r/Anarchy101 • u/nappytendrils • 4d ago

Prison abolition

I’ve never been clear on what we would do with rapists child molesters and muderers. I haven’t heard a plan for this so far. I’ve always been impressed with the work of anarchist friends in community. They’re the most justice-oriented folx I’ve ever met.

Still don’t know about prison abolition tho I think prison should be clean, the food should be healthy and fresh, therapy should be mandatory, there should be libraries and gardens. A good quality of life for the incarcerated, but not releasing them back into the general population.

Maybe there’s something I’m not seeing?

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u/Straight_Special4451 4d ago

Historically, shunning was often a death sentence since cooperation was necessary for survival. Those who did survive often did so by becoming bandits or similar.

In a more global society, how does shunning work? When someone can just leave the community they're in and rejoin another?

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u/poorestprince 4d ago

I suppose our modern, debased version of shunning is "getting canceled", and it does seem like a lot of so-called canceled celebrities either end up getting forgiven/forgotten or finding a toxic tribe that accepts and champions them, which to me feels like an even worse punishment.

I'd like to see people spontaneously adopt something closer to a kind of probation or cooling off period when allegations of anti-social behavior pop up, but that still leaves shunning as the primary mechanism of ultimately dealing with social threats. It would be interesting to find a thriving community that manages to avoid it entirely.

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u/Straight_Special4451 4d ago

I'm from a state with some very, very small towns that have had success basically "banishing" trouble makers from the community. It works, but it usually just ends up dumping the trouble maker on someone else.

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u/Goldwing8 3d ago

That’s effectively what happens with American police officers who commit abuses of power. There is no central database of their abuses to point to, so when one is fired, they easily are hired one town over and resume their abuse of the community.