Justice
You can tell a lot about a society, and a political movement, by its attitute to those citizens who have committed crimes.
Historically, a law-and-order mentality has been associated with the Right. The Right demands harsher sentences, believes criminals are inherently bad people, questions the presumption of innocence, and argues (against all evidence) that punishment works as a deterrent.
The Left, historically, has opposed this, arguing that most crimes are the result of material conditions, the vast majority of criminals are just ordinary people, and that when more extreme behaviour occurs it is the result of mental health problems, not an inherent “evil” of some kind.
It is a distressing fact of the current political landscape that much of what calls itself “the Left” no longer supports any of these notions, and instead agrees in principle with the Right, changing only the superficial characteristics of who is to be identified as The Bad People Who Threaten Us.
I remember the moral panic about Albanian rapists in 1990s Greece. It was obvious that this was racist propaganda, a typical narrative aimed at immigrants or minorities in many countries; the precise ethnic identity doesn’t really matter, it’s just a convenient way of demonizing people while making everyone afraid.
And yet now what calls itself the Left happily embraces the same trick. All the old arguments about what the statistics actually show, about how the problem isn’t evil people prowling about in the dark, no longer apply. And oddly enough, the “leftists” who act in the exact same way as the far right then claim to support restorative justice. Some of them even claim to support prison abolition!
The same people who think it’s right to fire someone for the slightest infraction of their extremely academic codes of morality, who think that there should never be any forgiveness for anyone who has been publicly shamed, claim to support the rights of prisoners.
Who do they think prisoners are? Who do they think commits crimes?
Maybe the fantasy is that they’re all gentle innocent giants played by Michael Clarke Duncan, who will be appropriately grateful for a job as a cleaner when they get out — as long as they don’t move to the wrong neighbourhood, you know, the sort where they wouldn’t fit in. Like where these people live.
Because you know that people who report Twitter accounts for ban evasion, who tweet at others to demand they stop following a person they consider a sinner, who insist people they deem bad should be fired or deplatformed— people, that is, willing to cast others out even before they’ve been charged with a crime, let alone convicted and sentenced to jail time — will never, ever countenance having to treat the majority of ex-cons as humans.
Because the majority of ex-cons fall into categories these people hate: lower-class, uneducated, uncouth. Damaged, if only by the experience of prison. They probably believe in all kinds of offensive stuff. And, get this: they’ve done crimes! When you can’t forgive someone for saying a bad word when they were twelve, or behaving inappropriately when drunk, or having emotionally hurt people… imagine when you find out about people breaking the law! Some of them may have even killed someone. Do you think that someone who believes that drunkenly propositioning a person you’re attracted to should mean exile from society is interested in working at the same job as someone who has actually permanently ended someone’s life?
I mean, just look at the mob of self-righteous middle-class crusaders that went after Alice Sheldon’s legacy, demanding the James Tiptree Jr. Award (named after her pseudonym/persona) be renamed because she killed her husband in what was with 99.99% likelihood a suicide pact. But even if it wasn’t, in which case it was a choice made by an old, suffering, depressed woman. She was found lying in bed with her husband, holding his hand. Imagine a person who would organize to ensure this woman’s legacy doesn’t stain their precious brand. Do you think this person, who most likely claims to believe in restorative justice, would allow a criminal into their smug little part of society?
No. At best, ex-cons should only ever get menial jobs, somewhere far away, where their existence can be morally pleasing but unthreatening. And they shouldn’t get any ideas about trying to make something of themselves, because if they ever find any level of success, they will be hounded and destroyed by champions of restorative justice. Zero forgiveness. You think they were vicious when they went after Alice Sheldon? Imagine the level of viciousness that’s reserved for an immigrant, maybe one with personal beliefs that aren’t entirely in line with what’s taught at the elite American universities he could never attend.
A core principle of a democratic society is this: when you commit a crime against that society, there is a response. We can choose, as a society, whether that response is a punishment, based on the idea that you are bad, or an attempt to help you, based on the idea that you are broken. After that period of punishment or restoration is over, however, you are an ordinary citizen like any other. That’s why we talk about a “debt to society.” You messed up, you harmed the group you are part of, and now you have to make up for it. And once you have done so, the debt is gone, and everything returns to normal.
It’s bad enough that most countries choose punishment over restoration, given that the evidence points heavily towards the latter being infinitely more effective. (We know why: prisons are a money-making machine for private interests, and the overall threat of imprisonment also keeps the population in check.) But to see people who claim to be “radical leftists” embrace an ideology that empowers the carceral system and opposes democratic rights is depressing and infuriating in equal measure.
