Crisis and Criminal Justice

How does the political and economic crisis - both on a national and international level - affect the criminal justice system (legislation, police, prosecution, judiciary, prisons)? How does it, more specifically, affect individual rights, the balance of powers, and the democratic order?

Legislation gives more powers to the police - and in some instances to prosecutors, liberating them from political influence, conferring the potential of an independent political role (PT) to prosecutors and judges. Involvement of military in domestic criminal policy. Estrangement between an ever more outspoken political right (Bolsonaro) and a fragmented "left" and grassroot movements (Marielle Franco).

Police more powerful. But relevance of video.

Prosecution: powerful in Brazil.

Judiciary:

Prisons: Overload. They used to be symbols of state pride and power (Takagi). Today they are the same in the U.S. - a return to old splendor with little humanity. But they are a symbol of the state's absence and impotence in other coutnries. Large rund-down prisons.

Crisis or Crises?

The Drug Wave of 1968: Implications for Criminal Policy. A second frontline beside the Cold War. The Secret State and the erosion of civil liberties. Punitiveness, Enemy criminal law. Devaluation of marginalized persons. Gropnik.

The Financial Crisis of 2008: Implications for social cohesion. Growing inequality. Less empathy. Aggravating prior tendencies towards a dual state. Sovereign police. Police killings. Competing forces of order. Extrajudcial killings. Prison as privilege.

The Global Crisis of 2018: Populism unchained. Belligerence. Destructive malignant narcissism. Desublimation.

Consequences

Individual rights on the way out
Balance of powers: increasing powers for the executive branch (state of exception), immunisation of military and police. Legislative branch? Corruption? Brazil: Judiciary thanks to PT policy (Vanessa Ruales 2018).
Competing powers: problem for democracy and voting. General disillusionment with democracy.
Prison expansion and overcrowding. Why?

The Prison Crisis

What does it look like? What does it look like in rich and in poor countries? In ex-slaveholder and ex-convict republics?
Where does it come from? The role of drug policy. Seychelles.
Which functions does it fulfill and which not?
What does the prison crisis signify in terms of social theory and the future for humankind?

The Way Out

The ethical one: see Gropnik and NO PRISON
The probable one: see Harari and Helotes

===1. The financial crisis and the divided global village

Equality is happiness, but the real world is polarising

2. It is especially bad in ex-slaveholder societies, where freed slaves turn into the new helotes (Harari)

3. Populism as an instinctive revolt with paradoxical consequences

Lack of education elects clowns and radical rambos with no experience, who are therefore vulnerable to influencers, i.e. lobbies, that turn their policies around

Tendency to elect autocrats (philippines, nativist iran, near east)

4. Affects the criminal justice system at large:

4.1 legislation tends towards measures and decrees, harsher and more unprofessional - Doppelstaat

4.2 StA und Polizei: StA hat weniger Gewicht, außer lava jato. Polizei weitgehend souverän. Militarisierung. PPP

4.3 Strafvollzug: hier finden sich die Überflüssigen, soweit sie nicht außerjustiziellen Exekutionen zum Opfer gefallen sind. Massaker. Heloten werden hier diszipliniert. Israel. BR, weltweit.

5. Demokratischer Prozess: Wahlen, Parteien, Oligarchien - fed up, Burnheim: Losverfahren?

10. Why not abolish prisons? In reichen Ländern ginge das vielleicht - wären da nicht die unsachgemäßen Gründe (falsches Signal etc.).

In armen Ländern sind die Verhältnisse schlimm. Da wäre Abolition noch dringender.