A 6'4" 220 pound pacifist. And he's concerned how he'll fare. What a shitshow we are.
A 6'4" 220 pound Krav Maga instructor.
A pacifist's plan to survive the violent world of prison
61–70 of 136 posts
Re: A pacifist's plan to survive the violent world of prison
#62Earlier quoted context omitted.
As a Canadian, 10 YEARS for a non-violent property crime??? What.
This is typically what "tough on crime" means in the US. Not that they will catch violent criminals faster or better, but they will prosecute minor crimes as if they were violent crimes. It's how many politicians leverage the fear of crime to get elected. Our criminal justice system is broken where innocent people should fear getting incarcerated because: 1. Almost everything is a crime and 2. Every crime is prosecut…
And the most frightening part... the public who eats it up with glee.
Re: A pacifist's plan to survive the violent world of prison
#63This is a bleak reminder that prisons are a crime against humanity, no deserves to live in constant fear for their own survival. Not only that but prisoners are a very vulnerable population often exploited for labor, medical experiments and general abuse.
I agree there's a lot to be done to reduce the number of prisoners. But at the end of the day, what do you do about members of society who greatly harm others? (murder, rape, etc)? I can't think of any effective solutions which aren't prison, death penalty, or prison-disguised-as-something-else (like a hospital). Maybe exile? What's your philosophy in those cases?
Well, you're in luck. The majority of people aren't in prison for this, they are just exposed to this because they are in prison.
The guy in the article is in for 10 years for burglary due to a drug habit.
Re: A pacifist's plan to survive the violent world of prison
#64Earlier quoted context omitted.
Sorry but this is ridiculous. Your solution to inmates having crappy lives is to impose even more arbitrary restrictions on them? This would make sense only if they could voluntarily go outside for a smoke whenever they want or go to a special smoking room or whatever.
> Your solution to inmates having crappy lives is to impose even more arbitrary restrictions on them? What about the other prisoners and guards who don't smoke having smoke imposed on their lungs? Isn't that ridiculous? I'm suggesting we make this fairer, by not forcing inmates to breathe poisonous fumes in addition to serving their sentences. What makes prisons special compared to every other indoor public space (in…
For one, prisoners are generally not allowed to step outside for a cigarette at their leisure
Re: A pacifist's plan to survive the violent world of prison
#65Earlier quoted context omitted.
The societal failings like prisons existing in the first place? The police and courts who supply a steady stream of fodder to the prison-industrial complex? The legislators who create innumerable and overbroad laws to give the above carte blanche to abuse vulnerable groups? By all means, let us get rid of all of these things.
Where would you put a rapist, if not in a prison?
If you look at California, for example, you can literally verify that many registered sex offenders live just a few blocks away from any given person. The thing with prison mentality is that people forget that most crimes don't carry life sentences and that ex-cons eventually go back to the streets.
So the question becomes how do you reconcile the secretly dark desire to wipe undesirables off the face of the earth forever vs a legal system that says that people do have the right to live normal lives after they've paid their debts to society. There isn't really a viable middle ground here. The current status quo is to just spend ungodly amounts of tax dollars deferring the dilemma to X years in the future. But when the time is up, either you wait for a relapse and go through the whole thing again, or you just accept that society wants undesirables banished and just kill them all all the time to free resources, or you come up with some reasonable reintegration strategy where people are ok living near ex-cons. Most people would probably balk at the idea of unconditional life/death sentences, under some tautological idea of justice. You can see small scale cases where reformed murderers claim to have found god and built families, and whatever. The challenge is that there's a lot of very strong stigma as soon as you leave tight social circles and that's where the relapses often come from.
Re: A pacifist's plan to survive the violent world of prison
#66Earlier quoted context omitted.
a large portion of the US electorate sees drug users and criminals as inherently violent. It isn't a fact or a conscious choice but rather a belief built from the constant narrative of tough on crime. It is also fundamentally, systematically, and intentionally racist.
Why is it intentionally racist to hold the perception that drug users and criminals are inherently violent?
It isn't intentionally racist to hold the belief...but the belief is an intentional construction to justify racist policing.
Off the cuff and reducing a complicated discussion to somethign simple you can start here:
https://medium.com/equityorg/reefer-madness-the-racist-roots...
The early representations used to vilify marijuana were part of jim crow efforts to ensure racial hierarchies. They included representations (later reused with crack cocaine) of Black and Hispanic people using drugs and then being sent into a violent frenzy where they murder and kill white people.
