I understand the desire for revenge. I have felt it, though I have rarely acted on such feelings. Instead I have let the desire for revenge fester within me. And yet, at the same time, I have never felt that if someone who hurt me was hurt in turn, it would make me feel any better. I have felt the desire for revenge but also see such desires as basically pointless. Sometimes I wonder if a sincere apology would make me feel better. Perhaps most of the apologies I have received didn’t quite feel sincere. Or I didn’t know how to take them in. I often find myself apologizing to others. I fear I might have gotten too good at it.
The existence of prisons, on one level, must have some connection to the desire for revenge. On another level they are racial capitalism’s mechanism for punishing the poverty it creates and managing surplus populations it has no use for. And white supremacy’s way of ensuring white people remain in power. Growing up during the cold war, one of the arguments I most often heard against the Soviet Union was that it sent all dissenting voices to the gulag, an argument that conveniently sidestepped the fact that the U.S. has the largest per capita prison population in the world. The pot calling the kettle burnt. And yet the desire for revenge, the feeling that if someone does something wrong they must be punished, is clearly at play in all these dynamics, if only as propaganda.
If I mention the former Soviet Union it is because I find myself wondering to what extent Prison Abolition and Transformative Justice can replace Communism and Socialism as the words we use to describe the world we are fighting for. If we start with the premise of a world without prisons and without police – however difficult it might be at first to imagine – what other changes to society would we need to make in order to get us there? For much of the twentieth century, Communism and Socialism were the words, concepts and histories that represented the most hopeful leftist frontiers of possibility. But the twentieth century is now over. Human cultures haven’t always had prisons or police. If it was possible before it might be possible again.
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Jacob Wren
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If there are no police and prisons, there is no law and no protection. Laws cannot exist without enforcement.
Comment by Tracey Chippendale-Gammell on 1 December, 2024 at 9:08 amStalin did not create the gulags, you can read Dostoevsky’s experience in The Dead House from 1850, 67 years before the overthrow of the Tsar. London’s Tower has served as a prison for 1000 years and before that the dungeons and pits. Don’t we elect governments to prevent the arbitrary use of force and protect those most in need? The police and prisons are tools without which we are all enslaved.
There is an Iranian friend I cannot find. She is a creative, a little non-conformist and deeply religious. In Iran, she is not safe. Likewise, artists who voice the truth of life around them in Russia, Belorussia and so many countries of the East. We might wish away the brutality of the police or guards and the inhumanity of prisons, but they are controlled by those in power.
In many countries without the rule of law, religious structures condemn in the name of God. The Inquisition never ended, terrible crimes are still committed because ordinary people, not police or prison guards, feel empowered to drive away a devil perceived. Without the restraint of laws, a woman with slightly red hair and a pointy nose will be condemned a witch and burnt at the stake. Religious fervour, with racism and misogyny, will leave every woman at her husband’s feet.
No political system has proved itself flawless, so we need laws that can be enforced. Otherwise, the worst type of monster who will rule the world.