Prisons Are an Abomination

http://churchlife.nd.edu/2019/02/26/prisons-are-a-biblical-abomination/

by pan_cogito • 7 years ago

55 96 7 years ago

churchlife.nd.edu

tathougies7• 7 years ago

Wow this is something else. The historical revisionism and simultaneous appeal to Catholicism is ridiculous.

While prisons have many problems and the church has spoken against poor treatment of prisoners for many years, the opposite conclusion -- that we should abolish prisons -- is nowhere to be found in the compendium of social teaching. Moreover, the idea that prisons should serve a purely restorative role is a modern invention. While restoration is certainly one goal, catholic teaching also commands just punishment for crimes. The issue today is disproprotionality in the sentence when compared with the crime committed.

Had the author stuck to that point, he would have had a good essay. Instead he claimed all prisons are immoral. This is simply at odds with the Catholic social teaching that just societies must seek temporal justice on behalf of the victimized

Claims that prisons did not exist in the past are met with obvious skepticism when you read about the apostles being imprisoned for sedition as well as the catholic moral commandment to visit the imprisoned. Long sentences are of course more common today as the power of the state has grown, but this is not something to be criticized since many prisoners who have long sentences today would have been swiftly executed in the past.

(Focusing on catholic teaching here because its from notre dame and Villanova)

rpiguy3• 7 years ago

I commented myself then deleted it because your rebuttal was more elegant :-)

As a father of daughters I am personally glad that prisons exist and fully understand the issues with incarceration, but gladly accept the trade-off (like many moral dilemmas the optimal choice may differ from person to person). Were I African American and more likely to be wrongly imprisoned, I might feel differently.

badfrog6• 7 years ago

As a father of daughters [...]
Were I African American [...] I might feel differently.

Why can't you incorporate women's issues into your world view without having daughters? Or civil rights issues without being black?

pavlov• 7 years ago

"As a father of daughters I am personally glad that prisons exist"

How does one follow from the other? I also have daughters and it hasn't affected my view of prisons one way or the other.

chasingthewind• 7 years ago

The implication that being the father of daughters has some kind of special relevance for one's views on prisons strikes me as poorly thought out. At best it comes across as paternalistic.

thisisweirdok7• 7 years ago

Yikes dude. You should feel empathy because women and black people are fellow humans, not because you _are or have fathered_ someone in those groups.

daeken• 7 years ago

As a father of a daughter, I particularly enjoy snow cones. Non-sequiturs are fun!

When my daughter was born, my mom asked if my views on the death penalty (which I have historically opposed) have changed. When I said no, she asked "if someone hurt her, wouldn't you want them to die?" And I had to think about this, because yes, I probably would. But what I want and what is right aren't necessarily the same thing.

Our entire justice system is fucked, at every possible level. If I put my daughter in the shoes of every victim out there, how would that possibly help me see things more objectively and make things better? You need to think outside your experience.

ConceptJunkie6• 7 years ago

And it's nice to see Catholic teaching represented clearly here. These days, Catholic social teaching is being distorted and downright misrepresented by many people (including the current Pope because of his sloppy and imprecise language).

We absolutely must practice mercy and forgiveness, but not at the expense of justice and security. St Augustine's doctrine of just war does not contradict Christ's admonition to "turn the other cheek".

andrepd• 7 years ago

social teaching is being distorted and downright misrepresented by many people (including the current Pope because of his sloppy and imprecise language)

Isn't catholic social doctrine dictated by the pope?

tdb78932• 7 years ago

I'm unclear as to where you are getting your idea of what is "correct" Catholic social teaching? I was always taught what is "correct" is essentially what the Bible and the Church say.

webmobdev2• 7 years ago

I haven't read the article. But wanted to add to what you said.

While you mention Christianity (specifically catholicism) and its influence on modern American criminal / prison system, I personally believe that the American criminal system is more influenced by the Islamic Sharia system when it comes to punishment.

Under the Islamic Sharia system, the laws are very harsh - you steal and your hand is cut off, you rape someone and you are stoned to death, you commit adultery and you are publicly lashed and so on.

But the Sharia also allows the victim (or their relatives) to forgive the perpetrator (with or without some compensation, usually money) in the spirit of Islam.

The American criminal legal system is modelled similarly - the punishments for most crimes are absurd - for e.g. US courts sometimes award absurd punishments of 200 years of jail time. Like the Sharia system, once punishments is awarded and carried out the system ensures you end up broken (in spirit, if not physically).

