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  • Hugo Durieux, <hugo.durieux@vub.ac.be>: lived in Italy for a time, is affiliated to a research group on Fundamental Rights and Constitutionalism, and writes on topics related to complexity, metaphors, law and anarchism. At a conference in Britain, he spoke about "From blind justice to silence" (referring to John Cage's work).
  • Bram Wets: Liga voor mensenrechten bram(at) mensenrechten.be
  • David Morelli: Liga voor mensenrechten dmorelli (at) liguedh.be

Francia

Catherine Baker

Publications by Catherine Baker:

Manifeste Abolitionniste (1984)

MANIFESTE ABOLITIONNISTE

Les principes qui ont fondé la prison étaient des principes philanthropiques : le délinquant, pendant son incarcération allait réfléchir, s’amender, se régénérer. L’histoire a eu raison de ces pénibles calembredaines. On ne peut bâtir l’utopie que sur une absolue rigueur intellectuelle, or l’emprisonnement repose sur « l’espoir que ça ira mieux après », c’est-à-dire sur rien d’intelligible.

Le mot « réinsertion » était une expression assez divertissante mais qui n’amuse même plus les élèves de l’École nationale de l’Administration pénitentiaire ; il serait au moins temps d’en trouver une autre, de préférence aussi cocasse.

Ce n’est pas le lieu ici de répéter ces évidences : l’incarcération rend fou, rend malade, rend dur et avide. Personne jamais n’a relevé le défi de dire le contraire.

Et nul ne désire vivre dans un monde que d’aucuns, en prenant le risque d’enfermer des hommes, rendent plus menaçant encore qu’il ne l’est.

Dans la plupart des pays, les criminologues, sachant qu’elle est profondément nuisible, tentent de plus en plus d’éviter la prison aux « petits délinquants » ; ce n’est certes pas par bonté d’âme.

A fortiori, il est primordial d’éviter l’emprisonnement aux « vrais » délinquants.

C’est pourquoi ces lignes ne sont pas une prise de position intellectuelle (ce que nous pensons n’a rien d’original) mais un appel à agir concrètement à quelques-uns pour l’abolition des prisons en inventant les moyens de notre action.

Nous ne sommes pas des dames d’œuvre ; nous ne croyons pas, en nous attaquant à la prison, soulager les misères du monde ni contrebalancer la bestialité de la multitude par une attitude « humaine ».

Nous ne sommes pas des humanistes. L’Homme n’existe pas et nous sommes tous communément des canailles.

La prison est un symbole, nous voulons dire un signe de reconnaissance pour des gens horrifiés d’instinct de ce à quoi on nous condamne.

Mais les prisons sont aussi des choses réelles accablantes pour l’esprit, insupportables à la raison et qui doivent disparaître, simplement parce que c’est logique.

Le discours sur une prison qui protégerait les braves gens des malfaiteurs est le plus facile à débusquer de tous les mensonges. On peut commencer par celui-là pour la joie de l’esprit : on comprendra mieux ainsi le rôle de la justice, de la police et finalement de la société tout entière.

La prison sécurise le plus grand nombre à trop bon compte et entraîne chacun à se départir du moindre bon sens. La prison est indispensable au maintien de l’ordre parce que l’ordre maintient la prison. Voilà pourquoi la prison est indispensable au maintien de la prison.

Le réformisme n’est pas, à proprement parler, idiot, mais impossible : moins la prison punit, moins elle répond à sa vocation. Reprocher à la prison d’être trop pénible, c’est reprocher à un hôpital de trop bien soigner.

Il y a une question intéressante qu’on nous pose souvent de siècle en siècle : « Vous parlez de supprimer la torture mais par quoi donc allez-vous la remplacer pour extorquer les aveux utiles à la société ? » Cette question est une bonne question. Nos réponses ne seront jamais assez bonnes pour ce genre de bonne question. Aussi demandons-nous humblement une autre formulation du problème.

En attendant, nous ne voyons aucun intérêt à faire durer l’état actuel des choses qui n’est pas un pis-aller mais le pire.

Nous avons beaucoup moins à perdre à ouvrir les prisons que les autoroutes et tout à gagner en sérénité, en intelligence, en désir de réfléchir à plusieurs aux moyens de vivre à plusieurs.

Et c’est urgent.

Les courtes peines sont une mise à l’écart temporaire, inepte en soi. Mais les longues peines sont des peines éliminatoires voulues comme telles par la justice et la société : on « coupe le membre gangrené », on « arrache la mauvaise herbe », on « procède à la dératisation », autant de délicats euphémismes pour exprimer la volonté collective d’élimination, de meurtre.

Si l’on écoutait la foule, beaucoup de ceux qu’on envoie en prison seraient brûlés sur des grils, écorchés vifs avant d’être écartelés. Nous n’avons pas à composer avec la barbarie. Nous ne pactisons pas avec ceux qui ont le goût de la souffrance et de la mort en transigeant sur le moyen terme que serait l’emprisonnement. Parce que nous aimons la vie. (Quand nous ne l’aimons plus, nous l’estimons encore assez pour la quitter volontairement.)

Nous ne laisserons personne parler d’êtres « récupérables » ou « irrécupérables » ; le monde n’est cette décharge d’ordure que pour les esprits orduriers.

Au mieux, nous excluons l’idée d’opinion(s) publique(s) ; au pire, nous affirmons que le propre des opinions publiques supposées est de se laisser manipuler par ceux à qui ça profite. Quant à nous, nous ne désespérons pas de voir des individus se rallier à nos positions lorsqu’ils se seront fait leur propre idée sur la question.

En jouant le jeu d’un partage absurde entre coupables et innocents, la justice, par la pratique de l’emprisonnement, nous scie en deux et nous interdit de rechercher notre unité ; en renforçant les structures mentales normatives les plus rigides, elle fait de nous des agents mécaniques. Nous ne tolérons pas que la société, sous son avatar judiciaire, nous accule ainsi à la démence et en prenne prétexte pour exercer « naturellement » sa tutelle sur nous.

Nous n’aimons pas les taulards parce qu’ils sont des taulards. Les taulards ne sont pas plus aimables en tant que tels que les femmes, les juifs, les enfants ou les écrivains. Mais nous aimons certains individus qui ont aussi, entre autres caractéristiques, d’être écrivains ou enfants ou juifs ou femmes ou taulards.

Nous ne supportons pas d’être enfermés. Ni dedans ni dehors. Nous, les « innocents », n’avons pas plus le droit d’entrer dans les taules que les détenus d’en sortir. Même remarque pour la censure de notre courrier. Nous ne recevons pas la plupart des journaux écrits à l’intérieur des oubliettes, ils nous sont interdits.

Ce n’est pas « par respect des droits de l’Homme » que nous refusons l’enfermement. Nous ne souffrons pas davantage qu’on attache les chiens à la niche ou qu’on mette les singes en cage. Cela n’est pas une parenthèse.

Catherine Baker, an abolitionist inspired by Louk Hulsman (foto: babelio.com)

Nous combattons toute alternative à la prison qui serait aussi un enfermement « à l’extérieur » comme par exemple un contrôle social plus raffiné encore qu’aujourd’hui.

Nous ne prétendons pas savoir ce qu’est la liberté mais nous percevons assez clairement et distinctement ce qu’est l’oppression et ce qui nous empêche d’être nous-mêmes.

