Peter Moskos - In Defense of FloggingAn_Old_Big_Tree wrote (edited )
Hi!
This doesn't seem to be a book or about one, so far as I can tell, so I'm not sure why you posted it here.
I didn't read this very long because although it presents itself as a radically different and less cruel option to prison, it's really a very ordinary and common argument of the sort that people who haven't actually engaged with radical options regularly take, while finding themselves to be quite edgy.
Reminds me of centrism that way.
Instead of making rhetorical gestures like "After all, who hasn’t committed a crime?" - isn't it preferable to critique entire ideas of crime, punishment, and justice? Maybe the fact that we all do crime is just evidence that criminality is something we should be suspicious of as a concept.
You might want to check out w/Abolish_Police for more info, or quack the Anarchist FAQ's sections on crime.
CorrectPrumunciation OP wrote
Hi!
This doesn't seem to be a book or about one, so far as I can tell, so I'm not sure why you posted it here.
It's literally the content of this book:
https://www.amazon.com/Defense-Flogging-Peter-Moskos/dp/0465032419
Instead of making rhetorical gestures like "After all, who hasn’t committed a crime?" - isn't it preferable to critique entire ideas of crime, punishment, and justice? Maybe the fact that we all do crime is just evidence that criminality is something we should be suspicious of as a concept.
The intent of the book is to offer an alternative to the cruel situation as US prisons, both from the conditions that they experience and the number that make up. And also to dispel the modern myth of prisons being more humane than subjecting them to brief but intense bodily pain. As he says, “that we accept prisons as normal is a historical oddity.” And it comes from no other than a former Baltimore policeman and now US law professor.
An_Old_Big_Tree wrote
Oh cool, you're a human, I was worried maybe you were a bot of some sort since you hadn't said anything yet. I might have not noticed it being a book because the whole page really struggled to load in my browser for some reason, so I had a kind of half-loaded version that was mostly just a wall of text.
Looking forward to seeing what else you post around here; former cops is an unusual and interesting choice.
CorrectPrumunciation OP wrote
No, I'm not the former cop lol I was talking about the author of the book!
An_Old_Big_Tree wrote
Ah, what I wrote was a bit ambiguous, sorry. I knew you meant that, I was saying that it's unusual here to post things written by former cops.
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