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this post was submitted on 29 Aug 2023
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It's so difficult to argue for a better prison system too, because a lot of people seem to think you're siding with the prisoners.
What's so bad about siding with the "prisoners"? Not with the "criminals" mind you, just the "prisoners".
In many countries, prisons have the mandate to "reeducate and reinsert into society", and while privation of liberty is a punishment in itself, it's intended only as a way to turn criminals too dangerous to let loose, into upstanding citizens once they do their time.
Prisoners can be "citizens in the making", not just "criminals thrown in a hole". That might be the first point to try to get through.
I'm saying people will say absurd things like "so you think it's okay to murder people?" I have genuinely had people ask me that when I complained about our inhumane prison system.
I know what you mean, we have a "reeducate and reinsert" penal system in Spain, and some people keep asking for the death penalty for murderers. Dead people can't become a member of society! 🙄
It's just the Overton window, we have it still towards the side of reeducation, but some people keep trying to push it towards punishment. In the US, it's already leaning towards punishment... and those people you mention, are the ones pushing it... so if you want that to change, you need to push it the other way.
Something like "so you think throwing people away is a good use of resources?". Follow up with a joke about Soylent Green, or something, to make it look less confrontational... but ultimately it needs to be something farther away than your actual position, just like they do 🤷
These are great arguments ans genuinely I've never heard an American say them.
Look at how they turned Bernie Sanders into "the guy who wanted to let the Boston bomber vote" for advocating for prisoner rights.
Exactly, a significant portion of people aren't able to argue about this in good faith and need to be walked through this long list of deep ethics questions in order to sorta meet the right answer.