Nous avons besoin de présenter de l’intérêt les uns pour les autres, donc nous ne pouvons accepter d’être assujettis ni pris en otage par quelque personne ou groupe que ce soit.

Nous nous opposons à toute institutionnalisation de la force, qu’elle vienne des caïds de tous ordres, des maffiosi, de la famille, du peuple, des mâles, de l’État, etc.

Nous ne reconnaissons à personne le droit ni de nous juger ni de juger nos actes.

Nous avons tous les droits.

Le Droit n’existe pas. Il est une vision pessimiste mais néanmoins fausse de ce que sont les rapports entre nous. Il est sans aucun intérêt d’interdire par exemple le viol, mais hautement intéressant au contraire d’imaginer comment éviter d’être violeur ou violé.

Le crime en soi n’existe pas ; si l’on prend au hasard un acte cauchemardesque et révoltant (comme un employeur qui me vole mon temps, ma vie), nous ne dirons pas qu’il faut éliminer le criminel mais que chacun a intérêt à renverser les choses, à comprendre ce qui se passe et à résister à la force. Rien ne s’oppose d’ailleurs à ce que des gens qui mutuellement s’apprécient ne réfléchissent ensemble aux moyens de se garder de toute atteinte à leur intégrité mentale ou physique.

Nous ne sommes pas complices des tribunaux qui condamnent en notre nom. Il s’agit là d’une usurpation qui est une fois de plus un coup d’État.

Cela ne saurait nous empêcher de garder chacun la possibilité d’un jugement ou d’une indignation mais la société n’a pas à se charger de nos indignations individuelles.

Nous ne sommes pas de gauche. Nous ne sommes pas davantage anarchistes, ni de droite, ni des parallélépipèdes, ni n’importe quoi de ce genre. Nous sommes opportunistes si cela nous semble utile. Nous savons ce que nous voulons.

Nous, abolitionnistes, sommes réalistes – si l’on veut bien par « réalistes » ne pas entendre « experts à avaler toutes les couleuvres du sordide aujourd’hui » – mais « décidés à réaliser nos idées ».

Catherine Baker

Pourqoi faudrait-il punir? (2004)

POURQUOI FAUDRAIT-IL PUNIR ? Sur l’abolition du système pénal

Est-ce bien de faire du mal à quelqu’un ? La punition est-elle nécessaire à la Justice ? L’incarcération une solution acceptable au problème de la délinquance ? Les pages qui suivent ne répondent pas à ces questions. Elles voudraient amener le lecteur à se les poser. Nous nous interrogerons principalement sur la prison ; ce n’est pas sous l’angle de ses conditions de vie que nous l’aborderons, mais sous celui de sa raison d’être, le châtiment. Personne n’ose plus dire comme au XIX e siècle qu’elle permet aux bandits de s’amender. Elle ne sert qu’à une seule chose qu’elle réussit d’ailleurs fort bien : punir. (Nous en reparlerons très bientôt.) Mais punir est-il utile ? À qui ? Même les plus timides réformateurs se heurtent à cette évidence, adoucir les cruautés de l’incarcération s’oppose forcément à son principe : elle est une peine, elle est faite et uniquement faite pour punir le coupable, pour lui être pénible. Car le droit pénal, par définition, est fondé sur la peine. Une peine est une souffrance qu’on inflige. Est-il raisonnable d’ajouter du mal à un mal ? Platon, par la bouche de Socrate, dénonçait déjà dans le Criton l’inadéquation d’une telle réponse. On n’a pas beaucoup avancé depuis. J’entends bien que les victimes réclament la punition du coupable.

On verra que les abolitionnistes insistent particulière-ment pour qu’on rende justice à la victime autant qu’à l’accusé. Aujourd’hui dans un procès, la victime craint d’être jugée. Crainte parfaitement légitime, car jugée elle l’est. Est-elle bonne dans son rôle ? Fait-elle la victime comme il faut ? Elle est la justification de la cruauté qu’on s’apprête à faire subir à l’accusé : le spectacle de sa souffrance doit être à la hauteur. Dans tous les films pour enfants et dans la plupart de ceux pour adultes, à la fin les méchants sont châtiés et le spectateur en est content. La punition procure une satisfaction certaine. C’est un peu moins vrai dans la littérature où la liberté de fouiller ce qui ne se voit pas a permis à de nombreux romanciers de se mettre et de nous mettre à la place de qui a commis la faute. Quelques cinéastes de génie y sont aussi parvenus. Seuls les plus grands créateurs nous permettent de comprendre le crime qui autrement nous échappe, comme il échappe très souvent aussi dans la réalité à la compréhension du criminel.

Le châtiment s’ancre dans l’histoire la plus archaïque de l’hu- manité, celle des terreurs religieuses que les hommes ont traduites en dieux et déesses au cœur démoniaque. L’enfer chrétien n’a rien à envier à l’enfer hindou et l’affirmation d’un sentiment de culpabilité proprement judéo-chrétien n’est que l’aveu d’une inculture crasse. En Occident, la condamnation terrible de la faute lors d’un jugement de l’âme après la mort s’enracine dans le culte orphique, introduit en Grèce entre le VII e et le VIe siècle avant notre ère; ses origines se perdent dans les traditions védiques du deuxième millénaire, et il est vraisemblable que l’idée de la faute nous poursuivant dans l’au-delà était déjà à l’époque bien ancienne. L’orphisme a beaucoup influencé les Pythagoriciens puis Platon qui écrit par exemple dans le Gorgias que les âmes doivent comparaître nues devant les juges pour éviter qu’ils ne soient trompés par les apparences. Sous tous les cieux, les humains scandalisés de voir l’éternelle injustice du monde, l’innocent maltraité par la vie, le joyeux scé- lérat prospérer et mourir tranquille, ont cherché à rétablir dans le séjour des ombres l’impossible équité. Mais l’au-delà est sans pitié. Des macérations épouvantables étaient censées apaiser les êtres suprêmes que ce soit chez les Sioux, en Indonésie musulmane ou dans les carmels français. Pas une religion pour sauver l’autre lorsqu’il est question des supplices réservés aux damnés. Chez les Scythes, les Aztèques, les Vikings, au fin fond de Bornéo ou du Malawi, à toutes les époques, sous toutes les latitudes, les dieux réclament vengeance. Nul besoin d’être coupable d’ailleurs pour attirer leur fureur. C’est assez d’être. Ainsi naît la tragédie. Tout châtiment s’inscrit dans cette volonté irrationnelle de se soumettre au tragique. À l’origine, le coupable est celui que les dieux ou le destin désignent comme tel indépendamment même de la faute. Œdipe fait un coupable idéal : il n’est pas dit pourquoi il n’avait pas le droit de coucher avec sa mère, pas dit non plus pourquoi tout le monde avait trouvé très bien qu’il tue l’insolent malotru qui lui barrait la route, mais que ce meurtre est devenu faute quelques années plus tard quand on apprend qu’il s’agissait de son père. On n’explique pas parce que le propre du tabou est d’être affirmé et non raisonné. Œdipe est condamné par ses fils à renoncer à son pouvoir et à rester enfermé dans le palais. Auparavant le roi déchu s’est crevé les yeux. On dit peut-être un peu vite que c’est pour se punir. Pour se punir, il eût fallu qu’il se sentît coupable. Son geste n’est-il pas plutôt l’expression du comble de son désespoir face à l’injustice des dieux ? On doit punir. C’est un impératif. De quel ordre ? Quelques philosophes (pas autant qu’on pourrait le penser) ont essayé de justifier la punition. Le lecteur pressé ou agacé par les vul- garisations trop sommaires pourra s’abstenir de lire le premier chapitre. Après bien des détours, on en revient aujourd’hui à cette idée (si l’on peut dire) qu’il ne rime à rien de chercher à justifier la punition et qu’il « faut faire confiance à la tradition », quand ce n’est pas à l’instinct.

