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by RcouF1uZ4gsC 3019 days ago
We have always had systems of punishment and retribution. In the past if you killed or raped someone, the clan and family members would try to hunt you down and kill you. Basically, the state took over the function of punishing wrongdoers. What happens when the state stops punishing people is not that punishment stops, but that you end up with vigilantism. For example in Detroit https://www.cnn.com/2013/08/14/us/michigan-suspect-beaten/in...
1 comments

> We have always had systems of punishment and retribution.

We have, but the system that the article is critiquing is, in fact, the one we presently live under.

You can, in fact, punish people without prisons. You said it yourself, we've done it with other means in the past. The article addresses incarceration specifically.

The whole article intends to convince us that incarceration should not be punitive, but restorative.

You directly missed my point. The carceral threat is only one stick, and judging by recidivism data, not one that is working particularly well. Perhaps we should examine another set of sticks, or even maybe, perhaps consider another set of carrots. Dismantling the prison industrial complex will not itself create predators, which is the claim I responded to.