Where as in a Sharia system the victim decides on being compassionate or a "fair" compensation in lieu of a lesser punishment, in the US system this power is held with the government. And this is used as a bargaining chip to make "deals" with the accused (note that I don't say the guilty, as sometimes even the innocent make such deals afraid of the harsher punishment if they were to lose the trial).

(From what I have read, some of the founding fathers of the US were admirers of the Islamic empire and their political and legal system influenced by Islam).

SolaceQuantum2• 7 years ago

I don't really know if I agree with the premise of this essay, mostly due to its deeply religious argument. Beyond its intense spirituality however its message is quite clear- the writer considers prisons to be a horrific phenomenon, and because horror is a reaction of morality, a morally unacceptable phenomenon.

The writer goes on to emphasize that prisons are morally unacceptable, but also importantly the normalization of imprisoning humans to be morally unacceptable.

bdhess• 7 years ago

The author probably only finds confinement-as-punishment morally unacceptable because he believes that just punishment will be meted out in the afterlife anyway. If you take away the assumption of religion, there's really no argument left.

SolaceQuantum2• 7 years ago

I believe the discussion on the morality of making imprisonment the default choice is pretty interesting:

"But we are not merely allowing the abomination of the prison. We are promoting it (and in popular culture and politics, romanticizing it). And in the case of the very limited number of those with deeply disordered desires, we are taking the tremendously difficult task of healing, a task best addressed locally, in families, neighborhoods, and communities, and elevating it the level of the state, where rationalized violence compounds and conceals the real harm that must be addressed."

ConceptJunkie6• 7 years ago

If he's appealing to Catholic social teaching and using that thinking, he's definitely missing the point.

No proper Catholic would think, "We don't need to punish people now because they'll get theirs in the afterlife". That is absolutely not a Catholic view for a number of reasons.

badfrog6• 7 years ago

Why was the word "biblical" removed from the title? It definitely seems relevant to know that this is a religious argument.

adsadadsad• 7 years ago

Probably something like the BBC, certain words are removed from the lexicon of main stream media.

badfrog6• 7 years ago

To clarify, the actual article does have "biblical" in the title, it was just removed from the HN submission.

hopler4• 7 years ago

HN leans atheist in its subject matter, to put it mildly. Bordering on censoro.

mLuby2• 7 years ago

Article says to abolish prisons and instead focus on healing. But as long as there are criminal opportunities, some percentage of baseline humans will want to exploit them, whether due to rational economic decision-making or quirks of their neurological or psychological makeup. Either way, once there are people with criminal intent, it becomes necessary to limit their possible actions to both limit harm to the community and to facilitate healing. So while we may get away from literal barred cells as other solutions become available, the idea of imprisonment is not going anywhere.

fcarraldo• 7 years ago

But as long as there are criminal opportunities, some percentage of baseline humans will want to exploit them, whether due to rational economic decision-making or quirks of their neurological or psychological makeup.

Can you cite a source on this?

watwut• 7 years ago

Psychopats and sociopaths will. Per observation, plenty of non-psychopaths and non-sociopaths are pretty good at rationalizing harmful behavior. Also, there is no period in history where people who not tried to break the law.

leetcrew• 7 years ago

obviously they can't, but it seems to be true throughput the recorded history of civilization. the burden of proof is probably on those who want to refute this claim.

alexpetralia• 7 years ago

Not to be rude, but is that not self-evident?

Is the reasonable counterargument that we can achieve 0% of people with neurological/psychological abnormalities, or that there will never exist a rational, profit-making opportunity to break the law?

badfrog6• 7 years ago

the idea of imprisonment is not going anywhere

I don't have any ideas off the top of my head, but I think it's definitely worth exploring alternative deterrents and punishments to see if there's anything equally effective and more humane.

mLuby2• 7 years ago

There's an excellent exploration of near-future and far-future alternatives to our current lock-em-up approach in Isaac Arthur's essay on Space Prison Colonies https://youtu.be/s_B_CJ3yieM

jdboyd• 7 years ago

The article adddress your point as well:

There may be good reasons to tolerate abominations, such as the abominable but justifiable deformation of the human person that occurs when a surgeon amputates a limb to save a patient from a disease. Prisons may be abominable, but they are necessary for community safety (often serial killers and child molesters are invoked here)—we must allow one abomination to prevent other abominations.

umvi4• 7 years ago

Just as anger marks our reaction to encountering a wrong and love marks our reaction to encountering the good, horror is a moral emotion marking our encounter with an abomination.