Dans les Lettres à Lucilius , Sénèque écrit qu’« aucun homme raisonnable ne punit parce qu’une faute a été commise, mais pour qu’elle ne le soit plus ». Aimable ironie d’un homme aimable entre tous qui mieux que quiconque sait qu’il n’est pas question de raison dans le châtiment. C’est bien l’esprit de vengeance des juges (professionnels ou non) qu’il dénonce dans ses entretiens sur la colère. Si elle n’évite pas les fautes à venir, dit-il, la pun ition n’a aucun sens. Par la suite, des penseurs allemands se montreront offusqués d’une telle vision utilitariste. La punition ne doit servir à rien. Rien qu’à punir. Et on se l’est tenu pour dit. En cette époque où une génération a changé totalement de repères (et non pas volontairement, mais parce que les conditions économiques et sociales mises en place par la précédente les rendent caducs), les aînés déboussolés essaient d’imposer à tous, à défaut d’un dogme religieux qui pourrait, lui, susciter dissidences ou hérésies, un signe de ralliement résolument impossible à critiquer : la Loi. Ils s’y réfèrent sans cesse. Le châtiment en est le corollaire indispensable. Chaque fois que quelqu’un dit « La Loi est pour tout le monde » ou « On doit respecter la Loi du pays qui vous accueille » ou « La Loi rend libre » ou « C’est au père d’incarner l’image de la Loi », il convient de le reprendre et de lui faire dire

« la Loi donc la punition » ; c’est moins majestueux mais plus clair. « Le châtiment est à la loi ce que le sexe est au mariage. » (Stephen Douglas).

Est puni celui qui est jugé coupable d’avoir enfreint la Loi, laquelle varie selon les groupes. Elle est l’expression du pouvoir en place : il y a la Loi du milieu, la Loi du silence, la Loi civile du code, mais, juste ou injuste, écrite ou non, elle demeure la Loi du plus fort. Établie par l’autorité souveraine d’une société, elle ne tire sa puissance, en premier ou dernier ressort, que de la force physique des gros bras à son service : brutes payées en tant que telles par une maffia quelconque ou police d’État. En démocratie, la Loi est sanctionnée par la force publique. Montaigne qui fut magistrat et à qui on ne la faisait pas, écrivait « Combien ay-je veu de condemnations plus crimineuses que le crime ? Les loix se maintiennent en crédit, non parce qu’elles sont justes, mais parce qu’elles sont loix. » Il est infranchissable le précipice entre l’équité à laquelle chacun aspire et la Justice qui fait fonctionner la machine sociale au détriment des relations libres entre les êtres. Et si cinq cents courtes années nous séparent de Michel de Montaigne, il y a deux mille ans, les Romains avaient fait, semble-t-il, le tour de la question du Droit. Ils nous ont laissé par exemple le fameux adage « Summum jus, summum injuria » que l’on traduit habituellement par « excès de justice, excès d’injustice », traduction que je trouve tendancieuse ; je proposerais « Justice parfaite, parfaite injustice » certaines de faire leurs choux gras d’une récession qui ne pourrait que rendre les pauvres plus délinquants et les riches plus répressifs.

La Justice est d’une sauvagerie rare depuis vingt ans. En France, où il a bien fallu abandonner la peine de mort pour être accepté dans la Communauté européenne, on se rattrape en distribuant à tort et à travers des peines de sûreté incompressibles. Beaucoup de Français trouvent que la mort manque. Quand on pense qu’en 1791, le comité de législation criminelle avait failli abroger la peine de mort 1 ... La durée maximale de détention était alors fixée à vingt ans !

Si l’heure est à une répression de plus en plus barbare, ce n’est pas dû en France, tant s’en faut, à l’arrivée au pouvoir en mai 2002 d’un gouvernement de droite particulièrement raide. Le nouveau Code pénal, élaboré entre 1981 et 1994 où il est entré en vigueur, est incontestablement plus sévère que celui qui le précédait. Même si 140 000 personnes sont condamnées mais échappent à la prison grâce aux peines de substitution (on verra cependant que la plupart ne seraient même pas passées en jugement avant le nouveau code), les cellules demeurent pleines à craquer parce que le temps d’incarcération est de plus en plus long. Mais si les peines sont plus lourdes, ne serait-ce pas parce que la délinquance s’aggrave ? Pas du tout. Si les prisons sont remplies, c’est par les contrevenants à l’article 19, autrement dit par les immi- grés clandestins ; nous ne parlons pas d’immigrés clandestins qui auraient « fait quelque chose », mais d’individus arrêtés et jugés pour la seule infraction à la police des étrangers. C’est un délit purement administratif, mais qui coûte cher. Par ailleurs, il y a moins d’attaques de banques depuis que partout se sont sophistiqués les moyens de protection et moins de cambriolages pour les mêmes raisons.

Michel Onfray

First underwriters of the manifesto: Philippe Bouvet, professeur d'histoire-géographie et père de détenu, Alain Cangina, président de l'association Renaître PJ2R Audrey Chenu, ex-prisonnière et auteur de Girlfight, Lucie Davy, avocate, Philippe El Shennawy, ancien détenu, Tony Ferri, philosophe, Samuel Gautier, documentariste, Yannis Lantheaume, avocat, Jacques Lesage de La Haye, écrivain et psychologue, Le taulard inconnu, détenu dans une prison française et auteur du blog du même nom sur Rue89Lyon, Thierry Lodé, biologiste, Noël Mamère, député, Gabriel Mouesca, ancien président de l'OIP, Yann Moulier-Boutang, économiste et essayiste, Michel Onfray, philosophe, Antoine Pâris, journaliste.

