hurt people again and again and again. What is keeping those men you’re talking about from doing it again? From taking someone else’s livelihood away? Nothing.
Call me crazy, but I don't think prisoners deserve to be raped either.
What you refer to as justice is actually punitive justice, which is what we have now. The idea behind punitive justice is that punishment = justice. It's "an eye for an eye," the idea that the way to repay a victim for a crime is to create equivalent harm to the perpetrator. Except, I'm sorry to say, seeing another person suffer has never cured PTSD. Seeing someone suffer has never undone suffering that already occurred.
Reparative justice is victim-centered. It asks "what actions would create the best outcomes for the victim and would prevent others from being similarly victimized?" It provides mental health resources and other monetary support to people recovering from trauma. It looks for systemic issues that allowed the crime to occur - is an abusive environment being fostered? Are there oversights not being properly maintained? How did we as a society fail these people? It determines the best course for rehabilitation for the perpetrator, how to keep them away from potential victims. It is not "let them roam free and keep hurting people," but it's also not needlessly cruel for the sake of punishment, because punishment is not the point and because subjecting perpetrators to trauma makes them more dangerous, not less.
Again, I'm sorry you're feeling so bad today that you feel the need to lash out at others. Most people who do harm to others are in pain, but that doesn't make the harm okay. Please reconsider the way that you are projecting your pain into the world. It may feel gratifying in the moment, but ultimately it makes you feel worse.
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the reality of what cancel culture has become is a practise that actively and maliciously stunts growth, rehabilitation and reform. and when those who are still engaging in cancelling challenge this, they say that cancel culture isn't real, and that it's just accountability.
accountability now has become a buzzword associated with vindictive behaviour, and it's more likely for people to be more averse to holding themselves "accountable" now, than if they'd been asked it say, ten years ago.
not that accountability has a specific enough definition, practise and moral grounding to work as an idea when it comes to doing or saying things that hurt others. what accountability has become in the age of cancel culture, is removing yourself from support systems, platforms, financial stability and boundaries of your personal life, and if one doesn't take "accountability" willingly, you're forced into it by the cancel brigade. it's punitive, and punitive justice doesn't work.
let's equate cancel culture and accountability with USA and UK justice systems for a moment, hypothetically. these are countries that operate with a punitive justice system, and we only need to look at data to know that it doesn't work. for example, the reoffending rates in the UK within 8 years of imprisonment is 77%, cited here, and in the USA, "within three years of their release, two out of three former prisoners are rearrested and more than 50% are incarcerated again."
both of these countries use prison systems that function on punishment of the offenders, and gratification of the public. it's very similar to the whole notion of throwing tomatoes at those in the stocks — the public gain gratification from watching criminals have their basic rights, freedoms and support systems stripped away. and in these prison systems, offenders are dehumanised, insulted, physically harmed, berated and isolated.
this is painfully similar to cancel culture. those who are cancelled are dehumanised, insulted, isolated, berated, and yes, sometimes even physically harmed. there have been cases of cancel culture leading to murder and suicide, and what? all for the sake of those instigating it to feel a bastardised sense of gratification from what they call justice? this doesn't help people, whether they've actually done a shitty thing or not, whether that thing was severe and violent or some mean words said on the internet. and it doesn't work, because punishment and punitive justice doesn't stop those problems — it exacerbates them. it angers people who are being targeted and often, leads them to want to retaliate. and if they don't retaliate, they lose everything.
now, what does work? let's go back to comparing prison systems to justice and rehabilitation. take a look at norway and the way their prison systems function. in the 90s, norway completely reformed their prison system from punishment to rehabilitation. since that change, recidivism rates have dropped from 60-70% to 20%. and in those prisons, offenders are treated with respect, trusted with freedom, offered therapy and education, and aren't berated. when offenders are given support systems, help, therapy and kindness, they stop offending. they get better.
the same can be said for people who aren't criminals, but for instance, have said or done something that is "cancellable". even abusers, and people who have done incredibly shitty things. when given support, therapy, education, kindness, people will change. people will grow. and those behaviours that are the cause of cancellations, and by proxy, mental health crises, addiction, being at risk of attack and suicide, will decrease.
it's not a complicated issue to solve. it's not fucking difficult, when faced with the question 'how do we stop people from doing shitty things?'
the answer is there. we stop punishing them. we don't strip them of support systems, we don't publicly humiliate them, we don't simulate tragically fascist right wing practises of punitive justice, twisted gratification and policing on smaller scales in our own communities. it isn't logical, it isn't sensible, and it certainly isn't left wing.
i'm sick and fucking tired of seeing people argue that cancel culture is social justice, for a good cause, and left wing. it's none of those things, and it's high time the genuinely politically left reclaim the notion of community and kinship and help our families, friends and acquaintances instead of handing out punitive justice like armchair judges and jurors. chuck that shit in the bin and start being nice to people again.
