One of the things I hate seeing is appeal to authority in matters like criminal justice and military affairs. The right loves to roll out prison guards and (specific types of) veterans like they’re the only ones who have any authority to speak because they’re the only ones who “get it.”
No, motherfuckers, they’re stuck in an extreme and potentially traumatic job that allows them no leeway to imagine anything other than fixing the immediate problem in front of them, and they come out of those jobs with only a small window into what would be best for people in their position, and in the short term. They’re generally conditioned to view their “opponents” as dehumanized Other, they generally have no training whatsoever in policy matters, and they all self-selected (to varying degrees based on economic prospects) to join those career paths in the first place. Add on, some of them are just straight up stupid and/or cruel. Yes, they should absolutely be consulted and considered, particularly about on-the-ground implementation, but they are possibly the single worst group of people to give a privileged role in policy making.
If a prison is doing something that instinctively sounds awful to do to humans, and the prison guards say they “have to,” those claims deserve fair hearing, but decision makers should default to instant skepticism, not deference. Even when there’s some “there” there, it’s probably solely to make life more convenient for those with the power, and their specific solutions, especially ad hoc ones, are going to be geared towards maximizing that convenience for them, rather than minimizing the amount of coercion needed to make their jobs safe and practical.
The vast majority of prisoners, even in overstuffed American prisons, probably have some anger (maybe from getting incarcerated, and that often after selective enforcement of something that’s not really damaging to society) and probably have some gaps in their long-term planning skills. Of COURSE it’s going to be difficult to manage them. The people who are confronted with that reality shouldn’t get carte blanche to do whatever the fuck they like, though, and it’s up to the rest of us who are not jaded by an admittedly tough job (would be easier with fewer prisoners who are there for shorter periods, of course) to hold them to a humane standard.
One of the things I hate seeing is appeal to authority in matters like criminal justice and military affairs. The right loves to roll out prison guards and (specific types of) veterans like they’re the only ones who have any authority to speak because they’re the only ones who “get it.”
No, motherfuckers, they’re stuck in an extreme and potentially traumatic job that allows them no leeway to imagine anything other than fixing the immediate problem in front of them, and they come out of those jobs with only a small window into what would be best for people in their position, and in the short term. They’re generally conditioned to view their “opponents” as dehumanized Other, they generally have no training whatsoever in policy matters, and they all self-selected (to varying degrees based on economic prospects) to join those career paths in the first place. Add on, some of them are just straight up stupid and/or cruel. Yes, they should absolutely be consulted and considered, particularly about on-the-ground implementation, but they are possibly the single worst group of people to give a privileged role in policy making.
If a prison is doing something that instinctively sounds awful to do to humans, and the prison guards say they “have to,” those claims deserve fair hearing, but decision makers should default to instant skepticism, not deference. Even when there’s some “there” there, it’s probably solely to make life more convenient for those with the power, and their specific solutions, especially ad hoc ones, are going to be geared towards maximizing that convenience for them, rather than minimizing the amount of coercion needed to make their jobs safe and practical.
The vast majority of prisoners, even in overstuffed American prisons, probably have some anger (maybe from getting incarcerated, and that often after selective enforcement of something that’s not really damaging to society) and probably have some gaps in their long-term planning skills. Of COURSE it’s going to be difficult to manage them. The people who are confronted with that reality shouldn’t get carte blanche to do whatever the fuck they like, though, and it’s up to the rest of us who are not jaded by an admittedly tough job (would be easier with fewer prisoners who are there for shorter periods, of course) to hold them to a humane standard.