Abolir la prison, ses mécanismes et ses logiques (2014)

For the Abolition of Every Prison and the Logic of Incarceration (2014)

Michel Onfray (2010)
“Prison was built on the principles of philanthropy: during the time of their incarceration, the offenders would reflect, would improve, would be reborn. History defeated this sad nonsense. A prison can only be constructed on the foundations of absolute spiritual cruelty; otherwise imprisonment is just based on the hope that everything will go well after it ends, hence on something completely inconceivable”. When Catherine Baker (journalist of the libertarian movement, author and supporter of the abolition of prisons) was writing these words in March of 1984, in France there were 38,600 persons held in prisons. Thirty years later this number has increased to 69,000 and the average time of incarceration is more than double (from 5.5 to more than 12 months).
Unable to reassure a public opinion that keeps asking for more and more security, the politics that have been implemented for half a century now, lead to the incarceration of an increasing number of people, gradually transforming the welfare State to a punishing State. The construction plans for new prisons succeed one another with a frantic speed, while their instigators keep guaranteeing the end of the chronic problem of the overcrowding of prisons and the ‘humanisation’ of the conditions of detention. In reality though, as the number of cells increases, the number of the prisoners increases accordingly. Humanisation translates into a cold, sterilised environment, intense colours and electronic surveillance systems, in replacement of the old filthiness and the unhealthy dormitories. Yet, a ‘golden’ cage is still a cage; and the prisoner –or, as they are called nowadays ‘the user of public penitentiary services– remains a hamster in a cage. There is nothing, or almost nothing that the prisoner can do for the time to pass. They are occasionally offered a repetitive and underpaid job. Their correspondence? All but confidential. Their visits? Restricted, controlled and surveyed. In case of inappropriate behaviour they will be placed in the disciplinary area, a proper dungeon where the prisoner is lowered to the level of an animal. For the most indisciplined or those strictly surveyed? There is isolation, the white cell that destroys you slowly and painfully.
The list is infinite. “There is no need to repeat the obvious: incarceration makes you insane, ill, harsh and greedy”, Catherine Baker used to write many years ago. It is something exceptionally paradoxical as “no one desires to live in a world where some people take the risk to imprison some others, constituting them even more threatening than what they actually are”.
The basic punishment of the prisoner is the dead time that passes relentlessly. It is the sense of the loss of time that nibbles the body and the spirit. All the rest –the repletion of the cells, the isolation and the discipline– are nothing but different aspects of the issues that have as a result the slow death of those that society has rejected. The prisoners kill their time but it is actually the time that kills them. They grow old without having really lived and when they exit the prison we tend to say that they served their time. But time has corroded them; has shattered them. More than any other person, the prisoner is the carcass of time.
When the time of their release comes, they need to learn again how to live: to regain their autonomy while for months or years they were in a state of absolute dependence, even for the most simple of movement, having lost any kind of free will and effect of their everyday lives. They have to learn again the ‘outside’ manners, while they have spent so much time in the state of the special laws of the prison system. They have to learn again how to love and touch, while for years they were deprived of any physical contact. They have to learn again how to open doors, as for years they would only see them shutting in front of them. Finally, they have to learn again how to be complete as persons, while this could be something that they never learned in the first place.
From the international fora for human rights till the organisations dealing with prisons, through the International Prison Observatory, the General Auditor of the spaces depriving freedom or the few MPs that exercise their right to visit the prisons, the voices that denounce the conditions in French prisons increase. Nicolas Sarkozy considered them ‘a shame for Democracy’. Christine Taubira describes them as ‘numerous but empty of meaning’. And yet after all these statements we get to hear that they have to be reformed, that it is necessary and urgent to re-examine prisons, their role and target in the penal system, or event to reorganise them. “Literally speaking, reform is not unthinkable, but impossible” claims Catherine Baker: “The less the prison punishes, the less it meets its mission. Blaming the prisons for excessive punishment is like blaming a hospital for excessive curing”.
The prison is the prime condition that we should not attempt to reform, but only to abolish. Firstly, because the penitentiary institution is such, that any progress comes with the price of the equivalent regression. Thus, the institutionalisation of ‘special conditions’ of detention would allow some prisoners, but not all of them, to detour the disciplinary process. The abolition of the prison is a choice because the prison bears in it the relentless logic of exclusion, resulting in the marginalisation and impoverishment of those who were incarcerated due to their precarious place in society or their family environment. The reform of the prison is impossible, as its inherent violence causes to those that experience it hatred and hostility towards anyone else and towards the whole of society; feelings that any social body should avoid to reproduce. Its abolition is imperative because, according to all the studies, the prison has completely failed to prevent relapse and thus causes more harm than good to society.
But it should also be abolished because it constitutes a symbol. As a parasitic outgrowth of our societies, it seems to be the concentrated form of all evil. Isolation, solitude and separation are forced there at their maximum. Out there, the public space, urbanisation, architecture and transportation acquire more and more penitential features. Even in the outside world, work and the commercialised social relations reproduce incarceration, neurosis and desperation.
France was the first European country to abolish torture, besides the prudent voices of the time, supporting that without it French justice would be disarmed and the good prisoners would be left in the hands of criminals. Additionally, France was one of the first countries in the world to abolish slavery, this crime against humanity that has been committed for the past 200 years. In 1981, the abolition of the death penalty (in France) reflected a social need. Even though France was one of the first Western European countries to outlaw this absolute negation of the value of human life, the result of this action was paradoxical. Without managing to solve any ethical and political problem arising in the context of human rights, the abolition of the death penalty did not end the logic of extermination that still exists in our country. Those that we nowadays call ‘convicts serving long sentences’ are nothing less than condemned to a slow death; a social death. Having been adopted in order to respond to a strong social movement where sentimentalism was fighting with hypocrisy, the abolition of the capital punishment did not mark that much the symbolic rise of the Left (with the rise of Francois Mitterrand at the presidency of the country) but the confirmation of the limits in its thinking. In any case, the end of the death penalty ended neither death (since after the last execution of a prisoner in 1977 more than 3,000 convicts have committed suicide) nor the punishments in the prisons .
We argue that nowadays, holding a person incarcerated does not mean that you punish them: it means that you permit the perpetuation of an archaic system that is now obsolete and incompatible with postmodern societies. We demand this abhorrent practice that allows the isolation and confinement of human by human, to be thrown in the deepest dungeons of history. It is our belief that it will not be long before imprisonment is considered by humans as the most irrefutable evidence of the brutality, the moral and emotional decline that characterised humanity till the beginning of the 21st century. We deny that Justice has the right, in the name of the law, to condemn people in imprisonment.

Authors of the manifesto are the philosophers Michel Onfray and Tony Ferri, the Member of Parliament Noël Mamère, the ex-president of the International Prison Observatory Gabriel Mouesca, the lawyers Lucie Davy and Yannis Lantheaume as well as the the ex-prisoner Philippe El Shennawy.

Signers of the Manifesto: Alain Cangina, president of the association Renaître (consisting of ex-prisoners it intervenes and highlights cases of mistreatment in prisons); Audrey Chenu, ex-prisoner, teacher and author of the autobiographic book Girlfight; Lucie Davy, lawyer; Philippe El Shennawy, ex-prisoner; Tony Ferri, philosopher; Samuel Gautier, cinematographer; Yannis Lantheaume, lawyer; Jacques Lesage de La Haye, writer and psychologist; The unknown inmate, prisoner in a French prison and blogger under the same name; Philippe Bouvet, professor of history/geography and father of a detained person; Thierry Lodé, biologist, Noël Mamère, independent MP of the party Europe, Ecology and Green (European Green Party??), Gabriel Mouesca, historic member of the Basque separatist group Iparretarrak and ex-president of the International Prison Observatory (OIP); Yann Moulier-Boutang, economist and essay writer; Michel Onfray, philosopher; Antoine Pâris, journalist.

Germania

Johannes Feest

  • Johannes Feest: Is the deprivation of liberty still an appropriate sanction in the 21st century?
Johannes Feest

Uwe Wesel

  • Gefängnisse sind absurd. Eine Abrechnung mit dem System von Strafe und Vergeltung, in: Wochenpost Nr. 14, 1. April 1993: 44.

