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Joined 1 year ago
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Cake day: July 31st, 2023

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  • Bad people don’t deserve bad things. That eye-for-an-eye mentality makes the whole world blind.

    That being said, living in a society means existing within an implicit social contract. If someone choose to not uphold their end, it’s reasonable that they should lose the benefits that come with it until they agree to and make meaningful effort demonstrating that they wish to follow through if given another chance (rehabilitation).

    That’s not to say that convicted individuals should be given the privileges to walk freely among society, though. For most people, there should be options for rehabilitation away from the general public, like how Norway does it. Throw in reparations for the wronged parties, and we have a humane approach as an option to carry out justice.

    As it stands today, I agree with the other guy, though. The current system is not justice; it’s punishment. Is it a practical way to isolate irredeemable people like rapists and murderers? Sure. But it’s also used as a sledgehammer for dealing with everyone, nonviolent offenders included. It’s also needlessly cruel and exploitative, putting profits above humane treatment.






  • Mental illness treatment and rehabilitation is the path forward, but it’s not a one-size-fits all solution. I was more direct about this in my other comments: What do you do with people who don’t want help and actively refuse to be rehabilitated?

    Practically speaking:

    You can’t reintegrate them into society as they are.
    You can’t ship them off to an island in the southern hemisphere and wash your hands of them.

    Morally speaking:

    You can’t execute them.
    You can’t lock them up.
    You can’t treat them against their will.

    What now?

    ————————

    The American prison industrial complex is a privatized slavery-for-profit feedback loop, yes. It’s an atrocity that needs to be dismantled and replaced with a justice system with rehabilitation and reparation as its core tenets. But, the inevitable truth is that either prisons must exist in some form as the lesser of many evils, or you voluntarily choose to repeat the atrocities of our past.

    I’m not arguing against treating and rehabiliting people who have made mistakes. I’m arguing that championing it as the solution to prisons is either an overly-optimistic pipedream, or a hypocritical display of indifference to the idea of involiable bodily autonomy.


  • Rehabilitation and mental health care are only effective when the individual is receptive to it. This guy is brainwashed, but let’s imagine that’s just the tip of the iceberg: what if it’s just a symptom of a greater issue like psychopathy, and he just doesn’t want to be rehabilitated.

    What, then? Let him have the chance to convince others going through their own rehabilitation to join the q-ult? Keep dragging him to appointments where he does nothing but reinforce his own delusions of grandeur? Forcefully sedate him? Put him in a straightjacket and padded cell, causing maddening isolation? Give him a fucking lobotomy against his will?

    The world isn’t sunshine and rainbows. Prison is a shit option, but it’s a hell of a lot better than being rehabilitated by firing squad or 1940s quack medical procedures.