Re: Prisons (Private/Public) or Justice? You choose.
BDSPM (BDSPM@aol.com)
Tue, 12 May 1998 15:51:59 EDT
The key difficulty with your prescription is that you still locate the source
and resolution to criminality within the individual, and you are still
pathologizing the 'criminal.' Is there a chance that anyone in your country
will ever get the message that criminality is constructed socially.
Therefore, attempts to curb crime can only be successful if they emerge from a
social analysis not a psychological one. The US record on crime control
clearly illustrates the futility of intervention strategies aimed at
'correcting' the individual. So your brand of correctionalism might be
radical in relation to the three strikes and your out mentality. However, to
those of us unecumbered by the US socialization process, it is still more
correctionalist drivel. We have learned to expect the psychologization of
social processes from that country.