Italia

NO PRISON

[NO PRISON Manifesto]

  1. Il sistema della giustizia penale come solo dispensatore di sofferenza non è tollerabile. Neppure infliggere dolore all’autore di una strage è utile al miglioramento della società: al sangue delle vittime si aggiungerebbe unicamente una sofferenza in più: quella del pluriomicida condannato. Quanto, poi, possa essere giusto reagire al male con il male ci sembra una questione oggi priva di senso, stante che la pena retributiva rinvia all’idea di meritevolezza di pena improponibile in uno Stato laico.
  2. Eppure nella cultura patibolare che da millenni ci ammorba, alla paura di essere vittime, collettivamente reagiamo invocando penalità come sofferenza nei confronti di chi giudichiamo pericoloso perché autore di un delitto. L’idea che al male si debba reagire con il male finisce così per non essere messa in discussione, quasi fosse una ovvietà. Mentre, con spirito critico, dovremmo interrogarci su cosa possiamo fare per limitare il delitto, perché il delitto è esso pure sofferenza, dolore, male.
  3. Nella società moderna, la reazione al delitto è politicamente legittima solo se utile, cioè se capace di contrastare la criminalità e/o contenere la recidiva: cioè, se la reazione al delitto è effettivamente capace di prevenire futuri delitti.
  4. Con l’avvento dell’era moderna, la società occidentale ha ritenuto che la pena privativa della libertà – cioè il carcere – avesse sia la virtù di minimizzare la sofferenza della reazione penale, sia la capacità di intimidire i potenziali violatori dal delinquere, nonché di educare i condannati a non recidivare. Il carcere fu salutato come fulgida invenzione del progresso dei tempi: una pena finalmente democratica, perché privativa di un bene da tutti gli uomini posseduto e apprezzato in uguale misura: la libertà personale; una pena misurabile con estrema precisione: da un secondo all’eternità; una pena economicamente virtuosa, perché finalizzata ad un progetto di inclusione sociale del condannato.
  5. Le finalità di prevenzione non sono mai entrate in crisi: esse furono e rimangono a distanza di due secoli ancora condivisibili e meritevoli di essere tenacemente perseguite. Ad entrare in irrisolvibile crisi sono state invece le modalità punitive. Prima fra tutte, il carcere. Sul punto non merita insistere più di tanto: il fallimento carcerario è da tempo universalmente ed unanimemente riconosciuto. La pena carceraria aveva al suo apparire persuaso per la sua efficacia preventiva. Il tempo ci ha mostrato, senza ombra di dubbio, da vero galantuomo, che ci eravamo illusi: il carcere ha clamorosamente fallito ogni finalità preventiva della pena.
  6. I dati di questo fallimento sono davanti agli occhi di tutti coloro che intendono il vero senza pregiudizi ideologici: il carcere non solo tradisce la sua mission preventiva, cioè non produce sicurezza dei cittadini nei confronti della criminalità, ma nel suo operare viola sistematicamente i diritti fondamentali, cioè attenta alla dignità umana dei detenuti e delle loro famiglie.
  7. L’aumento della popolazione carcerata rende evidente come la paura della punizione non sia un argomento capace di ridurre i reati: lo spettro della prigione non potrà mai fungere da inibitore delle condotte devianti - come peraltro non lo furono le sanguinarie pene di un tempo – per mille e buone ragioni: perché l’agire umano non sempre è governato dalla razionalità; perché la pena che deve seguire al delitto è una eventualità solo probabile, mai una certezza; ecc.
  8. I detenuti risocializzati alla legalità, sono ovunque pochi e lo sono “nonostante” il carcere e non “in virtù” del carcere. La recidiva, in quasi tutto il mondo, supera il 70%. La stragrande maggioranza di chi oggi è in carcere non lo è per la prima volta e non lo sarà per l’ultima. Non esiste Paese al mondo che a questa regola faccia eccezione. E anche sotto questo profilo, esiste una ricca letteratura scientifica internazionale che non solo ci descrive il fenomeno, ma ci spiega anche perché il carcere – pure il migliore del mondo – non riuscirà mai ad educare alla legalità attraverso la sofferenza della privazione della libertà personale. L’esperienza oramai secolare delle conseguenze della detenzione ci insegna, al contrario, che la pena del carcere educa alla delinquenza e alla violenza.
  9. La prigione, sempre ed ovunque, viola i diritti fondamentali e compromette gravemente la dignità umana dei condannati. Certo: non tutte le carceri sono uguali sotto il profilo del rispetto dei diritti dei detenuti ed è quindi giusto riconoscere che ci sono sistemi penitenziari migliori o peggiori di altri. Ma non esiste esempio storico di un carcere capace di limitare la sofferenza del condannato a quella sola che consegue alla privazione della libertà personale. La pretesa punitiva di farlo attraverso la privazione della libertà personale necessariamente comporta che altri fondamentali diritti vengano sistematicamente compromessi: dalla vita all’incolumità fisica; dall’affettività alla salute; dal lavoro all’istruzione; ecc. Il carcere, a ben intendere, sempre più ci appare come una pena pre-moderna, come una sofferenza più del corpo che dell’anima.
  10. Il riformismo penitenziario può oggi giustificarsi solo in una strategia di riduzione del danno. Si può, se lo si vuole, limitare quantitativamente le pene detentive; si può, se lo si vuole, contenere la sofferenza del carcere. Ma questo, confessiamolo, poteva valere anche un tempo per le pene corporali e la tortura. Ma così operando non si converte il fallimento carcerario in successo. Anche il carcere migliore è nella sostanza inaccettabile. Se, in ossequio anche al riconoscimento di molte costituzioni democratiche moderne come quella italiana del 1947, la reazione al delitto deve essere rispettosa della dignità umana e perseguire finalità di inclusione sociale, il carcere – per quanto riformato – non sarà comunque una risposta soddisfacente al delitto, perché mai il carcere potrà effettivamente favorire l’inclusione sociale di chi ha commesso un delitto, perché mai il carcere potrà essere in assoluto rispettoso della dignità umana del condannato.
  11. Per lungo tempo e da parte anche di forze progressiste si è coltivata la speranza che un carcere riformato potesse trasformarsi in un’occasione di investimento pedagogico e di aiuto per la maggioranza di chi impatta con il sistema penale, che è – sempre ed ovunque – in prevalenza appartenente ad un universo di soggetti deboli e marginali. Intenzione condivisibile e pure fondata sul riconoscimento veritiero della natura prevalentemente di classe della penalità carceraria. Sì, è vero, il carcere, fin dalle sue origini, è il luogo di contenzione coatta dei poveri. Come è vero che si finisce in carcere prevalentemente perché si è poveri. - Sia chiaro: che i poveri debbano essere aiutati ci convince, come politicamente ci soddisfa la missione di politiche di inclusione sociale dei marginali. Ma ciò non consente di confidare che la volontà di aiuto e di inclusione sociale possano soddisfarsi nell’allocazione sociale della sofferenza. Fin che rimaniamo all’interno della penalità, non possiamo che essere ancorati alla cultura patibolare del dare dolore intenzionalmente e del dolore come unica moneta per espiare la colpa. Qui si annida l’irrisolvibile paradosso di ogni riformismo penale.
