<html><head><meta http-equiv="content-type" content="text/html; charset=utf-8"></head><body dir="auto">On Apr 16, 2020, at 11:27 AM, Adrian Tymes via extropy-chat <extropy-chat@lists.extropy.org> wrote:<blockquote type="cite"><div dir="ltr"><div dir="ltr"><div dir="ltr">On Thu, Apr 16, 2020 at 10:57 AM Dan TheBookMan via extropy-chat <<a href="mailto:extropy-chat@lists.extropy.org">extropy-chat@lists.extropy.org</a>> wrote:<br></div><div class="gmail_quote"><blockquote class="gmail_quote" style="margin:0px 0px 0px 0.8ex;border-left:1px solid rgb(204,204,204);padding-left:1ex"><div dir="auto"><div><div>Agreed. And let’s consider abolishing prisons too:</div><div><br></div><div><a href="https://c4ss.org/content/30340" target="_blank">https://c4ss.org/content/30340</a></div></div></div></blockquote><div><br></div><div>That link kept teasing but didn't actually answer the question, "And replace them with what?" So, if you're promoting that point of view, I ask that question of you.</div><div><br></div><div>Let us say there is an individual who routinely burgles houses for a living. What is to be done to make said individual stop doing this? The court and penal system is presented as a preferred alternative to aggrieved people lynching and executing a suspected or alleged burglar.</div><div><br></div><div>How shall we deter murder - especially deliberate assassination by private individuals accountable to no one or almost no one?</div><div><br></div><div>What is to be done about rapists?</div></div></div></div></blockquote><div><br></div><div>I believe the starting point for this would be to ask two fundamental questions:</div><div><br></div><div>1. Is imprisonment moral per se?</div><div><br></div><div>2. Does imprisonment actually achieve positive results? </div><div><br></div><div>I agree that the first question is going to be tougher because of disagreements over morality/ethics. However, the second question seems like one folks here could make some headway on. </div><div><br></div><div>A subsidiary question to my second one is: Does prison achieve better positive results against other means of dealing with crime? (A good reason to consider this is the overall high cost of prison in purely monetary terms. For instance, imprisoning the serial burglar might be far far more costly in monetary terms than the monetary loss from their burglaries. There might other factors to consider here, as I know as a person who’s been burglarized before.)</div><br><blockquote type="cite"><div dir="ltr"><div dir="ltr"><div class="gmail_quote"><div>And that's just some of the basic types of crime. Drugs might be decriminalized, hate crimes might result in counseling (or lead to an assessment of mental disorders), but these measures by themselves are a far cry from abolishing all prisons.</div></div></div></div></blockquote><br><div>I wasn’t identifying the two positions (decriminalizing victimless crimes and prison abolition, respectively). I introduced the abolitionist merely as something to consider. </div><div><br></div><div><div dir="ltr" style="caret-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); color: rgb(0, 0, 0);"><div style="line-height: normal;"><div style="line-height: normal;"><span style="line-height: 20px;">Regards,</span></div><div style="line-height: normal;"><span style="line-height: 20px;"><br></span></div><div><div style="line-height: normal;"><span style="line-height: 20px;">Dan</span></div><div style="line-height: normal;"><span style="line-height: 20px;"> Sample my Kindle books at:</span></div><div style="line-height: normal;"><p style="margin: 0px; font-stretch: normal; font-size: 12px; line-height: normal; font-family: Helvetica;"><span style="font-size: 12pt;">http://author.to/DanUst</span></p></div></div></div><div><div style="line-height: normal;"></div></div></div></div></body></html>