#monad.txt#sociology#leftism#politics#anti cancel culture#cancel culture#healing#justice#punitive justice#prison systems#rehabilitation#accountability
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For most leftists, you simply gotta pick someone they don't like, and their claims of supporting rehabilitative justice fly out the window.
#punitive justice#rehabilitative justice#hypocrisy#tarantulas#sex offenders#fascists#bigots#capitalists
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There are things I fundamentally DO like about a Christian worldview
But
I feel like built into Christianity’s basic assumptions is the eventual state you see it in today?
Like on-paper it’s a wonderful, peace-loving religion about mutual aid , strong local communities, and unconditional love for your neighbors
It’s just that little tiny bit of Punitive Thinking that has to do with Hell and Judgement. Just a seed of punitive logic and it can blossom into the evangelical nightmare we see today in the USA and elsewhere
I think we as leftists need to kind of take a lessen to heart here. We cannot espouse all these beliefs of mutual aid and strong communities but still uphold Punitive State Powers or we will devolve into that which we are against some day. Alternatives to Punitive Justice need to be foundational to how we work. The Logic of the Guillotine needs to be rejected
(Google Against The Logic of the Guillotine for an amazing essay on this topic)
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of all the forms of punitive justice people fantasize about, rape has always stood out to me. like, you’re constructing elaborate scenarios under which you think rape would be justified and morally correct, but only for justice, of course! idk man, I think you just want a reason to rape people.
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Facing the Axolotl
#gods art#bill cipher#the axolotl#postfinale#my art highlights#the horror of confronting deeply buried emotions suddenly brought to the forefront by unconditional love#something something punitive justice is pointless and stupid. bill doesnt know that though#having so much fun with shapes and colors and textures#also related to->#mylongficidea
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Why I oppose punitive justice
Time for another anarchist talking point. I actually do not believe in punitive justice. I do not believe in locking people up in jail or making them pay fines as punishment (though asking them to pay for something they broke is alright). And I do even less believe in violence as a form of punishment. Moreover I do believe that the idea of punishment is rooted in a deeply flawed perception of why crimes get commited, as well as a deeply flawed idea of what justice is.
Let me explain.
I will say it again: I actually do believe that humans are in general decent creatures who have evolved to function well in groups. As such it is for the most part not our nature to commit crimes - outside of things were the crime actually is something that should not be illegal in the first place.
Most crimes, that do get committed, have one of the following causes:
It is a crime arrising from a situation committed spontanously without much prior thought.
It is a crime committed out of a desperate situation with the "criminal" not seeing any other way out.
It is a crime committed by someone in a psychologically bad place.
It is a crime committed by a true believer who believed himself to act justly.
One of the first ideas of punitive justice is that it somehow deters people from committing crimes, because they will think to themselves: "I do not want to be punished." But this just ignores the actual reasoning behind those crimes.
Someone who commits crime spontanously (which is a lot of violent crime, actually - most violent crime is not committed by someone who has gone somewhere with a plan to commit violence, but rather arises out of people unable to deal with emotions) does not think about the consequences in the moment.
Someone in a desperate situation often just does not see themselves having a choice. Examples of this can both be that person killing an abusive partner or parent, or the person stealing bread from a supermarket, because they are otherwise going to starve.
Someone who commits crimes because they are psychologically in a bad place (by which I do not even mean the serial killers, though some of them surely also fall under this umbrella - rather I am speaking of people who are prone to violence, have habbits or are forced into crime through addiction and the like) often will not consider possible outcomes either.
And the last kind of person usually tends to believe they are in their right to do whatever. This might be those abusing partners, as well as a ton of people committing hate crimes.
So, yeah... Punishment does not deter people from crimes. We even do have statistics on this showing that often enough in the places with the most harsh punishments there are more crimes getting committed than in the places with softer punishment.
Now, when it comes to the entire idea of justice... Two wrongs do not make a right. Punishing someone does not make the crime undone. Especially given that the punishment often lasts much longer than whatever the actual sentence is, due to societal prejudice against anyone who might have been imprisoned once.
Don't get me wrong: I do think there are some cases where people might need to be somewhere under lockdown, because otherwise they will not stop dealing in violence. The "true believers" often belong under this category. And some people in psychological emergencies, too.
