Post#250 » by Zonkerbl » Mon Nov 10, 2014 4:12 pm
"It is within this context that it makes sense to consider the decriminalization of drug use as a significant component of a larger strategy to simultaneously oppose structures of racism within the criminal justice system and further the abolitionist agenda of decarceration. Thus, with respect to the project of challenging the role played by the so-called War on Drugs in bringing huge numbers of people of color into the prison system, proposals to decriminalize drug use should be linked to the development of a constellation of free, community-
based programs accessible to all people who wish to tackle their drug problems. This is not to suggest that all people who use drugs-or that only people who use illicit drugs need such help. However, anyone, regardless of economic status, who wishes to conquer drug addiction should be able to enter treatment programs."
So basically she's saying take the stupid out of the prison system. Don't put people in jail for using drugs or prostitution. Don't make schools an assembly line for creating prisoners. Provide better care for the mentally ill. Address the root cause of the main problems that cause people to end up in jail and the need for prisons will start to wither away.
Now what do you do with murders and rapists?
"It is against the backdrop of these more broadly conceived abolitionist alternatives that it makes sense to take up the question of radical transformations within the existing justice system. Thus, aside from minimizing, through various strategies, the kinds of behaviors that will bring people into contact with the police and justice systems, there is the question of how to treat those who assault the rights and bodies of others. Many organizations and individuals both in the United States and other countries offer alternative modes of making justice. In limited instances, some governments have attempted to implement alternatives that range from conflict resolution to restorative or reparative justice. Such scholars as Herman Bianchi have suggested that crime needs to be defined in terms of tort and, instead of criminal law, should be reparative law. In his words, " [The lawbreaker] is thus no longer an evil-minded man or woman, but simply a debtor, a liable person whose human duty is to take responsibility for his or her acts, and to assume the duty of repair."
There is a growing body of literature on reshaping systems of justice around strategies of reparation, rather than retribution, as well as a growing body of experiential evidence of the advantages of these approaches to justice and of the democratic possibilities they promise. Instead of rehearsing the numerous debates that have emerged over the last decades-including the most persistent question, "What will happen to the murderers and rapists? "-I will conclude with a story of one of the most dramatic successes of these experiments in reconciliation. I refer to the case of Amy Biehl, the white Fulbright scholar from Newport Beach, California, who was killed by young South African men in Guguletu, a black township in Capetown, South Africa.
In 1 993, when South Africa was on the cusp of its transition, Amy Biehl was devoting a significant amount of her
time as a foreign student to the work of rebuilding South Africa. Nelson Mandela had been freed in 1 990, but had not yet been elected president. On August 25, Biehl was driving several black friends to their home in Guguletu when a crowd shouting antiwhite slogans confronted her, and some of them stoned and stabbed her to death. Four of the men participating in the attack were convicted of her murder and sentenced to eighteen years in prison. In 1 997, Linda and Peter Biehl-Amy's mother and father-decided to support the amnesty petition the men presented to the Truth and Reconciliation Commission. The four apologized to the Biehls and were released in July 1 998. Two of them-Easy Nofemela and Ntobeko Peni-Iater met with the Biehls, who, despite much pressure to the contrary, agreed to see them. 133 According to Nofemela, he wanted to say more
about his own sorrow for killing their daughter than what had been possible during Truth and Reconciliation hearings. "I know you lost a person you love, " he says he told them during that meeting. "I want you to forgive me and take me as your child."
The Biehls, who had established the Amy Biehl Foundation in the aftermath of their daughter's death, asked
Nofemela and Peni to work at the Guguletu branch of the foundation. Nofemela became an instructor in an afterschool sports program and Peni an administrator. In June 2002, they accompanied Linda Biehl to New York, where they all spoke before the American Family Therapy Academy on reconciliation and restorative justice. In a Boston Globe interview, Linda Biehl, when asked how she now feels about the men who killed her daughter, said, "I have a lot of love for them." After Peter Biehl died in 2002, she bought two plots of land for them in memory of her husband so that Nofemela and Peni can build their own homes. l35 A few days after the September 1 1 attacks, the Biehls had been asked to speak at a synagogue in their community. According to Peter Biehl, "We tried to explain that sometimes it pays to shut up and listen to what other people have to say, to ask: 'Why do these terrible things happen? ' instead of simply reacting. "
I've been taught all my life to value service to the weak and powerless.
