@CountNullFace I'm pro-prison abolition. Replace with executions, whippings, and/or restitution depending on crime.
— Free Northerner (@FreeNortherner) January 13, 2015
Count Nothingface made a crack at libertarians wanting to abolish prison on Twitter. I happen agree with the libertarians on this one, prison should be abolished. On the other hand, I think it should be replaced with things those same libertarians might not agree with: public whippings, executions, and restitution, depending on the crime. Prison should be abolished for a few reasons: it’s cruel, it’s costly, it’s actively harmful, and the alternatives are more useful.
1) It’s cruel:
Prison is unnecessarily cruel, yet everybody seems to accept it as normal, while thinking its alternative as cruel. Why is locking someone in a hole with the scum of society somehow less cruel than a few moments of pain. If you were given the choice between 20 lashes spread over 5 days or 3 years in prison, which would you choose?
Obviously, the former. Everybody I’ve asked would choose the former. I’m sure if you even gave just criminals the option, the vast majority of them would choose whipping.
If everbody would choose whipping then that then why is whipping considered cruel while prison is not? It makes no logical sense.
(It does make societal sense though. We do it for the same reason we send old people to die in old folks homes and hospitals: decadence. We have become so soft we hate to see pain and death in the open, so rather than accept that, we inflict greater cruelty on criminals [and old folks] by locking them away where we don’t have to see them.)
2) It’s costly:
It costs $20-50k per year to house a criminal in a prison. A bullet costs a buck or less. A bullwhip costs a few hundred dollars. A person to execute the punishment will probably cost under $50/hour. We could save a lot of money by eliminating prison. Restitution pays for itself.
Now, the standard argument is that death row inmates cost a lot to execute, but that is only because of the insane legal process involved in executing someone and holding them in prison until they are executed. If we streamline the process, the cost would not be so insanely high.
3) It’s actively harmful:
Prison is actively harmful in three main ways. First, it separates children from their fathers and destroys families. A man in prison is not raising his children; his kids are being supported the state and single moms. This is not good for children, it’s not good for families, and it’s not good for the state.
Second, it separates a man from his community. Instead of being able to get a job, learn a skill, or otherwise doing something that would help him become a productive member of society, he is forced into prison where he becomes a parasite for years. Then, when he gets free form prison, he has become so used to the prison lifestyle that he can no longer function productively in the real world.
Third, it turns minor criminals into major criminals. Prison takes minor criminals and/or misguided youths, who with a bit of guidance or stern correction could be set right, and forces them into spending months or years interacting with nobody other than other criminals. This turns minor problems into major ones.
4) The alternatives are better:
The immediate objection to eliminating prisons is ‘how do we keep criminals from law-abiding citizens?’ The answer is execute them.
If an individual is so anti-social that society can find no better use for him than to store him in a warehouse to keep him from being around other people, he should be executed. It is of no benefit to society to keep a useless criminal alive in prison for years and I don’t see how keeping someone hopelessly caged for his whole life in conditions worse than we treat zoo animals is less cruel than a quick death after a good meal and an opportunity for repentance to save his immortal soul.
So, for perpetual criminals and the fully evil, execution is the superior alternative to a life of caged parasitism.
For those criminals who commit lesser violent crimes whipping is the preferable alternative (possibly castration for sexual crimes). It is at once less cruel and less destructive, yet also more of a deterrent. While everybody knows abstractly prison is bad, the full scope of imprisonment is somewhat abstract and not all that easy to grok. On the other hand, a whipping is real and visceral, it is easy to picture and the pain of it is easy to imagine. The sight of a public whipping would be a much stronger deterrent than knowing bad guys are locked up somewhere away from here.
As for the petty criminals and property criminals restitution is easily a better alternative. Make criminals pay monetary damages for monetary and petty crimes. In the case where they cannot afford to, garnish wages over time until the debt is paid. If they are unwilling to find productive work, put them into forced labour until their debt is paid.
This is better for a number of reasons: First, it avoids the problem of prison making petty criminals into greater criminals. Second, it keeps a man with his family and his community. Third, it helps, or forces, a man to become a productive member of the community. Through forced labour, he’s forced to contribute to society and forced to learn a useful skill of some sort.
For the above reasons, I think that any wise society would end the wasteful, inhuman, and cruel prison system and institute a humane, human system of execution, public whippings, and restitution.
Abolish prisons now.
As much as I hate to eat my words, I really appreciate this post. To someone with modern sensibilities (some of which I seem to still suffer from), prison abolition seems completely ludicrous at first glance. But as any reactionary knows, modernism is degenerate. And as you point out, so are prisons.
Great post, really thoughtful, Keep up the good work.
http://goo.gl/PzwoLW
In defense of Ø-Face, there’s a vast, yawning chasm between prudent judgement regarding the knotty problem of crime and punishment thereof, and something called “Prison Abolitionism”. The hint is in the -ism. As if there is one ideology to rule them all, and we, The Libertarians, have found it. The Fabric of the Universe has not communicated to us the exact correct ratio of innocent people punished over guilty people going free. Yet these evils tend to pull against each other in any human achievable system of justice. Finding the right balance requires wisdom. Not sloganeering.
