Benutzer:Woozle/Against Penitentiaries: Unterschied zwischen den Versionen

"We have structured an attrition model as one example of a long range process for abolition.'Attrition', which means the rubbing away or wearing down by friction, reflects the persistent and continuing strategy necessary to diminish the function and power of prisons in our society.To clarify our terms, the reforms we recommend are "abolishing-type" reforms: those that do not add improvement to or legitimize the prevailing system. We also call for partial abolitions of the system: abolishing certain criminal laws, abolishing bail and pretrial detention and abolishing indeterminate sentences and parole" (Morris 1976, ch.3).

The harm caused by crime is often more complex and more widespread than is usually thought. There is physical, psychic, and/or material damage, but there is also something in a crime that affects the community as such and even the normative structure of the social order. If there is to be an alternative to punishment then this alternative would have to take into account this three-dimensional harm. Any alternative would have to be able to respond to the question how it would deal with the challenge of re-instating the victim in his or her full status as a citizen (materially, emotionally, socially), how it would deal with restoring peace and confidence in a shaken collective, and how it would manage to publicly re-affirm the validity of a broken rule in order to prevent normative erosion. Crimes hurt victims, but they also hurt the law's claim to validity. Whereas victim compensation can do a lot to undo the harm inflicted upon the victim, punishment takes care of the crime's symbolic message in that it publicly and forcefully contradicts the impression that it is easy and okay to disobey the law - and that you can get away with it. Punishment is central to the normative order (and very existence) of society because it is an instrument with which to assure that a crime will not derogate the norm that it disobeys. It serves as the authoritative repudiation of the implicity anti-legal message of every crime that occurs. It is a performative (speech and non-discursive) act restoring the claim that the law - even if broken - has not lost its validity. And as we have seen, this anti-message against the message of crime contains not only a consolation for the victim, but also a relevant lesson to the offender, and a vital reassurance towards the affected community that breaches of the law are not being left acquiesced.  

In other words: while one way of getting rid of prisons is to ("simply") replace one punishment by another - this is what the discourse about "alternatives" is mostly about - a more ambitious (but also more promising) one is that of moving beyond punishment altogether, and to renounce to punishment, but not to its three-dimensional restorative functions. If we want our societies not only to survive, but improve the living conditions for each and all of their members, then one of our central concerns should be to get rid of punishment without renouncing to its positive and necessary functions. To put it more clearly: how can we - after a serious offense has harmed the victims, affected the offender, and disturbed public peace - manage to fulfill the functions of punishment (i.e. to send a message that empowers the victims, teaches the offender, and restores community spirit) without resorting to punishment? Can we activate the healing elements of punishment without resorting to punishment?