"If something makes me feel bad, therefore it is bad. If something makes me feel good, therefore it is good."

Yes, prisons are unpleasant. Yes, we have a lot of people in there that probably don't belong there.

But we also have a lot of people that just can't integrate without society without committing egregious crimes no matter how many chances they get. What do we do with people like Charles Bronson[1]? Of course, fluff pieces like this don't propose any solutions, just make sweeping declarations that prisons should go away because a 5-year-old spoke a profound truth that keeping people in cages is wrong.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Charles_Bronson_(prisoner)

DanBC• 7 years ago

Put him in a secure hospital.

umvi4• 7 years ago

How is a "secure hospital" different from a "prison"? Presumably the patient can't leave, which means locked doors, barbed wire fences, etc. If the patient is violent, that means security personnel, meals through slots in the door, etc.

"secure hospital" is just a euphemism for "prison"

jdietrich3• 7 years ago

He was put in two different secure hospitals, but he attempted to murder a patient at both. The prison service and the forensic psychiatry service have thus far been unable to change Bronson's violence and hostage-taking behaviour; solitary confinement thus far appears to be the only reasonable option to protect society from Bronson.

He is an outlier and is in no way representative of the broader prison population, but he does rather puncture the case for abolitionism.

the_af2• 7 years ago

Yes, prisons are unpleasant

I think that's a bit of an understatement. For a vast number of inmates, prisons seem to be hell on earth.

umvi4• 7 years ago

Are they really that bad though compared to historical prisons? What makes them "hell on earth"? Modern prisons you get climate control, TVs, gym access, library access, (limited) internet access, 3 meals a day, etc. Not even 200 years ago, prisons were often the crawlspace under a building where the ceiling was only 4 feet off the exposed ground. If it was summer, you sweltered. If it was winter, you froze. No entertainment of any kind was provided, you couldn't even stand up straight without hitting the ceiling and you were lucky to be fed once a day.

conanbatt7• 7 years ago

After long introspeccion on the topic of prisons I finally distilled why I found them terrible. Prisons as we know them are monuments to the hatred of freedom.

If a society valued freedom as highly as possible, sending someone to prison would be such a spectacular condemnation that great accomodations would be offered. Instead, prisons serve as a demeaning punishment and eternal condemnation.

There is great moral value in taking the liberty stance: it would mean that prison would not be a great punishment for the great number of innocent and wrongfully incarcerated. And It would also be a lot easier to prosecute all kinds of crimes, as prison would not be as terrible as it is (but, if freedom valued, still a punishment)

ConceptJunkie6• 7 years ago

But then you lose the value of deterrence. I'm not bashing Norway, but if that's what our prisons were like, I think a lot of people wouldn't find them a deterrent at all, and in fact for a lot of people, they would represent an improvement in their lives.

Prison should not be cruel (e.g., solitary confinement for more than a short period of time in unacceptable), but it should still be unpleasant if it is to serve as a deterrent to committing crime, and that is definitely one of the biggest reasons we have prisons... to incentivize people to stay out of them.

everdev5• 7 years ago

Unfortunately, I think this is true.

If in a game I can steal 10 points and at most get a 1 point penalty for getting caught, I'm much more likely to give it a shot than if I get a 10 or 20 point penalty for getting caught. Plus, if everyone else in the game is cheating and getting away with it, I'm much more likely to try it too.

The problem is if you make the penalties so severe and the application of the rules unequal, then you end up with chopping people's hands off for stealing.

denom• 7 years ago

Your phrasing is really unfortunate in the sense that it limits our conception of how to deal with other humans. Yes, if we are trying to keep the malignant hoards at bay, then 'incentivize' with a whip. It's a fundamentally negative view of humanity and human nature.

hopler4• 7 years ago

Norway also has social welfare programs so prison is not anyone's best option.

Prisons aren't mainly intended to deter crime, they are for satisfying the public's vengeance lust and to divert taxpayer funds to cronies of government officials.

conanbatt7• 7 years ago

Perversion is not a solution to deterrence. Moreover, there are grave consequences to disproportionate punishment: all parts of the system would fight against it in different forms, from commiting crimes to prevent being caught, to disproportionate punishments based on the quality of the lawyers, etc.

It would be a much better deterrent to know that if a crime were committed, the punishment came swiftly: the threat of (almost) immediate jail time is much more powerful than the maybe (your life is over).

