RonF - You mention getting violent criminals off the streets. Shall we start by agreeing that prison for non-violent crime is useless? I could get behind that.

curiousgyrl - Having re-read the post I see what you were responding in your first comment. What I meant is that if law and order types start using feminist language to try and defend their position there’s nothing we can do about that, except make clear that we disagree with them. We have no control over misuse of feminism. Although I do believe that we should be very careful over hte alliances we build.

I can see I’m going to have to do a follow-up

I think this is key–when people tell me not to walk there or do this or whatever and the subtext or explicit reason is that I’ll be raped, I often respond that the only time i ever was raped it was by a rich white guy who I thought I knew well. I’ve never been raped walking home late at night. That doesnt mean it can’t happen, of course, but its true that avoiding that kind of situation hasn’t helped me avoid rape.

Because I don’t agree with your premise. I don’t think the current system works well, but I wouldn’t say that it doesn’t work at all or that it’s worse than nothing. It does at least get violent criminals off the street for a period of time. It’s existence does at least discourage people to a certain extent from doing something that might lead to their incarceration.

Tell me; say we close the jails tomorrow. What do you think would happen?

When someone is accused of rape, there are a lot of ways that the investigation, trial and punishment of that person can go wrong. One way is for the police and court system to discount the word and experience of the rape victim. Police can fail to appropriately collect evidence and they can harass and otherwise harm the victim who comes forward. In courts, judges have allowed defense lawyers to subpoena women’s mental health files, have asked victims to demonstrate the physical position they were in when they were raped for the jury, and have essentially allowed victims to be tried. These are sexist responses to the victim.

Another way that a rape investigation and prosecution can be unjust is for the police and courts to discriminate against the accused perpetrator. Police can decide that a stranger rapist must come from a certain racial group. They can rough up a suspect or deny him basic rights. Judges can bias the jury against the accused, can refuse to hear evidence, and can sentence people ruled guilty according to racial bias. These are racist responses to the accused.

There are of course other issues, like the erosion of free public defender programs, sentencing laws that mandate incarceration for non-violent criminals, the removal of prison programs that once helped to reduce recidivism rates, and forced labor in prisons. (All problems in the United States.)

Feminists are right to want women to be able to prosecute rape through the justice system without fear of repercussions to female victims. Rape is a violent crime and people who commit it are dangerous. You wouldn’t say that people who don’t like murder are responsible for the oppressive nature of incarceration. It’s not the fault of feminists who want a less-sexist justice system that we also have a racist and classist justice system that is overly punitive.

If you want justice, you have to approach social problems from more than one perspective. Luckily, feminists are allowed to wear their anti-racism activist hats on alternate Thursdays.

I think feminists need to be very, very, careful not to be co-opted by law and order people, or to reinforce law and order. I just think that good anti-rape work should be quite unco-optable - particularly if you don’t reifnorce the idea of rapists as dangerous strangers

I’m planning to write a post about what sort of legal reforms I think feminists could and should push for that wouldn’t play into law and order ideas.

Lu - at least in NZ the provocation defence has been unsuccessfully used by women whose partner was abusing them.

Because doing nothing might make things even worse than that. The town decides to build a guard tower to shoot arrows at attacking bandits; this causes the bandits to become more aggressive in their raiding. So the town tears down the tower and announces a policy of passivity; this encourages four more bandit gangs to move to the area. It’s rare that ceasing a failing strategy will bring us back to a status quo ante that’s any better than where we are right now.

In other words, you have to have a replacement plan. “Let’s just chill” is usually unworkable advice.

Decnavda - I’m not advocating that the state ‘allow’ people to do anything - just that we do it, that we put at least some feminist energy into non-state ways of dealing with violence against women.

RonF - people say that a lot and I don’t understand it. In other contexts ‘what we’re doing isn’t working but we have to do something’ doesn’t make much sense. If we’re currently making things worse, then why not just do nothing? There are lots of suggestions about where to start in changing prisons, and the drug war is the obvious place, but I think the current system is worse than nothing.

By Jove, could we have discovered a commonly-held principle?

As a general rule, any distribution or subsidy should be paid to the people making the economic decisions, not to the institutions that desire to serve them.

You are right. But just as I pointed out above that the flip side of granting the state more power, granting the state the power to legalize vigilanteism, can be used to aid the powerful, the flip side of giving the state more money, giving the state the power to assign and enforce private property rights, will also be used by the government to make the rich richer. That is why I support welfare “redistribution” (technically “predistribution”, but I won’t derail this thread further by explaining that here) through a basic income or a negative income tax. Help the poor by giving the money TO THE POOR, rather than to bureaucrats.

One of my criticisms of many on the left is that they often argue in favor of giving the government more power to help the powerless without realizing that the state will inevitable use those new powers to help the powerful.

I would also argue that giving the State more money generally results in it’s using that money to benefit people with money.

So, tell me; if we get rid of jail, what do we do instead to deal with criminals?

2. I suspect Maia is right that prison does not serve a very strong rehabilitative function. On the other hand, I believe prison does serve to discourage crime and to assuage public demand for vengeance. Moreover, I understand that most violent crimes are committed by people younger than, say, 35. Youth is a problem prisons seem well designed to address. If we can incarcerate people with poor impulse control during the years when they are especially prone to violence, I expect that we can reduce violent crime (at least, reduce it outside of prison walls).

3. Just to be clear, New Zealand doesn’t have a provocation defense to the charge of rape, right?

I found out about this because she saw him at a housemate’s party some years later (while I was dating him), and was upset at seeing him. Her friends somehow misunderstood the whole thing and were bound and determined to label him a rapist, get him kicked out of his house, and generally ostracize him from his social scene. They didn’t know me. They didn’t include the ex-girlfriend in their actions. Once I’d done enough digging I called one of them and explained what’d actually happened, and asked them if they might have thought of talking to me at all? They were somewhat sheepish. My boyfriend did move, however, as it seemed the only resolution to the situation by the time things got that far.

What if the ex-girlfriends’ friends had decided to spray-paint “rapist” on my boyfriend’s car? Would he have deserved that? Would it have accomplished anything?

Things can be complicated, is all I’m sayin’. I was with you til the lynching too.

I think it’s wrong to vandalize property, especially of someone who’s been accused but not convicted of a crime, but even of someone who has been convicted. Picketing the sidewalk or street in front of their house, however, I am perfectly OK with (in the US you have an indisputable constitutional right to carry a sign bearing any message you please — apparently this right is void if the president happens to be nearby, but I digress).