I don't like what prisons do to people's minds. I think that all the evidence clearly demonstrates that they are complete failures at rehabilitation and indeed make things worse. It does this by taking someone out of the market for a long period of time, so they have both a felony record and no recent employment history when they do go to look for work. It does this by placing them in constant contact with criminals as their nearly-sole company for years or decades.
They are hugely expensive things given that they don't work, and not just expensive in terms of money. Think of all the American men (and some women) whose lives are being wasted guarding prisoners. Whatever you think of the prisoners, people who are fit to be prison guards could be better employed in some gainful occupation.
I thought of this today while reading up on CECOT, the prison in El Salvador that is much under discussion. It is an immoral entity, as close to Hell as men know how to create on earth; America ought to have no part of it. It at least does not pretend to be reforming anyone; its conceit is that no one will ever leave it again, and thus the harm caused by their transformation through suffering will be contained within its walls. If that is what is wanted, executions would be a kinder and far more efficient way of achieving the same result.
The 8th Amendment should bar our government from making use of it, since neither a sense of honor nor morals seems to bind the government to much. Yet I reflect that it is no worse than, and indeed quite similar to, the detention centers we helped set up in Iraq to which we contributed many detainees. Like at CECOT, the Iraqis ran the prisoners together, perhaps in the hope that the rival gangs or rival Baathists/Islamists would punish each other.
Instead, as you will recall, that is how ISIS came to be forged. They learned to work together and became something worse and more effective than either had been alone. The transformative harms done to them were not, after all, contained forever behind the terrible walls.
10 comments:
I did not vote for Trump the first time, because I was afraid he would be thin-skinned and take opposition personally, getting us into wars and unnecessary domestic confrontations. He did little of that when president, and what confrontation there was I thought was driven largely by his opponents. I also thought disruption was necessary and a fair bit of unintended consequence was simply unavoidable and voted for him the second time. This last time I thought the need for disruption was even more dire and was prepared to overlook a great deal of misstep to get there.
But this is now back to my first worry. He has never been good at taking advice but he has become even more impervious. If we want to blame Democrats and liberals for creating that, fine, but in situations like this the end result matters. I do not trust his instincts here.
What should be done with the prisoners the US is sending there?
Mostly I don't think they should be prisoners: abolishing prison is the main thing. Deporting them to somewhere other than a prison would be a start. Especially not to the worst prison anyone has been able to conceptualize, one that clearly violates our own constitutional protections even for prisoners. As I said before, I don't think the US Government should be allowed to outsource constitutional violations; paying someone else to do it doesn't make it right.
There are definitely things Trump is doing that I think need to be done, especially wrestling with the budget issues and fighting fraud/abuse/waste. Dismantling the parts of the bureaucracy that have been engaged in unconstitutional censorship efforts, or efforts to manipulate the populace through funding NGO networks that lean left, is also valuable. The trade wars are kind of a tossup; I get the argument, and they could work, but they could also blow up badly.
This police-state stuff, though, I'm quite sure that I oppose. It's not just unconstitutional but evil, and we should have no part of it.
I am leaning toward your side generally in getting rid of prisons (though I have reservations), and certainly in this case CECOT seems both unconstitutional and immoral. I also agree that the govt should not be allowed to pay private actors to do things govt itself is forbidden to do.
However, I believe these are Venezuelans and Venezuela refuses to take them back. I doubt any other nation wants them except under the condition that they be prisoners, as they are cartel foot soldiers.
We could declare them unlawful enemy combatants and shoot them. We could put parachutes on them and air drop them into Venezuela. We could build 8th Amendment-friendly prisons for them here, or require El Salvador to change their treatment to be acceptable (as we are paying them).
Do you have other suggestions?
Putting aside any El Salvadorans we've sent back that ended up there, the Venezuelans, I'm fairly certain, could get out simply by Venezuela asking for them, as they are their citizens. Interesting they are not. But ultimately the blame lies with the 'civilized' world and it's disgust with execution as punishment.
One possibility is the one that Israel has suggested for the Palestinians, namely, that EU states or others who feel they are being treated unfairly accept them as refugees. We could send them to live in Ireland or Spain, or any other state that cares to voice a concern about how we treat them.
Rehabilitation is ideal. Unfortunately, there are people for whom that ideal is not applicable. Some of them happen to be members of organizations such as MS-13, the Crips, Hamas, or the like. Therein lies a problem for which I have no good solution that fits the current understandings of laws and justice.
LittleRed1
Yeah, that seems like another good option.
I suspect we'll need to change those understandings to solve our current problems.
Post a Comment