"I have no thought of escaping"

April 29, 2018 12:59 PM

Inside an Association for Protection and Assistance to Convicts prison.
posted by queen anne's remorse (6 comments total)

If you have to do incarceration, I guess it sounds nice and relatively humane. I'll keep it in mind for how we detain violent reactionaries after the revolution. I do have concerns about the "strict routine of work and study required by Apac". Prisoner production of actual goods is usually suspect.
posted by AnhydrousLove at 2:32 PM on April 29, 2018 [1 favorite]

From TFA: A prisoner should only lose his liberty, but keep his fundamental rights.

If only this sentiment were universal. Society gains nothing by dehumanizing prisoners, no matter how heinous their crimes. A just society would treat all people with compassion, even when through their actions they've shown that they cannot be left unguarded, even when they've shown that they do not respect others. In this way, the state shows that its monopoly on violence is deserved. Otherwise, the state is simply a more powerful criminal organization.
posted by Anticipation Of A New Lover's Arrival, The at 2:57 PM on April 29, 2018 [9 favorites]

I wonder about how this could be scaled up though. Right now, one of the main incentives for inmates to behave in the APAC prison is the threat of returning them to the hell that is a "normal" prison. Also, I would assume that the inmates who are sent to the APAC are those who have already shown good behavior in the "normal" prison (as well as some who got there through connections or bribery). How could we transition the entire (world) prison population over to something like this, something more humane?
posted by Anticipation Of A New Lover's Arrival, The at 3:39 PM on April 29, 2018 [2 favorites]

I remember a legal scholar (my father, and yes, he was on that level when he was practicing and teaching) once pointing out that the prison element of the justice system has three fundamental reasons for existing: rehabilitation, sequestration, and vengeance. I responded that as long as it emphasizes the third of those to the exclusion of the first, it cannot honestly call itself a justice system, but rather merely a legal system; he agreed. It seems that, however minimally, APAC is a step back in the right direction of prioritizing the first and limiting the third. Now, if only we could get that in America.
posted by mystyk at 4:11 PM on April 29, 2018 [2 favorites]

"… three fundamental reasons for existing: rehabilitation, sequestration, and vengeance."

Sometimes otherwise known as the Three R's - Restoration, Retribution, and Rehabilitation.

The usual practice of taking offenders against society and locking them up in a crab bucket environment, maltreating them, and largely witholding from them any opportunity for self-help or improvement, doesn't fit any of those.

It does satisfy society's (manufactured?) lust for vengeance though - although that's hardly healthy…
posted by Pinback at 5:44 PM on April 29, 2018 [1 favorite]

Nothing manufactured about it, we humans have been vengeful little shits since at least monkey times, if not before.
posted by Anticipation Of A New Lover's Arrival, The at 6:15 PM on April 29, 2018 [2 favorites]