  12. Credere e praticare oggi una volontà abolizionista del carcere è irrealistico quanto nel passato lo fu invocare l’abolizione della tortura e della pena di morte. Nulla di sostanzialmente diverso: anche allora ai pochi che si schierarono contro, i più opposero scetticismo, accusando gli abolizionisti di imperdonabile ingenuità. Ma la storia ha dato ragione a questi ingenui: la società senza pena di morte è più sicura della società piena di forche; la giustizia penale senza tortura garantisce l’accertamento della verità di più e meglio della pratica delle confessioni estorte sotto tormento.
  13. Liberarsi dalla necessità del carcere perché pena inutile e crudele non comporta affatto rinunciare a tutelare il bene pubblico della sicurezza dalla criminalità. Anzi: per il solo fatto di rinunciare al carcere si produce più sicurezza dal pericolo criminale, stante che il carcere è fattore criminogeno esso stesso. Una società senza prigioni è più sicura, come più sicura è una società senza pena di morte. - Ma liberarsi dalla necessità del carcere comporta anche qualche cosa di più importante che ridurre le nostre insicurezze. Significa liberarsi della pratica che fa dei poveri i soli capri espiatori di una società fondata sulla disuguaglianza. Riflettete: è mai possibile che le carceri di tutto il mondo siano abitate al 90% solo ed unicamente da persone povere? Con ciò non vogliamo insinuare che la “detenzione sociale” sia il prodotto di una accentuata propensione a delinquere dei poveri. Le migliori ricerche scientifiche ci suggeriscono una diversa spiegazione: la pericolosità criminale è distribuita equamente in tutte le classi sociali, ma ad essere puniti e a finire in carcere sono prevalentemente coloro che godono di minore immunizzazione dal sistema penale, cioè coloro che sono economicamente, culturalmente e socialmente più deboli. E questa pratica di verticalizzazione sociale per mezzo della penalità, cioè attraverso il sistema penal-carcerario finalizzato alla produzione di maggiore differenziazione, confessiamolo, è sempre più intollerabile.
  14. Per educare le persone alla legalità ed al rispetto delle regole è necessario che anche le regole siano rispettose delle persone. Questa ovvietà pedagogica è un punto d’appoggio sufficiente per rovesciare il sistema intero della penalità. Perché mai siamo tanto insensati e presuntuosi da presumere di educare al rispetto delle regole attraverso la rappresentazione ed esecuzione di un dolore? Eppure così è: tutto quanto concerne il sistema della giustizia che si fonda sulla penalità è pensato, costruito, agito e giustificato per rappresentare e dare dolore. Ricordiamo nuovamente: la pena è sofferenza inflitta intenzionalmente. Non è un errore o un costo collaterale non sempre evitabile di un’azione altrimenti positiva. - Quando si invoca la legittima difesa per giustificare il sistema delle pene legali, si commette un grave errore: per invocare la legittima difesa è necessario che la minaccia al diritto mio e/o di altri sia attuale, mentre quanto la Stato castiga il colpevole, il diritto mio o di altri è già stato leso o messo in pericolo. Insomma: non si punisce per difenderci da una minaccia che ci incombe, perché oramai è troppo tardi, ma solo per dare ad altri dolore. Ma perché questo ostinato sadismo? E’ il permanere di un pregiudizio antico, quello che confida che “la pena valga comunque e sempre la pena” di essere inflitta, che il dolore sia cioè una specie di farmaco salvifico. Non tanto e non solo una medicina utile per il condannato, ma anche, se non soprattutto, per noi. Questa è la cultura patibolare da cui dobbiamo liberarci.
  15. E’, pertanto, necessario ripensare completamente a come confrontarci alla “questione criminale”, immaginando una politica di sicurezza dal delitto che sia in grado di mettere in crisi il termine stesso “pena”, che evoca solo dolore e sofferenza, ridando invece dignità ai termini che usiamo per indicare gli obblighi e i doveri nelle relazioni sociali. Più del 90% delle persone che sono oggi in carcere, potrebbero essere ben diversamente responsabilizzate e controllate in libertà: attraverso opportunità pedagogiche ed assistenziali, attraverso modalità lavorative e formative, attraverso risposte economiche, attraverso opportunità risarcitorie.
  16. Anche se ciò manderà in crisi tanti operatori e addetti ai lavori, figli di una cultura carcerocentrica, è ormai evidente che le prigioni devono essere chiuse per far spazio ad altro che sia effettivamente rispettoso dei diritti anche delle persone che si sono rese responsabili di gravissimi delitti. E’ realistico supporre infatti che avremo ancora necessità di interventi segreganti nei confronti di alcuni, ma che pensiamo siano comunque pochi, pochissimi, se l’attuale sistema definisce pericoloso solo un detenuto su cento.
  17. La risposta al delitto non può che essere un intervento volto ad educare ad una libertà consapevole attraverso la pratica della libertà. Questa deve essere la regola. Ripetiamo: nei limitati casi in cui questo non sia immediatamente possibile, solo eccezionalmente, si possono prevedere risposte di tipo custodiale nei confronti della criminalità più pericolosa, ma in quanto extrema ratio a precise condizioni: a) La perdita della libertà deve realizzarsi all'interno di strutture che salvaguardino sempre e comunque la dignità delle persone e i loro diritti. I luoghi preposti per questo non posso essere le carceri che conosciamo: esse sono state pensate per l’afflizione e la punizione e non per favorire l’inclusione sociale. Noi immaginiamo altro: altro nella fisicità delle costruzioni e nell’economia degli spazi, altro nella professionalità di chi è preposto al controllo, al dialogo e all’aiuto. b) I tempi di questa permanenza in strutture segregative debbono comunque essere ridotti al minimo e cessare in presenza di un interesse serio, da parte del condannato, in favore di programmi di inclusione sociale in libertà.
  18. Per superare la cultura della pena e del carcere e riportare le persone che hanno violato la legge alla legalità ed al rispetto delle regole è assolutamente necessario che anche le regole siano rispettose delle persone! Dalle persone non possiamo pretendere cose anche giuste ma in modo ingiusto!
  19. L’istituto della mediazione deve entrare stabilmente nel sistema della giustizia penale, in modo da poter essere applicato nelle diverse fasi della vicenda giudiziaria ed esecutiva, a seconda delle disponibilità e possibilità.
  20. La risposta alla criminalità attraverso la libertà deve coinvolgere tutti i soggetti sociali del territorio e non può più essere lasciata solo agli esperti.
Livio Ferrari, Massimo Pavarini

