prison abolition is uncomfortable at first, so I understand. Nordic prisons would be a massive improvement, but to me it’s just polishing a turd
So what are we going to do with actual terrible people? Murders, rapists, etc?
find and address the problems that cause people to behave that way, to prevent it from happening in the first place.
Yeah that’s nice and feel good but you can’t deny that there are people who behave badly because they’re just rotten people.
Domestic abusers are a key example, people go through the same supposed stressors that DV perps go through without belt whipping their kid for not being man enough at the age of 5.
A big part of what makes our prisons so terrible and why we throw so many people into them has to do with the 13th amendment, as you acknowledged. If they cease to be profitable, if prisoners cannot be used as slave labor, a lot of what makes them terrible will evaporate. If every prisoner costs the state money, expect them to create fewer of them.
