Crime punishes long after release: no distinguishing between types of crimes or that the debt was paid (Nietzsche, 53)
Prison is supposed to be a temporary time-out for transgressors yet it turns into lifetime of judgement. Davis’ prison abolition hits the mark of tenuous prison sentences. It is this demeanour that further devalues the individual.
Davis makes some impressive points concerning the flawed incarceration of non-violent crimes and its impact on race and gender. The issue with ideological tenants certainly plays a major role in the mass influx of prisoners. Locking people up for using drugs or for being black. False charges to hurl those different away. Yet Davis opens pandora’s box without supplying a solution for violent criminals. The idea of prison is itself a modern notion away from sovereign punishment. An idea modernised with the shuffled gore. Harris argued that free will is an illusion and those who commit heinous crimes couldn’t have done otherwise. Promoting psychiatric help over isolation. While Davis supposes the racial aspect even insinuating that much of black crime is racially initiated. To some extent Harris would concur but he hasn’t incorporated the nurture variable insofar as the neurological falsity is a failure. Since people are a byproduct of both nature and nurture, their neurological pathology is not their fault, thus they must be helped instead of prosecuted.
In Davis’ world, if funds are adequately relocated then crime will end. Crime does connect with wealth. If everyone was wealthy then nobody would have an issue with anyone else. Yet there is crime from jealousy or lust. It isn’t only greed. Middle class people can do so out of religious or political leanings. It is not always a racial nor an economic point. Though Sowell points out that Jews were hustled every time they succeeded while other denominations failed. Koreans and Lebanese have also faired in the same way. Excelling and then persecuted for their success. He dubs these people middle-class middlemen. Looking back to the Middle Ages peasant Christians in disgust of Jewish success would riot and kill Jews pushing the monarch to expel them immediately. Under this guise, it wasn’t that Jews killed Jesus but that they were excelling so Jews killing Jesus came to the forefront. This didn’t occur in every conflict but it was frequent. Economics is the root of evil. Raise the poor and the problem will be solved.
Such a solution to Sowell’s socio-economic theory has never worked. For this to occur, redistribution would be done so expansively, compelling a government to steal assets from the middle-class and the rich for the poor. It also suggests that economics would salvage the issue. Also, the world doesn’t work that way. People will find difference. Even if all the houses and cars are the same, otherness will be discovered. A dystopian reality were eden lies is still riddled with desire. Just because economics are good doesn’t mean everything else good. Bullying is not from economics but power relations. While mass scale polemics have an economic backdrop that doesn’t indicate that other problems will desist. Economics is but one variable of jealously. A crush lost to another man or envious of another woman’s beauty. The competitive aggressive spirit is lodged in the human brain. Neurologically, violence is seemingly inevitable. Desire is the root that stretches into various branches. Cutting off one branch does not end the foundation. Erasing prisons does not end crime. Solving the economic issue which is a big if, would lesson crime but may also aggravate other areas.
Preoccupied with the economic side forgets the other elements stifling peace. Difference is sowed into interpretive conclusions. Each side has two adequate personas. A debate of which should be prioritised. The duality is an inherent part of humanity. The dialectic only serves the oscillating prognosis. One side may win but it doesn’t make the point objectively true nor usher in the utopia. If anything, many a time the theme of the old is manifested in the new. The south practiced slavery and the north wage slavery. Even Douglass argued that it may have been better to be a slave in the south than a freeman in the north. There are tradeoffs. A master provides for his slave lest he die and not work. An employer doesn’t care. Do the work get paid and leave. The master is responsible for the slave not so much the employer. Having a brutal master versus a brutal empower. The slave must endure while the employee can resign. The employee is free outside the office while the slave is always under the master’s command. Is slavery an ontological evil? Maybe, maybe not. Is slavery wrong? Depends on the circumstances. Many westerners may not like that answer but there is a truth to the pro-slavery side. Just like communism is evil in most minds so is slavery.
A world governed by duality will reveal its flaws even in an economically sound reality. Peace doesn’t emerge from economics. The racial barrier is an ontological problem. How to change peoples minds? It is impossible. Their ideological desire is baked into their personality. There is no critical thinking, it is an obvious marker to them. Of course Jews are trying to control the world that all muslims wish to blow up the world. The level of conspiratorial nonsense is never backed up. At least believers in the fake moon landing and JFK attempt to back it up instead of stubborn yelling. So for Davis, establishing institutions to prevent crime is the way to go but what are these is unclear. The ideological foothold prevents these apparent institutions from doing anything. A novel idea but one that fails to comprehend the depth of people’s emotional linkage to their ideas. Preventing crime ideologically must seek to campaign against parental education. If parents teach their children that black people are bad then that slogan on repeat will persist in the child’s mind through their teen years. Therapy for all children to escape the clutches of indoctrination is itself indoctrination. The level of bias exists in the home, school and government. There is no escape. No level of wealth will end this.
Accordingly, her comments about the justice system are quite fare. Is prison a problem? Yes. Is it biassed? Yes. Should many non-violent crimes not be prosecuted? Yes. Does that mean that they should be obsolete? No. Davis fails to provide a sector for the violence and even non-violent dangers. She fails to demonstrate how crime can be erased and prisons can be demolished. Violent people have to go somewhere. Even Harris conceded that while empathy should be accorded, dangerous people need to be removed from the public scene. The jarring case of the dead South African girls’ parents is truly astonishing. Yet that is subset of people. What they did is abnormal. Their level of mercy is unmatched. Yet should one be so forgiving despite the circumstances. Obviously context is necessary. If someone gunned down my brother because he was Jewish or black I wouldn’t forgive him so quickly nor potentially ever. People can change but until that change happens, there will be no mercy from me. There is nothing wrong with bearing a grudge against one who has wronged you terribly. More so, their crime deserves a punishment. Though maybe it should be up to the individual instead of the government.
Whether a murderer has the capacity to choose or not is debatable. Though it is the state that imprisons people. It steals the burden away from the victim and takes charge of the situation. One may be prosecuted for murdering the murderer. Revenge killings in the west are illegal. Even if they are first provided due process there is no salvation for the family. The family suffers while the murderer lives off taxpayer money. Why is that fair? The victim has lost his wife and the perpetrator can still breath? Maybe the state shouldn’t have that ability. Maybe it should be in the hands of the victim. The scenes from Law Abiding Citizen only further fit into the corrupt legal system. Murderers don’t even go to jail striking a deal with the state. The state chooses who goes to jail not the law. Though a fictional movie this takes place in the real world. The tragedy is that bad guys do not always get locked up. Bad guys go free and the victim suffers. Yet even if the bad guy is rotting in jail how is that any remedy for the victim? Just deal with it. Isolating the bad guy releases him from sight but not from this world. He is still mooching off of the victim’s taxpayer money. Hurting him evermore for the rest of his life.
Are prison’s obsolete? Maybe. Yet Davis’ crime-less utopia is a paradise of buddhist overhaul. Suppressing desire and overcoming the obstacles of yore. The justice system needs to be reformed for wrongfully and dubiously persecuted citizens and for scandalised and rebuffed victims. Prison is a problem but its job is the state’s power not humanity’s devil.
No comments:
Post a Comment