We seriously need to abolish prison https://twitter.com/sbagen/status/1282986453492998145

In all the joking about my self-radicalization, this may be the thing I’ve gone furtherst on. Prison just isn’t compatible with my beliefs. If you think I’m crazy that’s fine, but the carceral state is an abomination and I think we should abolish it.

We have to stop our knee-jerk and completely unsupported belief that the best and only way to solve social problems is lock people up in cages for extended periods of time. It’s a kind of psychosis. This girl didn’t do her homework. Wtf are we even doing here.

Mike, what is the alternative? Bare minimum getting our incarceration rate down to the level of other countries. That right there means dropping the prison population by ~85%. So let’s start there and we then wrangle over the tiny minority of serial ax murderers still locked up

In this much smaller population of offenders, many have aged out of being a threat, have extenuating circumstances, or personal stories that demolish any claim they *still* pose a physical threat to the community. Where locking them up is counterproductive and pointless.

Because let’s agree that nothing resembling “rehabilition” is happening in prison. That’s a sick joke. So the object of prison is either straight punishment or “removal from society” for the safety of the community. Those are the 2 pertinent justificstions.

to the extent that “punishment” is a necessary tool of crime deterrent (debatable) I think we can do better than “lock you in a cage for X years.” As a form of punishment it’s tortuously unethical. I personally think it violates the 8th amendment but that’s just me.

See...this is happening right now in another part of my timeline. This is *insanely* cruel. https://twitter.com/attackerman/status/1283030419479371782?s=21 https://twitter.com/attackerman/status/1283030419479371782

I understand at the end of the day I’ll be left trying to explain what we do with the handful of violent recidivists who willfully pose an imminent threat to people around them. But seriously this conversation needs to stop starting with them.

Oh and of course I forgot to mention that not funding the prison-industrial complex anymore means plenty of new resources for social, rehab, counciling, therapy, job, school, aid programs. So better, safer happier communities all around. Win-win.

PS Banning guns would resolve a lot of objections to prison abolition so we should do that too