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So with your great imagination, please suggest a way to have a functioning society where we don’t have people causing harm to others without a team of people trained to physically stop them, bring them somewhere where they can be rehabilitated, and if they can’t be, isolated from the rest of society to prevent further harm?
My mind is open and my ears are too.
a team of people trained to physically stop them, bring them somewhere where they can be rehabilitated,
That would be great. Maybe we should try that instead of the police and prisons as they stand now.
But then you’re calling for reforms rather than abolishing the current system which is what the post says
It’s the same thing.
There’s no true difference between making a new “rehabilitation facility” of whatever name and changing “prison” to be “prison v2: less shitty and counterproductive“. The only difference is the sign on the door.
the trick is that you have to abolish the originals including all the people who are part of the shitty system, and that can be easier to do if you make a whole new institution with a new name and all.
I’m a big believer in “institutional DNA” where the way things start carries down much longer and stronger than one might expect. This explains things like the way US policing (originating from slavecatchers) differs so much from British policing and the Peelian principles. Both can be awful but it happens in very different ways.
how do you differentiate between a reform and an abolishment?
Reform
to make an improvement, especially by changing a person’s behaviour or the structure of something
Abolish
to end an activity or custom officially
This is a pretty old talking point, and I’m about to go eat some dinner so here’s some info from classical anarchist perspectives copied from reddit, which can work as a starting point for your learning journey.
Guillaume says “all able-bodied inhabitants will be called upon to take turns in the security measures instituted by the commune”, calling this a “Communal Police”.
Merlino posits a question from a non-anarchist asking “Would there be need for a government, a parliament, a cabinet, a police force, a judiciary?”, which he answers with “Nothing of this kind would exist in the anarchist system”. However, he still suggests some kind of social defense institution organized as a public service, though I don’t know the details.
Kropotkin believes most crimes would simply disappear in an anarchist society (under the common anarchist assumption that crime is only caused by capitalism), but still says “here surely will remain a limited number of persons whose anti-social passions − the result of bodily diseases − may still be a danger for the community”. His solution for such people is a kind of quarantine, not in prison but in a community empowered to rehabilitate them. Call it an open compound, maybe. Presumably the community members are responsible for herding offenders into the compound.
Malatesta proposes giving citizens the right to defend themselves,“Perhaps we would come closer to a more comprehensive formula by asserting the right to forcible self-defence against physical violence as well as against acts equivalent in manner and consequences to physical violence”.
tl;dr: Community driven, rehabilitation lead approaches. Violence is justified in defense.
That’s not without police or orisons though… That’s just calling them by a different name. If you have enforcers of the public code (law) and a place to send people who break the code (criminals) to where they can’t leave (prison), then even if the goal is rehabilitation if possible else isolation, which it should be to be ethical, it’s still the same idea as police and prison.
Police are paid employees by the state they are not community driven mutual defense.
The “state” in this case is the municipal district of a town or city, which is to say “a community of people”.
my issue with this is that while this is what police say they are, it is not how they do things and the point of a thing is what it does. police officers other than sheriffs are selected not by other members of the community, but are selected based on their willingness to carry out violence in the name of capital.
so the problem with police is how they are selected/rewarded, not their existence?
i love this question. so if the point of a thing is what it does, and what the system of policing does is select bad cops, we have to abolish the system and implement a new system that prevents a new just as bad system from arising. so in answer to your question, it’s not an either or problem, but an intrinsically interlinked problem
and the funny thing is, around here the sheriffs tend to be the worst troublemakers
Yeah… If we really get into it we also have a massive propaganda problem where the voting public perceives the police differently than the people that the police interact with on a regular basis. The most common deciding factor in sheriff elections around here where I am is who talks in their TV ads the most about the bible
Sheriffs are literally voted in. The problem is the complete lack of oversight or accountability.
Right. Which is why I specifically separated out sheriffs’ selection process being distinct from all other processes. And without oversight or accountability, who will select police officers will be whoever has power within the current system. As things stand, the structures we exist in favor people who already have access to power in the form of money and political positioning to design the police officer selection process (which mostly hinges on desperation) to maintain the status quo in order for them to retain their access to power in the form of money and political positioning.
In my country, the state is elected democratically.
Is this post just one of those Russian propaganda things designed to piss off the masses and divide people with nonsensical vague bold provocative statements?
I doubt it.
I don’t know your country, but would I be correct in assuming you get a limited choice every few years on maybe choosing a representative who might share 1 or 2 values of yours?
It’s telling that you’re more pissed off by a post calling for changing an abusive system, than you are the system. But hey I guess every leftist idea is Russian propaganda to a clown.
It’s worth noting that native American communities thrived for hundreds of years without police or prisons, and they had a variety of different ways of dealing with problem behavior. In the Iroquois Confederacy specifically if someone from one village killed someone from another, the village that was home to the victim would hold the entire village that was home to the perpetrator responsible. To avoid war, the elders of each village would meet and discuss how to make amends, which usually involved gifts and assurances that the murderer would be prevented from killing again. Internally if the problem person could not be reasoned with or was likely to continue their problem behavior, they would be shunned or banished.
That’s just police and prisons with extra steps, and since theres no regulation for the police eventually you’re going to be ruled over by a police gang when they refuse to change shifts.
The community would be the police, how can they rule over themselves as a gang if they already are in charge of themselves?
Please think things through a bit more before reacting.
Because they take shifts and if they refuse to hand over authority then they’re now permanently in charge and will use force to regulate the rest of you.
It’s called a “power vacuum” where in the absence of authority humans have always immediately created a new hierarchy, in some cases a democratic republic and in other cases a militaristic autocracy and everything in between.
lol.
“We refuse to leave our shift, we’re going to own you”
“But we’re also as equally armed as you?”