That said, yes there are much better alternatives to punishing crime than the current prison system. But I suspect that phasing out of the prison system is probably a more workable alternative than abolishing. Abolition is almost never the solution, sometimes even for great wrongs.
The Libertarians have a few things right, but they have a lot wrong. Fortunately, this seems to be something that they’re getting correct, though I don’t believe that your average one would have thought through so thoroughly as was done here, in this blogpost.
You seem to be missing an obvious perk of the prison system:
The people in authority enjoy threatening their subjects with homosexual rape by proxy.
Prison isn’t a threat of isolation from society; it’s a threat of homosexual rape.
The people in power enjoy threatening their targets with rape by proxy.
They will never willingly give up that power.
Their regime will collapse, and they will still clutch at power madly.
‘If you were given the choice between 20 lashes spread over 5 days or 3 years in prison, which would you choose?’
I’d choose a 20-gauge. And it wouldn’t be pointed at myself.
Very informative and you make the case well. I actually did an article on this very topic myself with regard to public corporal punishment.
http://citadelfoundations.blogspot.com/2014/10/a-case-for-corporal.html
Added you to my blogroll, Free Northerner. Be well, brother, and keep on Reactin’!
Great OP. IIRC Moldbug once discussed how the US prison system used to work a lot better, because inmates were required to learn and practice useful trades and skills (if they refused, they would be beaten and starved), and while that has its appeal I think the arrangement you describe still sounds better for the reasons given. Somewhat similarly, I’m a believer in (controlled, moderate) corporal punishment for children, especially young children who are capable of willful disobedience but unlikely to be swayed by more abstract punishments like loss of privileges. It’s always painful to see parents trying to persuade or reason with misbehaving 3-6yo kids, when it’s blatantly obvious that the kids have no fear or respect of their authority or possible consequences.
Ultimately if would-be criminals fear the government’s punishments (within reason) and believe they will be swiftly and vigorously enforced, there shouldn’t be much need to use them.
Another good piece Free. I to favor fines, whipping and execution over imprisonment. If nothing else it cannot be any less.effective then the prison system but would be much cheaper to tax payers. Racially separate nations would be useful as well
Very interesting thought experiment.
One caveat. As you say, most would happily accept a flogging over years in prison. So there becomes an economic style trade off for those who think punishment x is an acceptable price to pay for crime x. So if ordinary people are less scared of flogging v prison, then it would quickly become obvious that tough guys, hardened crims and masochists would happily pay the price of corporal punishment.
So, if I’m motivated enough, I can beat the crap out of that guy I hate knowing full well that the price is x number of lashes.
The system would need variety (fines, forfeiture and flogging) and serious escalation of punishment (1st offense 10 lashes, 2nd offense 100, 3rd offense 500 etc…) in order to catch out those who could game the system.
Excellent analysis. I spent a few hours in jail for a traffic violation, and came out knowing the basics of how to make certain illegal drugs, where to find certain drugs and prostitutes in my town, and contacts with several local criminals. This was in a small town in a mostly safe area. I can only imagine what one learns and experiences being in a big urban prison.
I talked to a teacher at an alternative school the other day. She told me she sees the same kids year in and year out. This proves my theory that there are really just rotten people, that will never amount to anything, and they will be evil, with some exceptions I’m sure, their entire lives, causing harm to others and being a drag on society. I asked her what was the answer other than killing them, and she didn’t really know, although growing up in a single family household where the parents don’t want you around was a huge cause, so I’d say providing more free birth control / abortion in combination with abolishing prisons so that dads can be around to help raise their sons would help. But I can’t help but think the real answer is getting rid of these useless creatures.
Execution is not a solution. First, you presume there is a way to be sure someone is beyond redemption, or deserving of such punishment, or in many cases, even guilty of the crime they’ve been charged with. The US has already witnessed many cases where convicted persons have been exonerated for the capital crimes they were charged with. Second, such a punishment cannot be undone if it turns out the person was wrongfully charged, which is fundamentally unjust. The State has no right to take what it cannot in some measure return. I do agree with the premise that prisons should be abolished – for the most part. It would cost society relatively little to reserve incarceration only for those charged with violent crimes which are severe enough to suggest they cannot be trusted to live among us. We as a society would hardly notice this cost. Moreover, the maximum punishment even for those crimes could be limited – as Norway already does – to 21 years (with the possibility of extension if the prisoner is still found to pose a risk). There is no other rational reason to incarcerate anyone. Those committing non-violent crimes or even violent crimes where they do not pose a substantial risk of further violence can be adjudicated using such means as victim restitution, community service, and re-education. Victim restitution is especially powerful, in that the perpetrator must face the victim, make amends and make whole what has been taken, and therefore gains a sense of being worthy of forgiveness. The victim obviously, also benefits. In many cases where property is involved, the victim sees nothing and society bears the cost of putting people in cells. In addition, our laws need to be reformed so that many of our common “crimes”, such as drug possession, are taken off the books. We would be left with a miniscule population of prisoners, costs would be orders of magnitude less than they are now, families and careers would not be destroyed, and those who must be locked up could be given individualized rehabilitation.
Thank you. It’s all true. One thing must be stressed, though. The real reason for the current system is to feed and prosper a “Law-Enforcement Growth Industry,” as the late George Gordon called it. The beneficiaries care mainly about their careers, paychecks, and pensions.