But they should be kept secure for that reason: Security. Not to punish them for their crimes.
Punishment does not make a society safer. At best it satisfies some vengeful lustings of a society. And if we do not (and we cannot) satisfy an individuals lusting for revenge... We should also not do that on a society wide scale. Rather we should focus on making the world safer for everyone.
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Yeah it’s cool and all that Lyanna Mormont and Wylla Manderly are such vocal Stark loyalists. But it’s actually quite important that they share names with two of the most important women in Jon Snow’s life: Lyanna Stark - his mother, and Wylla - his wetnurse and rumored mother in universe. Such stunning loyalty from these two girls who are named after women so important to Jon just tickles all the key parts of my brain. These are the women who gave him life. And it’s even more poignant when we realize that by ADWD, when the girls are declaring their loyalty, Jon is the KiTN who bears the name STARK per Robb’s decree.
#jon snow#asoiaf#valyrianscrolls#lyanna mormont#->#lyanna stark#wylla manderly#<-#wylla the wetnurse#Lyanna couldn’t press her son’s claim and wylla had no power#so little Lyanna and young wylla step in for them#and do what they can with the little power they have#though they may not truly know what it means#I’m sorry but jon is like at the very heart of the gnc - however big or small#the conspiracy by itself is really about love - love the north has for the Starks and esp ned stark#but then we have Jon a product of love - lyanna’s wylla’s and ned’s#and he has been named KING#it’s why a stark comeback can’t be punitive vengeance#it has to be about restorative justice - the return of love to the north where fear and hate once ruled#let stannis do the avenging#but let jon bring love when all is said and done
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Us: Shaming, ostracization and other systems that use punishment as deterrent just leads to making unintended collateral of people who are themselves vulnerable and marginalized. Because abuse and systemic violence is rooted inequality, and you will never have more power to punish the privileged than you have to endanger the oppressed. This is why abolition exists. Protecting the victimized has little to do with punishing the guilty.
Some screaming wannabe cop in the notes: YOU'RE ON THE SIDE OF BIGOTS IS THAT IT??? YOU WANT BIGOTS TO NEVER HAVE TO FACE CONSEQUENCE???
Before you say ACAB you need to stop thinking like a cop: that society needs punitive justice and intimidation to maintain order. Otherwise your only problem with violence is that it's not you that's weilding it.
#acab#abolition#carcerality#ableism#social justice#inequality#mental health#ocd#knee of huss#punitive justice
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Genuine good faith question, are you okay with nazis being alive? To be an absolute abolitionist and to compare sexual predators and hate crime murderers to over persecuted and policed populations is insulting and reeks of privilege. A black man put in prison for being a victim of the system is not equal to someone raping a child. Yes, prisoners do deserve to be treated with dignity and to receive help but to live in a society where no one is punished is begging for victims to be thrown to the dogs.
Hey anon, this is a GREAT question, because the very way that you've posed it points out a lot of the problems with the way we as a society are taught to think about "justice." I also apologize in advance, because this is a question I couldn't answer with less than an essay.
Let's start at the start: "are you okay with nazis being alive?" There's an assumption in this question, which is that Nazism is an intrinsic, immutable quality of a person. The phrasing suggests that the only way to end Nazism is to kill everyone who believes Nazi ideology. This statement suggests the death penalty as a punishment for Nazism.
People are not born as Nazis. They learn Nazi ideology. And you know what? They can unlearn it. People unlearn it all the time. So what's the statute of limitations on our death penalty for Nazis? If someone espoused Nazi ideology ten years ago but has since been deprogrammed, do we still have to kill them? What about if they're in the process of deprogramming and still slip up and say fucked up things sometimes? Or let's take a less radical approach. We try to deprogram them first. How quickly do they need to progress before we decide they're irredeemable and have to die? How far do they need to progress? Is it enough for them to stop using hate speech or do they have to become 100% liberal before they're allowed to live?
But I concede that you might have been talking in extremes and don't actually want to use the death penalty as a punishment for Nazism. Maybe you just want to send them to prison. In that case, I've got bad news for you. If you think that prison reduces the number of Nazis in our society, you don't know very much about American prison systems. Prisons churn out way more Nazis than go into them.
Next you claim that I am comparing "sexual predators and hate crime murderers to over persecuted and policed populations" by being an absolute abolitionist. First, the post you're referring to actually begins by discussing how you can talk about under and over-prosecuted populations and correcting those disparities without abandoning abolition as an end goal.
