This came up on a couple of threads recently.
I wrote:
Anarchist Black Cross Network wrote:
We believe, as most Anarchists do, that prisons serve no useful function and should be abolished along with the State. We believe in the abolition of both the prison system and the society which creates it.I believe that in a communist world there will still be the occasionally sociopathic act. What would you do with the perpetrators? There are three choices really;
1) Let people who keep heads in the fridge walk around free to commit other crimes.
2) Lock them up for the protection of the community while trying to help them.
3) Execute them.
For me I think the second is the least worst choice, and in that I accept that the abolishment of capitalism, and the state won't destroy prisons. In will decrease them in numbers dramatically, and change lots of things about them, but a need for some sort of prison will still remain.
Cantdocartwheels expressed a similar idea, but much less politely:
Hagbard Celine wrote:
If cantdocartwheel's communist society stills has prisons (and probably factories for that matter), then can somebody please tell me what the fuck is to be gained from communism?You absolutely fucking worthless hippy. What do you imagine is going to happen to rapists, murderers, paedophiles and people who commit GBH then, or do you think that people will just suddenly stop committing these crimes. You'd have less prisoners and prisons would be a lot more humane and run on the principles of industrial self management yadda yadda yadda but the basic concept of a prison as 'somewhere to keep certain people who are a threat to society locked up in'' isn;t likely to change.
God tel me your not one of these ''free all prisoners'' twats. I mean are you planning to just let some lunatic like ian brady go free, can you not see a slight problem withthat line of arguement?
Do people think that communism would need some sort of prision function?
Devrim
to the extent that communism won't be a utopia which doesn't produce some dangerous anti-social individuals, you're right that separation from the rest of society seems the least worst. i don't see any reason for a punitive function though, so there's no reason these prisons would resemble anything we have no except in separating specific individuals from everyone else.
how would we deal with the 'stanford prison' dynamic though? self-managing communes of some sort?
of course i'd expect much lower crime since so much is property-related, non-violent etc