The modern versions of this are more subtle, because they aren't being made explicitly but rather are part of a narrative societal norms is built on, which makes the entire discussion fuzzy and implicit. C.f. ...
the magical negro, and white people's belief that Black people actually have magical powers and super human strength - https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/pdf/10.1177/194855061455364...
and as an extension...
excited delirium, which is an invented thing used to justify violence by police and drug people and is often correlated with a presumption of drug use - https://www.brookings.edu/blog/how-we-rise/2020/08/10/how-ex...
With excited delirium, 'symptoms' may include "attempts at violence, unexpected strength [see previous paper]...Complications may include rhabdomyolysis or high blood potassium". Those complications happen to also be side effects of narcotics people are injected with...the 'diagnosis' is much much more likely to be applied to Black people (https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/28990246/)
it is a disease, invented by police, that only seems to occur when police are involved and suspect drug use, that is disproportionately applied to people of color, to provide a post hoc rationalization for violence comited against them.
Re: A pacifist's plan to survive the violent world of prison
#67I'm glad we're starting to move the conversation and American laws towards decriminalizing drugs. With Oregon leading the way last week. Focusing on helping addiction not ignoring it and shaming people will go a long way to breaking the cycle
It isn't enough. Legalisation needs to happen, even for things I wouldn't touch. It isn't just about breaking a cycle, though not shaming addiction is helpful. It isn't just addicts that do drugs: I've met folks that do cocaine twice a year, for example. Few folks are addicted to LSD, and most folks only take MDMA occasionally. There is more than one way to take heroin, and folks do use occasionally. All drugs I woul…
Last sentence is especially valid - decriminalization does absolutely 0 with organized crime earning tens of billions every year from all addictives. The same folks that deal in kidnappings, ransom, contract killing, weapons smuggling and many more.
As a bonus health of patients(addicts) is not deteriorating so rapidly due to crap they take along with actual drugs, so bonuses go back to whole society in form of lower costs of general healthcare. Imagine cigarettes that would be killing 10x more slowly/less often. Smokers would often die of old age and not in 1-5 years of super expensive agony. Safer methods of applications can be used.
The benefits just mount for whole society. All it takes is general acceptance that there will always be some part of society that will want to get high / calm the existential pain, be it physical of psychical.
Re: A pacifist's plan to survive the violent world of prison
#68Earlier quoted context omitted.
True, and our focus should be on correcting the societal failures that lead to people ending up there. Because prisons aren't going to away. But we can all agree that we should help people who need it.
As a Canadian, 10 YEARS for a non-violent property crime??? What.
Came in here for this comment.
As an European the United States needs proper reform of its judicial/law system, or whatever you call the dreadful thing where you can imprison a person for 10 years because of non-violent property crime. Unfortunately I've read that the new VP had built her career partially on being tough on crime, hope that those people were wrong/lying or (if they were correct) that she'd be able to see that that's not the best road going forward.
Re: A pacifist's plan to survive the violent world of prison
#69Earlier quoted context omitted.
True, and our focus should be on correcting the societal failures that lead to people ending up there. Because prisons aren't going to away. But we can all agree that we should help people who need it.
The societal failings like prisons existing in the first place? The police and courts who supply a steady stream of fodder to the prison-industrial complex? The legislators who create innumerable and overbroad laws to give the above carte blanche to abuse vulnerable groups? By all means, let us get rid of all of these things.
You might want to look at the historical status quo before prison - I highly doubt you would approve of public floggings, mutilations, and quickly carried out (from trial at least) executions. Prison requires cheap enough food or a high ransom to be viable as an institution to allow keeping them working and some means of ensuring they cannot escape or fight successfully - potentially guards as well.
It can be a historical running dark joke - "Sadly still qualified as an improvement." such as slavery technically being a bit better than early human warfare ending in genocide either directly or indirectly (forced out of all territory capable of sustaining themselves).
That doesn't mean we shouldn't try to do better (ones with far better recidivism rates should be a model for one) but given the history it isn't a failing in itself - that would suggest a shift away from widespread killing and mutilating people was a mistake.
Re: A pacifist's plan to survive the violent world of prison
#70Earlier quoted context omitted.
Where would you put a rapist, if not in a prison?
If you look at California, for example, you can literally verify that many registered sex offenders live just a few blocks away from any given person. The thing with prison mentality is that people forget that most crimes don't carry life sentences and that ex-cons eventually go back to the streets. So the question becomes how do you reconcile the secretly dark desire to wipe undesirables off the face of the earth fo…
That's a whole lot of words to not answer my question. Where would you put unrepentant rapists, if not in a prison?