Also contributions from:

Neerlandia

Wiene van Hattum

Wiene van Hattum


w.f.van.hattum@rug.nl

Norvegia

Nils Christie

Nils Christie in his study

This is a text by Nils Christie (2015) that could be good for the No Prison Europe Project:

Here she is. The Lady Justice. We find her at the entrance of many courts, – in sculptures or paintings. She is a carrier of justice. Blindfolded, – no undue influence are to distract her. And as here visualized, with a scale-weight in hand. And then of course, when needed, with a double- edged sward in the other hand.

Thus, we get the message. And inside the court, more is to follow. With some luck, we find the room for the proceedings, and also a seat. May be we are able to relax for a while in this foreign territory, – until a door in front of us opens. It is the judge(s). Sometimes in colourful gowns. We all stand up. When the judge(s) are seated, we can sit down. A ceremony of grandeur: They, above us all.

Once upon time much of this was highly needed. And it still is, in some settings. When The Emperor was all mighty, and those close to him much of the same, Lady Justice was essential if conflicts between them emerged. So was also the case when the bourgeoisie gained influence.

And now?

Welfare states have emerged, at least in parts of Europe. Such states claim they are there to satisfy the need of all citizens, all those in need of welfare, in all situations. But, and that is the simple question I raise in this essay; have Lady Justice seen to it that ideals of welfare for all rule inside the penal courts?

May be it had been a good idea to move the Lady Justice for a while? Move her from the doors of the courts and over to the gates of some of our major prisons?

New equipment for The Lady

But at these gates, we would have to change her equipments. Particularly, we had to resque her from being blindfolded. The point of having The Lady at the prison-gates, would be to let her see what sort of people were passing the gates. She would soon observe that those arriving without leaving the same day, they were nearly all from the same social clas. They were from the bottom of society. Prisons are for poor people.

Study after study of prison populations in modern western societies give the same answers, as well formulated in the very title of a master-thesis in criminology (Thorsen 2010): ”Too much of nothing”. Too much of unemployment, too much of divorse and absence of family-ties in general, too much of miserable housing conditions. And we could add; too much of minority background. Loïc Wacquant (2009) shows much of the same from the U.S. in his book with the telling title: ”Punishing the poor”.

It has of course always been a tendency in this direction. The rich and powerful get away with more than the poor and miserable, at least if they do not threaten the central powers. But this stands out more accentuated the more the society where it happens sees itself as a relatively egalitarian one, and particularly where the words ”Welfare states” are added. ”More pain to the poor!” Not the most attractive banner for the penal system of welfare states!

Such states are supposed to provide welfare for all. But their penal systems represent an anachronism by not paying sufficient attention to social class. Particularly, various forms of poverty as mitigating factors when punishment is decided on . Deep in our morality is the norm that you don’t hit a person who is already down. But we do hit them, as The Lady again and again loudly would have had to report. It is as the welfare thinking has not been admitted to the penal court system.

At the gates, she might also have to change another piece of equipment: Out there, with prison guards all over, she would have no need for weapons. So, in her right hand, the duble edge sword might have been removed, – exchanged with a michrophone. Here she would become able to report on her findings: They are poor and miserable. That ought to be considered as a major consideration if they are sentenced to receive even more pain.

How could this be changed, in welfare states worth the name?

My basic answer would be: Let us invite welfare into the court – at the stage when punishment was to be decided on. Many among those waiting for trial have had a miserable life from the very beginning, acquaintances from that time might to be invited to tell. Friends and teachers from school time ought to come, and also family members of all sorts, – favourite aunts not to be forgotten. But in addition, all sorts of functionaries from the welfare system had to be asked to explain. May be the offender lived on the street, why was not his housing situation and unemployment mended? How could he have been left behind in this misery? What sort of help had she or he received. A court case like this might function as a constant reminder to the system of unmet needs of reform. Instead of functioning as an easy way out for the system of social service, – getting rid of troublemakers, hiding system deficiencies through imprisonment of unsolved needs – such an examination in court would expose weaknesses in the welfare system. Such exposure might function as a driving force for reform of the welfare system in general.


They could have been my children

At the same time, with a thorough examination of the life situation of the person to be punished, she or he would also be converted from the simple image of a “criminal” to “a picture of a full human being.

We know, from personal life experiences as well as from scientific research, that the closer we come to people who have broken the law, the less delivery of pain stands out as the preferred answer.

We got an interesting illustration of this in Norway some time back. It was a relatively high profile politician. He was well known for his stern attitudes. No leniency. But then he was to function as a lay judge in some connection. Here he was confronted with a case involving three young delinquents. It was, according to newspapers, really bad what they had done. A stern sentence was expected, but then these three youngsters received the most lenient sentences that could be conceived of. Bewildered journalists flocked around the usually so stern politician and asked if he had changed his views on penal policy. Oh no, absolutely not. Bad youngsters deserve stern punishments. But these three were not of that sort. These were good boys, at the bottom. They could have been my children!


To make them all to our children

Here lies a central challenge for penal reform in welfare states. We have to resist the anonymity created by modernity. We have to create social systems where we see each other as full human beings and where we can evaluate the acts in full social context. But this is a heavy task to accomplish. It stands in opposition to the dominating trend of our time.


The fruits of modernity

We have a tradtion in my country. Each New Year evening our prime minister at the time is on Radio and TV with wishes for a happy new year, followed with some political reflections. A central topic in their short speeches, has regularly been the need for further development of the country. No stagnation, we have to move on! It is as if we are on a train in a beautiful landscape – a good country, well run – but nonetheless, we have to see to it that we do not stop where we are just now, we must always move on, develope the land, the districts, the towns, – and ourselves.

But development has a twin-sister. Her name is mobility. And mobility has a major effect; it dissolves networks. We develope from living in tight knit communities to more loose ones. Poets might write about the blessings of open landscapes. Sociologists are, rightly so, more concerned about empty social landscapes, societies without cohesion, or even worse, about societies where we don’t know who the the others are. Neighbours, fellow students, collagues, potential friends or evil doers, – they are foreign to us in some forms of modernity. Classical descriptions are given by George Homans (1951) and Roberty Putnam (1999). Trains and cars have changed social life, you can move in and out of your community, you belong everywhere, and nowhere. Or you can retreat into privacy, away from neighbours and they from you. Electronics takes over. Sherry Turkle (2000) describes some of this inn her book ”Alone together”. And then, what has become so clearly brought in focus by Richard Wilkinson and Kate Picket (2009) and by Thomas Piketty (2014), economic distance between classes are on the increase, it becomes more and more difficult to gain a clear view of those far above or far below us.


Centralized ignorance

With developing into modernity, there is also created an opening for the establishment of large units. Modern medicine has a flora of specialities. They claim they need to be together, in case of unexpected occurrences in the borderland between them. It is supposed to give better service to the population, and might also be less expensive with one administration to them all. The small, local hospitals disappears, eaten by the mastodons.

The same trend can be found in all public services. Centralization takes place in units for social service, - and also in the organization of police. The old sheriff – “lensmann” we called him – is soon gone. He was obliged to live in the district where he functioned. He knew those he lived among, and they knew him. He is now converted to a functionary among other functionaries in a police station, often far away from his place of living. Local knowledge disappears, those who would have known the story of that strange, drunk, threatening man – they are not there to tell. A policeperson in car takes him away, and the man receives his punishment according to the tariff. May be they even found a leaf of cannabis in his pocket.

This trend toward centralization has these days also hit the courts. The lonely judge in a small-sized community is to be rescued by replacement in larger units. We have at present 66 courts in the country. The goal is to end up with 20. Small districts are to be merged with other small districts, or absorbed in larger cities. Large courts make it possible to create a community of judges, colleagues that can help each other, learn from each other, and meet as equals in and out of court. This will create competence at a high level. But with costs attached. In this situation, they will tend to live much of their social lives with their equals, that means other judges or others trained in law, or as a minimum they will associate with other highly educated professionals. But they will loose time and interest for social interaction with other people in the districts.

The case of Per and Ole is illustrative: They had always quarrelled, these two. So did also their fathers. It was that wooden fence somewhere between their two farms. According to Per, the father of Ole had one dark night moved the fence several feet, – to his advantage. But according to Ole this was because Per owed him some money and never paid them back. At a recent funeral, not a completely dry one, Per hit Ole so strong that two teeth’s disappeared. The new police chief in the modernized, reorganized and enlarged police district did not know neither Per nor Ole and the tradition behind their quarrels, and gave Per a severe fine for hitting Ole. Of course, Per would not pay. The new judge in the reorganized and enlarged court district was also unfamiliar with the family story, and Per ended up with 30 days in the new centralized prison in Oslo.