Again, if a society truly valued freedom, just losing that would be such a great punishment. When you say that such a punishment is not enough its precisely because you dont value freedom that highly.

What brought me to this path was the simple thought exercise: should escaping jail be illegal? How can it be illegal if it is a fundamentally moral act?

everdev5• 7 years ago

Prisons as we know them are monuments to the hatred of freedom

I think restricting freedom of movement as punishment is saying that society values law and order (or safety) on equal footing with freedom.

Sure, there are tons of laws that don't make sense and that don't actually make us safer.

But for serious crimes the mechanism of removing your freedom if you remove our safety actually respects freedom as having a lot of value.

And for less serious crimes, you're correct the punishment rarely fits the crime.

hopler4• 7 years ago

US prisons do far more than restrict movement. they infringe on prisoners liberties in dozens of ways unfelated to public safety, from reading material to phone calls to lifestyle within prison and more

conanbatt7• 7 years ago

To clarify: it is absolutely necessary, at least for our current toolkit, to rob someones freedom in exchange for the safety of others. But that should come at a very high cost to the punisher: that is society in general as well. Whereas today, it is common to curse someone to "rot in prison" or to suffer torture at the hands of the state, the police or other inmates. That vengeance is not sated because freedom is not valued highly.

sl1ck731• 7 years ago

People glance over and talk around it, but part of prison or punishment in general is to appease victims. I don't think there is anything wrong with that. Sending someone to a 4-star hotel after they've damaged a victim in some way will not appear as justice to the victim. Some people say that isn't the purpose of punishment, but it serves as a reason to "believe" in the justice system and processes itself, which is important.

ra1n85• 7 years ago

It’s not just to appease victims, but to prevent them from seeking out their own justice, which is a noble endeavor. Blood feuds and cycles of retribution are the state of society without the capability to deliver justice.

conanbatt7• 7 years ago

An ugly side to the fact that without prisons, people take justices on their own hands if not satisfied.

Unfortunately, it is estimated 4% of people in jail are wrongfully incarcerated. What to do about those in this appeasing stance?

gamblor9565• 7 years ago

If a society valued freedom as highly as possible, sending someone to prison would be such a spectacular condemnation that great accomodations would be offered.

This is nonsensical. If we valued freedom, we'd make prisons into resorts?

Prisons are intended first and foremost to punish criminal offenders and to deter them from committing additional crimes by removing their opportunity to further offend. If they were luxurious, you'd get plenty of people who would commit crimes just so they could keep enjoying the life of luxury you propose. Not every cares about abstract concepts like freedom.

US prisons are also not as bad as most people think. In the real world, they're mostly like Orange is the New Black, not Oz.

conanbatt7• 7 years ago

Yet US prisons do solitary confinement. It is estimated that 4% of inmates are wrongfully convicted(innocent, at least of the crime accused). Inmates have diminished capacity of communication, consumption, safety. There are a disproportionate populations in prison to respect to crimes actually committed.

Your indignation is just because you value freedom very lowly. It is true that another man's freedom is so worthless to oneself that it doesn't sate your thirst for vengeance.

cheeko1234• 7 years ago

Reminds me of Norway's implementation of prisons:

https://www.businessinsider.com/why-norways-prison-system-is...

Treating people with decency and respect, and giving them options to better their life usually does wonders.

Gpetrium2• 7 years ago

Norwegian prisons are based on the aspect that "people make mistakes, but they can improve", in other words, rehabilitation. Most countries have based their prisons on the view that prison should be a form of punishment for wrong doings.

Brendinooo• 7 years ago

I only skimmed, but...there weren't a bunch of supporting arguments in this piece, right? The argument is basically "people in cages is bad", which seems like a reasonable take if you never question why people are in there.

Anger doesn't "mark...our reaction to encountering a wrong" if our reaction is not grounded in truth.

There is plenty of room for criminal justice reform, but not by banning prisons, and not by this kind of argumentation.

_bfhp• 7 years ago

Attacking the image of God in the human is abominable, but this need not be a literal attack. Rather, a literal attack names but one species of the genus ‘domination,’ a broader category in which one imposes an arbitrary will on another. An individual can dominate, or a social system.

I am enjoying seeing anarchist anti-capitalism popping up everywhere. This professor should check out Current Affairs and Nathan J. Robinson, folk punk, Proudhon...

Just as human-made categories disguise themselves as divine, divinity is obscured by social conventions.

