Prisons and enforcement in a communist system.

[Connolly]

Iv been thinking about this recently.

In your opinion, would prisons exist?


I think there would have to be prisons. I also think there would have to be some sort of enforcement organisation/institution.


What of serial killers? - speeding on roads? - domestic violence?

How could such problems be solved without some sort of enforcement?

[Vendetta]

I doubt they wouldn't. The world's not a squeaky clean place where everyone makes nice.

[spartan]

The only crimes that will likely disappear in a Communist world are economic crimes as there will be no more need for people to steal to survive anymore.

But as you pointed out what do we do with the serial killers, rapists, etc of the world who commit their crimes because of mental health issues and crimes of passion amongst other things?

Well hopefully research into potential cures and treatments for people with mental health issues wont be stiffled like they are in our current society (A perfect example being the religious nuts who were making a nuisance of themselves with the recent stem cell research votes in Parliament.)

Also scientific bodies wont need to worry about funding in a Communist society as there is no money and they will be given unlimited resources for their research and experiments by local authorities.

But these things will take time and probably wont work in some cases so we will still need prisons and some method of punishment for violent criminals (Murderers, paedophiles and rapists etc.)

Prisons in a Communist society shouldnt be there to punish its inmates but should be there to reform and treat them them whilst keeping them safely isolated from the rest of the community (For both the communities and prisoners safety).

[apathy maybe]

Funnily enough, I was just talking about this issue over in this http://www.revleft.com/vb/capital-punishment-t79969/index2.html thread.

Talking about prisons, I said:

So, we need a police force to capture these people (and recapture them when they inevitably escape), then we need a judicial system (including judges etc.) to try these people, to pass judgement upon them, then we need the prisons, and the staff to look after the prisoners, then we need some way to raise resources to look after all these otherwise productive people, then we need some way of deciding what should be punished by imprisonment, and what shouldn't be, and most people aren't interested in such things, but maybe they could elect a representative, and so then we'll need a parliament building, and a team of clerics to look after all these newly elected politicians, and how will people decide who can best represent them? maybe some sort of party system, and oh dear, it appears as if we have built another state. With prisons, police, judges, politicians, parliaments, parties and taxes.

Fuck that shit.

I fully stand by that.

What of serial killers?
Self defence. They kill us, we kill them.

speeding on roads?
Why is that a problem? OK, let's say someone has an accident, and the reason is that they were not driving safely (much broader then speeding). Why does the local community do? They request that the person not drive.
What happens if they do drive, and there is another accident? Well, perhaps the vehicle might be taken off the person, and they are politely informed that they won't be getting it back. Of course, this is only one idea.

But ultimately societal pressure is a strong force to enforce conformity. At least in areas where damage/harm to others is concerned (I would fully support the ignoring of any other conformity).

domestic violence?
Domestic? Violence can be answered by self-defence. If a person is persistently abusive of another person, and the second person can not adequately defend themselves, they fuck off and no one wants to have anything more to do with the violent scum.

However, I would suggest that people would be taught not to accept being beaten by anyone (unless of course they enjoy it).

[mikelepore]

Let's try some reasonable numbers. I'll arbitrarily begin with the U.S. total. The United States has two million people in prison today. Let's suppose half of them were found guilty fallaciously, for example, the police and prosecutor fabricated phony evidence, bribed the witnesses, etc. That leaves one million. Suppose half of those are guilty, but guilty only of victimless crimes. That leaves 500,000 people who actually "did something wrong." Now suppose a decent society in the future, a classless society, can partially achieve what the writers of the Enlightenment used to call "the perfectibility of man", an improved trend in human behavior, due to the removal of poverty and economic insecurity, the removal of the rat race and "climbing the ladder", better education, upbringing that encourages cooperation, psychological counseling of compulsive people. Suppose that eliminates 99 percent of the crime. Taking out 99 percent, now we still have 5,000 people who assault others, or infringe on the rights of others, to such an extent that they have to be pursued and restrained. So can we expect the ideal classless society of the future to have a need for laws, police, courts and jails? Yes, because society must protect itself, and there will still be a problem with estimated thousands of people.

[TheDevil'sApprentice]

oscar wilde
http://www.marxists.org/reference/archive/wilde-oscar/soul-man/index.htm


With authority, punishment will pass away. This will be a great gain – a gain, in fact, of incalculable value. As one reads history, not in the expurgated editions written for school-boys and passmen, but in the original authorities of each time, one is absolutely sickened, not by the crimes that the wicked have committed, but by the punishments that the good have inflicted; and a community is infinitely more brutalised by the habitual employment of punishment, than it is by the occurrence of crime. It obviously follows that the more punishment is inflicted the more crime is produced, and most modern legislation has clearly recognised this, and has made it its task to diminish punishment as far as it thinks it can. Wherever it has really diminished it, the results have always been extremely good. The less punishment, the less crime. When there is no punishment at all, crime will either cease to exist, or, if it occurs, will be treated by physicians as a very distressing form of dementia, to be cured by care and kindness. For what are called criminals nowadays are not criminals at all. Starvation, and not sin, is the parent of modern crime. That indeed is the reason why our criminals are, as a class, so absolutely uninteresting from any psychological point of view. They are not marvellous Macbeths and terrible Vautrins. They are merely what ordinary, respectable, commonplace people would be if they had not got enough to eat. When private property is abolished there will be no necessity for crime, no demand for it; it will cease to exist. Of course, all crimes are not crimes against property, though such are the crimes that the English law, valuing what a man has more than what a man is, punishes with the harshest and most horrible severity, if we except the crime of murder, and regard death as worse than penal servitude, a point on which our criminals, I believe, disagree. But though a crime may not be against property, it may spring from the misery and rage and depression produced by our wrong system of property-holding, and so, when that system is abolished, will disappear. When each member of the community has sufficient for his wants, and is not interfered with by his neighbour, it will not be an object of any interest to him to interfere with anyone else. Jealousy, which is an extraordinary source of crime in modern life, is an emotion closely bound up with our conceptions of property, and under Socialism and Individualism will die out. It is remarkable that in communistic tribes jealousy is entirely unknown.Pretty much sums it up