What I read
In "Liverpool prison is a symbol of our broken system. Send the inmates home," Simon Jenkins (2018) uses expert opinion and the example of Dutch society, which in recent years has opted to imprison so few criminals that it is closing some of its prisons, to argue that most of the people locked up in Britain's increasingly overcrowded and poorly maintained prisons should be released into non-prison sentences because this would be better both for them and for society. Jenkins says that the appalling state of its prisons reflect ugly moral truths about British society that loves to lock citizens up in disgusting prisons for no good reason, the only reason being a vengeful desire to hurt them.
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My response
I liked Jenkins' sad story for a couple of reasons. First, he uses reason and solid evidence for support. But as I read and thought about it I also realised that it relates to the topic we have been reading about in Skillful, that is, identity, except that it's the identity of an entire society rather than just the individual persons who make up that society. And then started thinking about my own country and my own personal experiences. No, I've never been in prison, but I have been to prisons to visit friends who were locked up, and I could never see any benefit to anyone coming from their being there.
I think that we do need prisons; so does Jenkins. He thinks most people now locked up should not be, but he also thinks that the need to protect society from harm is a good reason for imprisoning people, and I agree with that. How could it be moral or just, for example, to lock a man up because he had sex with another adult man who wanted to have sex with him? No one has been harmed. There is no victim, and yet both British and my own country used to call such men criminals and lock them up as punishment. And today, thousands, if not hundreds of thousands, of people are imprisoned in my country for using popular drugs although they have not harmed or threatened any harm to anyone else. More obviously not in need of prison are criminals who commit fraud, such as lying accountants and businesswomen. These people might be very gentle, and although society needs to be protected from them, they are no risk of dangerous violence, so why should they be locked up in bad conditions that fail to respect the fact that although criminals, they are still human beings and citizens who are members of society?
The answer that Jenkins gives sounds right to me. Our societies lock people up because the chosen identity is one of violence, of punishment, and of revenge. These chosen identities of our nations might be understandable, but they also show a core identity that is morally bad. Good people, as the Buddha knew and taught, and as Jesus knew and taught, do not act like this. The modern Dutch seem to me to have changed the given identity they inherited from their ancestors into a much better core identity by making choices to reform the bad old ways and attitudes of the past. And if something has been demonstrated to work, as the Dutch experiment shows it does, that is solid evidence that it does work. So if there are better alternatives available, should our societies continue to choose the bad habits we were given instead of changing to better values and attitudes for our core identity?
I think that we do need prisons; so does Jenkins. He thinks most people now locked up should not be, but he also thinks that the need to protect society from harm is a good reason for imprisoning people, and I agree with that. How could it be moral or just, for example, to lock a man up because he had sex with another adult man who wanted to have sex with him? No one has been harmed. There is no victim, and yet both British and my own country used to call such men criminals and lock them up as punishment. And today, thousands, if not hundreds of thousands, of people are imprisoned in my country for using popular drugs although they have not harmed or threatened any harm to anyone else. More obviously not in need of prison are criminals who commit fraud, such as lying accountants and businesswomen. These people might be very gentle, and although society needs to be protected from them, they are no risk of dangerous violence, so why should they be locked up in bad conditions that fail to respect the fact that although criminals, they are still human beings and citizens who are members of society?
The answer that Jenkins gives sounds right to me. Our societies lock people up because the chosen identity is one of violence, of punishment, and of revenge. These chosen identities of our nations might be understandable, but they also show a core identity that is morally bad. Good people, as the Buddha knew and taught, and as Jesus knew and taught, do not act like this. The modern Dutch seem to me to have changed the given identity they inherited from their ancestors into a much better core identity by making choices to reform the bad old ways and attitudes of the past. And if something has been demonstrated to work, as the Dutch experiment shows it does, that is solid evidence that it does work. So if there are better alternatives available, should our societies continue to choose the bad habits we were given instead of changing to better values and attitudes for our core identity?
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My question
Do you agree that the way society treats its criminals tells us a lot about the moral identity of that society?
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Reference
- Jenkins, S. (2018, March 12). Liverpool prison is a symbol of our broken system. Send the inmates home. The Guardian. Retrieved from https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2018/mar/12/liverpool-prison-symbol-broken-system-send-inmates-home
At 115 words, my summary is getting long, but it's still safely within the 130 word limit. I don't need to be punished for being too wordy.
ReplyDeleteIt was interesting writing my response. I had seen and quickly skimmed the article yesterday, as its date of publication suggests, and perhaps my brain was thinking about it in the background. When I started writing, I only had the vague ideas in my first paragraph in mind. The rest evolved as one idea led to another, which is normal for response writing.
The connection with the topic of our reading didn't occur to me until I was writing, but I liked it. Of course, if I sat and thought about it for a bit like I would for an academic essay, I would probably change my mind about a few things, but this is not an academic essay where idea is carefully considered, argued and supported on one topic.
On the other hand, perhaps that's what my unconscious brain was doing over the last 24 hours. I often see something in the news and then go back to blog it a day or two later. That seems to work well for me.
How about you? As you blog to practice writing for fluency, you might like to think about what works and doesn't work for you. And then share your ideas on that.
I just made a couple of revisions to my summary paragraph. It's now up to 118 words. (When I read it again after publishing, I saw that I'd missed copying and pasting part of the title! Than I also managed to delete a couple of other words to make it clearer and shorter.)
Delete