debitage: part of the core tool and scraper tradition

debitage

18.2.06

Criminal Justice Produces Criminals

Cultural Theory argues that different cultures focus on different risks, pointing out and making a stink about those risks that threaten the culture's way of life. But I think it goes farther than that -- each culture produces risks, which are in turn used as a rationalization for maintaining that culture. What we have is not a functionalist theory of society, but a dysfunctionalist theory.

Take, for example, the modern criminal justice system. The criminal justice system is a Hierarchy. And what Hierarchists fear most is Fatalists -- delinquents, people who don't respect the rules, an underclass of people with no loyalty to the system. Yet the criminal justice system's primary role in society is to create crime, to instill in people -- particularly people who have been identified on the basis of race or class as "bad people" -- the worldview and skills necessary for a life of crime.

The most astonishing feature of the criminal justice system is its arbitrariness. The system appears on the surface to be highly formalized -- indeed, over-formalized to the point of being crippled by red tape. But in fact the system is based largely on the whims of the people in charge. If the jail doesn't want to let you out (for example, because the jail is a privatized one that gets paid per inmate), they won't -- and all the paperwork stating that the court found you not guilty means exactly nothing. If the guards want to do a cavity search, or beat you, it's entirely at their discretion.

The arbitrariness holds even for people who are not serving sentences in jail. Pre-trial conditions placed on defendants are designed to make them fail, giving the system another hook on which to hang its control of their lives. Sentencing, of course, is no picnic either. Rather than assigning a sentence with clear parameters that a convict can serve out and be done with, judges like to impose sentences with various conditions that keep the convict dependent on the mercy of the system.

And of course the system doesn't even need to wait for a person to do something wrong. The system creates crimes, and traps people (particularly poor and black people) into committing them. (For example, it's routine for plainclothes police to jump people in low-income neighborhoods, then charge them with resisting arrest.) Once a person is in the system, the system's treatment will ensure that they commit more violations, which keep them in the system.

The key point in Fatalism is the feeling that nothing you do matters. To a Fatalist, the rules of the game are arbitrary and unpredictable, so there's no basis on which one could figure out a plan for getting ahead. By treating defendants and convicts arbitrarily, the system destroys their ability to understand the system, and hence their ability to figure out how they could satisfy its conditions and get back on the straight and narrow.

The criminal justice system also serves to destroy the social ties that allow non-criminals to function in society. The conditions placed on defendants (who have not been convicted of anything), such as regular drug testing, undercut their ability to hold a job. Probation, parole, or jail time are even worse in this respect.

These factors make crime seem an appealing way of life. There's no deterrent value to punishment if you think that whether you end up in jail is a function of the arbitrary will of those in power, rather than of your own conduct. And there's no moral-teaching value to the law if the law is clearly unprincipled and brutal. Meanwhile, the alternatives to crime are closed off.

The modern criminal justice system is a giant protection racket. It creates a criminal underclass, then gets paid by society to "handle" it in a way that only perpetuates the problem.

Stentor Danielson, 12:40, ,

15.2.06

Read It

This article on the environmental justice implications of wildfire and wildfire management is what my dissertation ought to have been.

Stentor Danielson, 19:33, ,

13.2.06

Three Kinds Of Ambivalence

Hugo Schwyzer has a post up expressing concern about his own ambivalence about many issues (abortion is the example he focuses on). He worries that his ambivalence is a moral fault and an instance of privilege, since the fact that the issues in question don't directly affect him means he has the luxury of being undecided.

His commenters rush to reassure him that ambivalence can be a virtue, contrasting it favorably with blind dogmatism. But I think to really parse this question out, we need to distinguish between at least three types of ambivalence, which I'll call (with apologies for the alliteration) avoidant, affective, and active.

Avoidant ambivalence occurs when one declines to think about an issue enough to form an opinion. Both sides' arguments sound superficially plausible, so one shrugs one's shoulders and moves on to other things. This type of ambivalence is most clearly indicative of privilege, since only someone not immediately impacted by the consequences of an issue can so easily decline to think more about it. Avoidant ambivalence is often a defense mechanism for sloth -- after all, you can't feel compelled to take action on a contentious issue if you don't know which side you support.

Affective ambivalence is ambivalence maintained as a deliberate affectation. Because active ambivalence is often seen as a virtue, many people will put on a deliberate show of ambivalence to convince themselves and others of their open-mindedness. The affectively ambivalent person refuses to let one side's arguments convince him, deliberately seeking out contrary evidence so as not to become a hated partisan. This too is a privilege, since only when an issue's resolution is of minor importance can one sacrifice it in the quest to appear open-minded. And like avoidant ambivalence, it can be a refuge for those who don't want to do the hard work of taking action.

Active ambivalence is the type of ambivalence that Schwyzer and his commenters all believe that he has. Active ambivalence arises when, despite one's best efforts to figure things out, one is unable to come down for certain on one side or the other. This is a respectable intellectual position, but it brings with it a responsibility -- the responsibility to remain actively trying to move to committed open-mindedness, rather than giving up (avoidant ambivalence) or becoming too attached to your own ambivalence (affective ambivalence). Committed open-mindedness is the condition in which the weight of evidence and argument on one side of a question is definitely stronger, but one remains sympathetic to the way that others could find the alternative more convincing. Committed open-mindedness is a virtue because it allows one to take action, but avoids demonizing one's opponents or remaining closed to any new and better arguments they may put forth. Someone coming out of active ambivalence is in a good position to be committedly open-minded, having so recently felt the pull of the other side's arguments. But we should be careful of the lure of fanaticism -- to be so happy to have finally made up one's mind that one becomes dogmatic.

Stentor Danielson, 10:31, ,