[extropy-chat] Gen X amnesia

[Damien Broderick]

At 12:00 PM 11/5/2005 -0800, spike wrote:

>Angela Davis.  I went to wikipedia, learned
>that she was the big-haired person who wanted to do
>away with prisons.  Hmmmmm, ok Angela, that sounds
>like a great plan, lets go right out and do that...
>
>Not.

A quote from her at the wiki:
"Imprisonment has become the response of first resort to far too many of 
our social problems."
Oddly, this sounds rather like your own complaint the other day, Spike. 
Can't find it now, but weren't you pointing out that we need the skills and 
labor power of the vast numbers imprisoned for victimless "crimes"? That 
would be a start. The value of jails in confining the bad bastards is 
presumably in isolating them from the rest of us for a time; the obvious 
fact that this hardens some and instructs all of them in better methods and 
motives for further crime suggests that doing away with today's prisons and 
finding better methods isn't really all that silly.

Damien Broderick