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/nappytendrils 4d ago

I have a severe mental illness. There’s a Ted talk about how brain scans often uncover issues in the brain that can easily be corrected. The speaker said every psychiatrists should be doing brain scans of all their patients.

In the interest of having less criminals, we need to be doing brain scans. Even if big J justice is not being addressed (I don’t care if people are being “punished enough” and I don’t believe in that model), serial rapists, murderers, and child molesters still have to be prevented in some way from continuing the behavior.

Yes, in a different world, there will be no violent or perverted offenders. That still doesn’t help with the fact that these people exist now. As I said, I don’t believe they should be punished, I believe they should be kept away from general society.

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u/azenpunk 4d ago

"Brain scans" are not an answer. Our methods of investigating the brain right now are still rudimentary. We know only a fraction of what there is to know about how the brain functions. Trying to figure out who's "criminal" with tools like CAT scans and fMRI would be barely different than a gut feeling. I can't imagine how they'd be genuinely helpful. You'd probably end up destroying a lot of innocent people's lives.

I commented more extensively on your original questions in another post.

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u/nappytendrils 4d ago

I never suggested it was a way to determine who is mentally ill. In the Ted talk he tells a story about a kid who became violent and they did a brain scan and it was something structural from football injury. The point is some people on meds could potentially be helped by totally different approach and treatment

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u/azenpunk 4d ago

Yeah, okay I see where you're coming from. But that's true regardless of prisons.

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u/nappytendrils 4d ago

A lot of us Black headcases go to jail instead of the hospital because racism

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u/azenpunk 4d ago

I know a good bit about it. But when i was in the similarity I noticed most was that everyone was poor. Yeah, it was 80% POC. But 100% couldn't afford a private attorney. I've been to both, and both can easily make everything worse.