“Oh, but but your shift is over you can’t defend yourself!”
Are they as equally armed as you? Are they also equal in number to your household? They also don’t have a “quarantine” to hold people, then? In that case, wouldn’t they fail to enforce anything in the first place?
Sounds like an HOA with guns. No thanks.
HOA with guns sounds like how a state is run.
Do HOA generally run open meetings where everyone votes together on issues? from all the horror stories I read it’s about old bitter people who have become the HOA president or some garbage dictating the rules to everyone else.
Yes, but nobody gives a shit or wants to spend their time on government, so the old bitter people get carte blanche to run everything.
I’m an anarchist. What you’ve quoted is absurdly naive.
Yes, community rehabilitation is good for some sorts of criminals. The abolition of prisons, on the other hand, might be possible 1000 years from now with the proper technology, which makes the suggestion at best unhelpful and at worst actively counterproductive.
I didn’t write that Guillaume, Merlino, Kropotkin, Malatesta did.
As an anarchist, you must be pretty conflicted if you think those 4 are absurdly naive.
Each of these people has written intelligent and wise things, abundant examples of which you’ve deftly avoided in order to quote shit that makes us all look like idiots.
Okay, well once again I didn’t write any of that it’s copied from reddit.
https://www.reddit.com/r/Anarchy101/comments/nleody/how_exactly_would_law_enforcement_work_under/
Go there and learn something about Anarchism. Community self defense is a large part of Anarchism and it’s something you sound like you need to learn more about.
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kropotkin is hopelessly naive
Thanks! I especially like Malatesta’s perspective.
“all able-bodied inhabitants will be called upon to take turns in the security measures instituted by the commune”,
Including people without any aptitude or desire to engage in law enforcement? Like, law enforcement isn’t a simple, easy job. It’s a job that requires a lot of training to do properly.
Yes, you need to rethink it as something all people do as a good citizen.
And are you honestly telling me if you heard someone screaming for dear life in the house next door you would sit still, phone the cops, and wait 45 minutes for them to arrive? I seriously hope not.
You need to be looking out for your neighbours, that’s community defense. And frankly most crime can be stopped from ever happening in the first place with education and rehabilitation, so you wouldn’t be dealing with much if any ever.
It’s not like we don’t want the ideal of what the police should be. Plenty of ways they can serve public interest and safety without being paid chimps with guns.
It does seem challenging to make sure everyone follows the rules if there’s no dedicated enforcement of said rules
Communities can enforce rules on themselves, there’s nothing about anarchy that is against that.
If there’s dedicated people to enforce those rules, that’s just police
And if everyone enforces those rules, is that what you think the police is today?
Anyway I’m going to go eat now, there’s a link somewhere in here if you want to learn more about it.
I think that sounds a bit like mob justice/vigilantism.
Yes, following mob rules as decided by the mob.
Much preferable to the current system of rules written by rulers, enforced by abusers.
I mean my mind goes to lynchings and such. That’s not great imo
When I think of cops my mind goes to bombing babies in their bedrooms, shooting the dog, burning down the house, and planting drugs on the corpse. That’s not great imo.
When I think of “mob rule” or community policing if you want to frame it with less sinister words, I think of people stepping up to defend their community
Okay but right now the mob wants fascism, so… no.
Maaaaate, right now you already have fascism.
Isn’t that the definition of mob justice?
And when you hire a bunch of people within that community for the specific job of enforcement, you call that “police”.
Sounds like you just have a problem with the word/name, and not the actual concept?
You don’t hire them, you are them. The community is the defence.
Your problem here is that you’re thinking all one wants is the same system but under a different name.
I suggest a historical perspective that I only recently discovered: Graeber and Wengrow’s Dawn of Humanity has some very interesting anthropological/archeological examples of how communal police and security has been organized in the past (distant or more recent).
Most notably some cool “clown posse” police that’s cyclical with summer/winter.
I’m on like chapter for, and it is FASCINATING
Isn’t it?! I have only a few books in my life that had that much impact on my worldview.
FOUR REAL
… and now I can’t edit it
You should be able to. And it would be great as it would make my all caps joke absolutely inunderstandable, in very internetical way.
Seconded. Lots of fascinating stuff in that book. It really helps the imagination to know some of the huge variety of different ways people organized in the past.
these 2 questions are worlds apart are they not?
There was already an alternative to harvesting cotton without slavery. There is a solution to that problem.
There does not seem to be a solution to public safety that does not involve a central figure to enforce said rules. So police and prisons are the only solution we have.
They are not the same question
Yeh I used to think like this as well but tbh here we don’t even have public safety despite the existence of police.
Couple days ago some people threw a big firecracker here that gave me temporary hearing loss and the constant firecrackers are really putting me on edge n I know police can’t help even if it’s illegal so uh sry for rant am just a angyPolice are a socialised version of something that already existed. If we didn’t have them what exactly is going to happen if somebody gets murdered?
Vigilante justice!
I’m sorry, is this post implying the solution to crime is paying repeat offenders a salary to not do it again?
This post is implying that OP is unfamiliar with sociology, psychology, history, and the texture of grass.
… no
Well, I mean we currently give them a badge and a gun and pay repeat offenders to repeatedly offend.
…No.
Go on.
no. it isn’t. it’s implying that our police don’t keep our communities safe and our prisons aren’t adequate deterrents or rehabilitation centers. a better solution to community safety would be a society that doesn’t enforce poverty. within that framework we need the imagination to find community oriented solutions to investigating and punishing people who encroach on the safety, liberty, and autonomy of others.
This would work IF we were all telepathic like in Pluribus or the Borg, but until then, you’re gonna have something that someone else wants, and they’re gonna fight you for it. Whether it’s money, food, or your virginity.
Russian propaganda post, designed to divide and rile people up.
