I suspect you may have missed the whole entire point of having a justice system. No, the police aren’t supposed to kill people for committing crimes that are horrifying enough to disgust you, either.
You support the death penalty for rape? Fine. That happens AFTER the trial, by the state, using laws supported by the people. NOT via the mob justice of state-funded gangsters with sidearms acting on their own discretion.
Honestly this perspective indicates an understanding of justice so warped that I don’t think productive discussion is even possible until you’ve done like 6 months of education on the basic philosophy of a justice system. “Extrajudicial murder of people on the street is okay if they’re Bad Enough People” is a whole fucking red flag parade of a position to hold.
every so often I get notes on my “deciding people are guilty from the get go and then denying them rights based on that decision is Bad” post with “except pedophiles and rapists!” and like, 1) way to miss the entire point, and 2) the recent surge of casting queer people as “child groomers” should make it pretty damn clear that that line of thinking makes it really easy to justify murdering queer people on sight. “but who would do something like that?” I don’t know, maybe the same people who justified lynching black men by accusing them of rape and murder?
NOT via the mob justice of state-funded gangsters with sidearms acting on their own discretion
OR via the mob justice of non-state-funded randos with guns acting on their own discretion. Anarchism wouldn’t make this any better. (Anarchism raises a fuckton of questions about who gets to decide who’s punished for what and how… and if you do come up with an effective system, it raises questions about whether it even counts as anarchism anymore.)
People around here are all in favor of non-punitive restorative justice except for the crimes, or the people, that they personally consider unforgivable. Y’all need to think seriously about what your principles actually are. Are you really opposed to cruel retributive punishment on principle, or do you just think the wrong people are subjected to it? Who do you think does and doesn’t deserve to be reconciled and reintegrated into the community (which is the aim of restorative justice), and why?
I’m constantly perplexed by the sheer number of bloggers on here who claim to be anti-police, or anti-prison-industrial complex, or what have you, but will then breezily come out with hot takes about punishing ‘irredeemable people’ that I wouldn’t even have expected to hear from Republican judges during an election year.