Second, your statement confounds two different categorizations: "sexual predators and hate crime murderers" is categorizing people by what they have done, while "over persecuted and policed populations is categorizing people by an entire population segment to which laws are applied (presumably, racial and sexual minorities). Mixing those categories, you end up stepping on your own toes, because people in over-policed populations can and do commit under-prosecuted crimes. The reverse is true as well. So what do we do with a poor Black rapist? How about a wealthy white drug user? Do we need to prosecute one or the other more or less?
This leads into Critical Legal Studies, the discipline which gave us the Critical Race Theory that folks like Tucker Carlson are so afraid of. CLS at its most simplistic posits that, because laws are created and enforced by people in power, they maintain current balances of power. If laws are created by people who have employees not those who are employees, an employee who steals $100 from the cash register will face steeper punishment than an employer who denies their employee a $1000 final paycheck. Drugs used more in Black communities (crack) will have longer sentences than those used in white communities (cocaine) even if they are very similar. And we can break our backs trying to fight back on every little systemic imbalance in the way our laws are written, but according to CLS, these are an unavoidable bias in the nature of law itself. Changing who is in power only changes the direction in which that bias points.
What does that have to do with how a "black man put in prison for being a victim of the system is not equal to someone raping a child"?
I'm glad you asked!
Rather than sitting around trying to figure out the most equitable way to punish people, a more effective approach is to step back and ask, "Why are we trying to punish them?" (I'm a big fan of asking "why" over and over and over again like a three-year-old until you get to the root question.) We're trying to punish them because they did something harmful. "Why is punishing them the correct response to doing something harmful?" Because not punishing people "is begging for victims to be thrown to the dogs."
Is it?
According to the National Survey of Victims' Views, most victims do not feel that punitive justice meets their needs. Most would prefer shorter sentences with a stronger investment in rehabilitation. About 75% want a stronger emphasis on accountability through programs like community service and mental health treatment. About 75% believe time in prison makes people more likely to commit another crime rather than less likely.
In short, punitive justice does not make victims feel safer or like they are less likely to be victimized again.
More than half of people in jails and prisons in the US have a mental illness. People with mental illnesses are more likely to be victims of crimes than perpetrators, but for those who are perpetrators, untreated mental illness very likely played a part in their criminality. Prison makes mental illness worse, not better. Prison is inherently traumatic and people who go into prison without a mental illness often leave with one.
Prison is a place that a person survives, and survival mentality generally decreases one's capacity for empathy. This means people often come out capable of committing more atrocious crimes than they could stomach before going in.
People who go into prison a little bit racist? They come out Nazis.
All of this is to say that punitive justice falls down when you ask, "What are we trying to accomplish?" If we're trying to accomplish making society a better, safer place to be, reformative and reparative justice are the obvious choice. If we replaced prisons with compassionate but intensive mental health treatment facilities that assessed the root cause of a person's behaviors, if we engaged our best and brightest social workers and psychologists to reeducate, counsel, and reintroduce people to society, we could actually make a better, safer society. This includes helping sexual offenders to identify how they dehumanize their victims to justify their behavior. It includes deprogramming racist and other extremist ideologies. It includes helping child abusers to realize that they are perpetuating trauma and abuses done to them as children.
The only situation in which punitive justice makes sense is when the answer to, "What are we trying to accomplish?" is, "I suffered, and now I want to see other people suffer."
And if that's someone's goal, they probably have a lot more in common with some of those criminals they want punished than they do with someone who want to make the world better.
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I don't know if this still happens cause I'm not too involved with the Fuuta side of the community, but when I was first getting into Milgram I remember being somewhat annoyed at how much I saw Fuuta's murder being watered down to just "Haha twitter user was twittering". And I still feel that way, not because I think Fuuta should be specially punished for his murder, but because in a series full of murders that anyone could commit when placed into their shoes, Fuuta is the character that I think exemplifies the fact that any of these prisoners could be you if you were placed into different circumstances.
#tw cult mention#tw suicide mention#haru chats about milgram#I would talk more in detail about what I mean but it's 1 AM and I need to be up for school so like#Just pretend I talked your ear off about internet cults of punitive justice and purity culture and how often teenagers get harassed into-#-offing themselves on these damn sites because of people'e desire to be the 'good guy' and 'the hero'#I've both observed and met so many Fuutas in my life and doubley so people who have been in his circumstances#Out of all the prisoners he by far feels the most real to me#And considering how much I've praised Yamanaka's character writing for how real he makes the characters feel despite their actions#that's saying a lot#milgram#milgram project#fuuta kajiyama#kajiyama fuuta#milgram fuuta
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