Against progress

Progressive penal policy strategies seems to me to demand elements of regression. It seems necessary to re-establish forms of social organization so that people again will become able to see each other, know each other as full social beings – and also to control each other and realize that the they also themselves are controlled.

In Germany I once come across a postcard with a central message. Two ladies, they looked a bit strict, met in the street. And the text was this: “The blessed Good sees all, but the neighbours see much more”. (Postcard in here) With crime prevention in mind, neighbourhoods ought to be strengthened and given tasks that make it important to live there and to participate. We have 428 municipalities in Norway. Authorities want the number reduced to 98. I want the number of municipalities increased, and particularly to split the few large cities we have into several independent communes, forcing ordinary people to participate with local neighbours to create functioning social systems.

And of course: Local courts ought to be preserved, and increased in number serving their local neighbourhoods. The same with police stations.

For these tasks, we need further assistance from Lady Justice. After her observations at the prison gates, she ought to move inside the doors of the city halls and say as follows: “It seems to me that the basic ideas of the welfare states have not penetrated our institutions of penal law. Most of those persons I observe moving in and out of our prisons are miserable people living under exactly those conditions our welfare state was created to prevent. Their failure in life is a reflection of our failure in realizing our ideals of welfare for all.”


Broken windows are not the best indicators of a neighbourhood in need of crime prevention. Locked doors everywhere – between apartments as well as humans – tells more about an urgent need for change.


Literature

Homans, George Casper (1951) The Human Group. Chapter XIII. Routledge & Kegan Paul.

Picketty, Thomas (2014) Capital in the Twenty-First Century. The Belknap Press of Harvard University Press.

Putnam, Robert D. (2000) Bowling alone. The Collapse and Revival of American Community. Simon & Schuster.

Thorsen, Lotte Rustad (2004) For mye av ingenting (Too much of nothing). Major in Criminology, University of Oslo.

Turkle, Sherry (2011) Alone together. Why we expect more from technology and less from each other. Basic Books, USA.

Wacquant, Loic (2009) Punishing the poor. The Neoliberal Government of Social Insecurity. Duke University Press.

Wilkinson, Richard and Kate Pickett (2009) The Spirit Level. Why equality is Better for everyone. Allen Lane.

Thomas Mathiesen

Thomas Mathiesen

Regno Unito


Nick Herbert argues against prison abolition in "The Guardian" at the occasion of an ICOPA conference. Here his text:
The British Police and Criminal Justice Minister Nick Herbert


Last week saw an International Conference on Penal Abolition. With such a heady ambition, what can be next? A global conference to abolish crime? The ambition of an eccentric minority to abolish prison isn't just dotty. It's a distraction from a real and pressing agenda, which is to reform prisons which simply aren't working.

A century ago, prisons had hard labour and treadmills. Today, they have colour TVs in cells. Jails may have changed, but the enduring truth that they are necessary has not. We will always have a small minority of offenders who, by their behaviour, pose so great a threat to the lives and property of the law-abiding majority that they must be kept apart from us. Ignoring this reality and arguing for the total abolition of prison is a hopelessly utopian goal that does the credibility of penal reformers no service.

The case for penal abolition rests on a series of tenuous assertions. Let's set aside the obvious, if uncomfortable, fact that part of the purpose of prison is to punish. It's said that short-term prison sentences don't work, because recidivism rates are shockingly high and there is little time for any restorative programmes to work. But since the evidence is that longer sentences have lower recidivism rates, and provide the opportunity to rehabilitate offenders, this might be an argument to lengthen sentences, not abolish them altogether. After all, another purpose of prison is to incapacitate offenders.

Of course, overcrowded prisons that are awash with drugs, and a system which gives short-term prisoners no supervision or support on release, is almost calculated to fail. But this could equally be an argument – the one which the modern Conservative party is making – for a complete transformation of prison regimes and a system of support for offenders when they are released from jail. It's a logical non sequitur on a grand scale to argue that because short-term prison sentences currently aren't working, we should therefore stop using them at all.

Abolitionists say that short-term prison sentences have a poorer recidivism rate than community sentences. In fact, both have a lamentable record – and one that has deteriorated in the last ten years. But the difference is hardly surprising, since the worst recidivists are bound to end up in jail. According to Home Office figures (pdf), only 12% of those sentenced to prison have no previous convictions. Over half have five or more previous convictions, and over a third have ten or more. Those who say that prison should be reserved for serious or serial offenders tend to ignore the fact that it already is.

Serial offenders who end up with custodial sentences have usually run through the gamut of weak community sentences already. If we want to avoid magistrates having little choice but to send them down, the logical thing to do is to make community sentences far more effective. Yet the perverse reaction of the abolitionists is to recommend that the very community disposals that have, by definition, already failed are used again.

Over a third of unpaid work requirements are not completed. Drug rehabilitation requirements have an even worse record – fewer than half are completed. If a fraction of the energy and resources that are being devoted to the cause of penal abolition were directed to thinking seriously about how better to design non-custodial punishments, short-term prison sentences would be less necessary.

What do the abolitionists really want? If it's the end of all custody, including for the most serious and dangerous offenders, then we can dismiss their demands as truly silly. If it's the abolition of short-term custodial sentences, then the effect on the overall prison population will be minimal. Justice ministry tables show (pdf) that over 87% of the current prison population are serving sentences of over 12 months. Abolishing prison for those serving, say, six months or less would mean watering down 60,000 sentences – but it would reduce the prison population by less than 7,000. The more effective and sustainable way to reduce the prison population in the long term is to reduce re-offending, as the Conservative party's radical "rehabilitation revolution" proposes.

It would be nice to live in a society where there were no prisons, just as it would be nice if there were no hospitals because there was no illness. But until someone steps forward with a ten-year plan to Make Crime History, jails are here to stay. The challenge is to create prisons with a purpose – not to hold lazy conferences making futile calls for their abolition.

An excellent, well argued and logical article. Thanks. Now lets hear from the lunatic lefties who disagree, and see what kind of referenced counter arguments they can put up to convince us that you are wrong.

Spagna


Addresses

Belgium:

  • Bram Wets (Liga voor mensenrechten): bram@mensenrechten.be
  • David Morelli (Liga voor mensenrechten): dmorelli@liguedh.be

Brasilien:

  • Ricardo Genelhú: ricardo@fcb.edu.br

Germany:

  • Johannes Feest: feest.johannes@gmail.com
  • Sebastian Scheerer: scheerer@uni-hamburg.de

Italy:

  • NO PRISON & Simone Santorso

Regno Unito:

  • David Scott: d.g.scott@ljmu.ac.uk
  • Vincenzo Ruggiero: ??

Neerlandia:

  • Wiene van Hattum: w.f.van.hattum@rug.nl

Norvegia:

  • Thomas Mathiesen:  ??
  • Hedda Giertsen: hedda.giertsen@jus.uio.no

Spagna:

  • Inaki Rivera Beiras: rivera@ub.edu
  • Alejandro Forero Cuellar: aleforero@ub.edu

See also

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