As someone who doesn’t believe that humans have free will, I don’t believe people should be cast as being culpable for their actions and thus morally deserving punishment or praise.
However, there exist people who do harm to their neighbors and to society, and the above doesn’t mean that they need to be given free rein to do whatever they’re driven to do. To me, the call to eliminate prisons is like the call to defund police - it’s not saying that nothing should be there, but rather what we currently have not only doesn’t solve the problem but actually makes it worse.
From my point of view, incarceration needs to serve at least one of two purposes:
Changing the person’s propensity to engage in those behaviors using an evidence-based medical approach rather than one of “criminal justice”
Isolation to prevent caused harm while necessary. The isolation should be no more onerous than is strictly necessary. It might mean hotel-like accommodations and academic classes, but the people would not be permitted to leave the facility. I believe this is the practice in some Northern European countries, which have a lower rate of recidivism than the US.
As someone who doesn’t believe that humans have free will, I don’t believe people should be cast as being culpable for their actions and thus morally deserving punishment or praise.
However, there exist people who do harm to their neighbors and to society, and the above doesn’t mean that they need to be given free rein to do whatever they’re driven to do. To me, the call to eliminate prisons is like the call to defund police - it’s not saying that nothing should be there, but rather what we currently have not only doesn’t solve the problem but actually makes it worse.
From my point of view, incarceration needs to serve at least one of two purposes:
We can dream.
Americans have a huge hard on for punishing people, regardless of utility.