I feel the professor would appreciate some Buddhist teachers!

jdietrich3• 7 years ago

I hope that this article doesn't distract us from the elephant in the room - that the US incarcerates a greater proportion of its population than any other country, with no apparent benefit in terms of crime prevention. Most of that disparity has been created since the Reagan administration's "war on drugs".

The case for abolishing prison entirely is distinctly tenuous, but there's a fairly obvious case that the US criminal justice system is needlessly costly, cruel and ineffective. Most of the arguments in defence of the status quo are tacitly racist, e.g. "European countries don't need to imprison as many people because their population isn't as diverse".

Prisons may be a necessary last resort to protect the public from violent criminals, but the US criminal justice system is riddled with genuine abominations - Three Strikes laws, plea bargains, private prison contracts with minimum occupancy quotas, the high proportion of seriously mentally ill inmates etc.

badfrog6• 7 years ago

the US incarcerates a greater proportion of its population than any other country

A large part of this is ridiculously long sentences. You called out California's three strikes law in you comment. One example of this I heard on the excellent Ear Hustle podcast was somebody who was sentenced to 50 years to life for stealing $40 (unarmed) after having two prior convictions. I don't see how this is good for anybody.

jdietrich3• 7 years ago

Several other states have Three Strikes or "habitual felon" laws, so the problem of life sentences for minor offences isn't confined to California.

Gpetrium2• 7 years ago

Could it be that the "3 convictions and you are out" comes from trying to balance the fact that the system believes if someone is caught 3 times, they are likely to have done other times without being caught and that they will continue to do so for the foreseeable future (prison is not acting as a deterrent). Coupling that with the material and psychological impact on the victims, the system believes that society is better off having that person imprisoned for "close to life"?

If that is the case, society then needs to start looking at other incentives (carrot & stick) that can limit the risk of re-incidence, such as better reintegration mechanisms.

webmobdev2• 7 years ago

I personally believe that the American criminal system is more influenced by the Islamic Sharia system when it comes to punishment.

Under the Islamic Sharia system, the laws are very harsh - you steal and your hand is cut off, you rape someone and you are stoned to death, you commit adultery and you are publicly lashed and so on.

But the Sharia also allows the victim (or their relatives) to forgive the perpetrator (with or without some compensation, usually money) in the spirit of Islam.

The American criminal legal system tries to model something similar - and that is why the punishments for most crimes are absurd too; for e.g. US courts sometimes award absurd punishments of 200 years of jail time. Like the Sharia system, once punishments is awarded and carried out the system ensures you end up broken (in spirit, if not physically).

(From what I have read, some of the founding fathers of the US were admirers of the Islamic empire and their political and legal system influenced by Islam).

gamblor9565• 7 years ago

the high proportion of seriously mentally ill inmates etc.

While I generally agree with the rest of the items in your list, prison is the second best place for mentally ill offenders, with a dedicated psychiatric hospital being the best option if available. The problem is that they're isn't space at psychiatric hospitals--they're always at capacity.

Most of that disparity has been created since the Reagan administration's "war on drugs".

Drugs aren't harmless, and we shouldn't pretend like they are. Nor should we operate under the fantasy that treatment and rehabilitation are enough. Many of the mentally ill in prison are mentally ill because the drugs they abused ate holes in their brains, which is something that no amount of treatment will fix. When I was a public defender, the % was about 75% of MDOs were drug-induced mental illnesses, with the remainder being inherent (i.e., genetic) or trauma-induced mental illness.

ilovetux• 7 years ago

Drugs aren't harmless, and we shouldn't pretend like they are

Agreed, but IMO the "war on drugs" has caused far more damage than drug abuse. While there are recreational drug users they tend not to be drug abusers. Rather drug abuse usually tends to be caused by erroneous self-medication. We could help these people.

The war on drugs tears our society in half by forcing people who might otherwise use drugs in a recreational manner into a counter-culture where they feel alienated. This alienation leads to mental health disorders which are treated through self-medication which causes even more problems and a vicious cycle begins.

doe88• 7 years ago

It seems there is a shift in the terminology used - at least in the US - by explicitly referring to people being caged. This is the second article in a few weeks I read with this new language. The previous one was I think an article about the jail in NY left without electricity. I must say even if it seems at first to be a strong vocabulary it doesn't seem to me exaggerated. Maybe it will help people understand the overall inhumanity of the current situation.

Prisons Are an Abomination

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