Mamdani’s dream team: Imagine there are no prisons
All is proceeding as foreseen. Mamdani has assembled a group that’s brimming with ideas. Some of those ideas may seem vaguely familiar to you, if you came of age in the late 1960s and spent some time on college campuses. Now these stale warmed-over Rousseauvian theories come out of the mouths of young people who are running the show in NYC rather than shooting the late-night breeze in the dorm while passing the bong around:
Late last month, the mayor-elect released the roster of his transition team’s Committee on Community Safety, a 26-person group that will advise him on criminal-justice and related issues. The list contains several activists who are not only openly hostile to law enforcement but also reject the very concept of carceral punishment.
What could possibly go wrong?:
Brooklyn College professor Alex Vitale, the author of The End of Policing, has argued, for example, that policing is “fundamentally a tool of social control to facilitate our exploitation.” He has also described police as “violence workers,” who should be turned to only as a “last resort.”
And he seems like the conservative on the team, compared to several others:
Advocates like Vitale and Olderman often cast the criminal-justice system, and even America itself, as a villain. In doing so, they echo the worldview of transition-team member and former Women’s March leader Tamika Mallory, who said days after the death of George Floyd in 2020, “We are not responsible for the mental illness that has been inflicted upon our people by the American government institutions and those people who are in positions of power. Don’t talk to us about looting. We learn violence from you.”
There is a tiny kernel of something true in all the claptrap, and that “something” is that the causes of crime and related social ills are multifaceted, and that a lot of criminals really are mentally ill and/or addicted, something that’s also true of the homeless. It’s interesting that a great many of the solutions suggested by the Mamdani appointees involve intervention by social workers rather than police; good luck with that, is what I say having known a great many social workers, most of whom are not the least bit eager to be the first on the scene of a potentially – or actually – violent situation.
The idea of protecting the non-criminal public from criminals seems to be the furthest thing from the minds of Mamdani’s crew.
Perhaps my favorite part of the article is this. Kassandra reminds me most forcibly of the type of thinking that one would often hear back in the late 60s and early 70s. Let’s reminisce, readers:
Kassandra Frederique, head of the Drug Policy Alliance and another Mamdani committee member, has framed her advocacy in “abolitionist” and revolutionary terms. During a 2021 appearance on a web show, for example, she discussed the prospect of black revolutionaries “tak[ing] over the state.” She also seemed to endorse drug use as a way for some advocates to embrace more radical positions. “There are some people in our movement that need to be high so that they can imagine the world that we can’t see currently,” she said.
Imagine.
Behold the Portlandification of New York City.
Korean grocers Rodney King LA riots. There will be blood. Wasn’t there a Committee for Public Safety during the French Revolution? That didn’t end well either. Will the National Guard be needed after some NYC pols have taken a swing?
“after some NYC pols have taken a swing”
They need to swing if you follow my drift.
There is a tiny kernel of something true in all the claptrap, and that “something” is that the causes of crime and related social ills are multifaceted, and that a lot of criminals really are mentally ill and/or addicted, something that’s also true of the homeless.
________
The glaring problem with all the above is that, while the “causes of crime” are no doubt multifaceted, that doesn’t mean we actually know what they are. We always hear about these “root causes” but what we don’t hear is exactly what those are. We hear what some ideologues want to think they are, but that’s a different matter. The only answer we can be sure of is that broken and disfunctional families are a breeding ground.
And even to the extent we do know, that’s a far cry from knowing how to fix the problem. The only unanimous verdict on that is that all the experts think we need to give more money to the experts. Not very promising.
I can understand Portland going where it did — when I visited 30 or more years ago it was a spaced-out city that considered lawlessness as “art” and tolerated open drug use.
But frankly, I cannot believe the people of New York will be pleased with this turn of events. When street crime starts going up like it has in LA and San Francisco, old and new residents alike will call for change. Of course they could have nipped this in the bud by voting for someone else, but that train has left the station and perhaps they’ve learned their lesson. Perhaps. It would have been easier for them to vote for someone else if there had been a reasonable alternative, granted. But in a race between unreasonable and out-freaking rageous, sometimes unreasonable is the better choice. Please tell us, Neo, what your New York friends are saying about developments there. Do they really want to be San Francisco on the east coast?
Why the gee whiz about “black revolutionaries”? Oh, I see: “There are some people in our movement that need to be high so that they can imagine the world that we can’t see currently”.
Sheesh.
F:
The New Yorkers I’ve spoken to recently haven’t said a single word about Mamdani, and I haven’t asked.
Re Neo and Eeyore, I would agree that crime’s roots being multifaceted. But this often devolves into being an excuse to avoid addressing what those are and the degree to which we can deal with them. And one undeniable root of them – probably the most important – is the fallen, depraved nature of humans and the natural world. I am a Christian so I understand this in a spiritual and supernatural way, but one can understand it in other senses as well. Ultimately evil exists and it exists in all of us to one degree or another, and it ties in to every crime, no matter how justifiable or understandable. And we can manage that with many ways -one of which has to be punishment – including incarceration and execution – to help limit the misery.
But while it is justifiably taboo to talk about growing government on our side – and I can understand given how we literally cannot afford it – one area where I feel government actually could do with being bigger would be in the criminal justice system, at most levels. Issue is trying to avoid it being wasted. But as it is there are big issues with overcrowding.
First thing I feel would be majorly expanding the size and number of Public Defenders, to prepare the way for what is coming next. Those that exist are horribly overworked and underappreciated, and that does not help. Issue is I feel you need to expand their numbers to get a lower case to head ratio, and make it a more appealing position to attract more quality personnel. These are the people who are the public’s defense and shield against persecution from the government. We should all recognize the importance of that after January 6th. It may result in more acquittals of the guilty and fewer convictions or plea deals, but that is far from the worst sin. It would also prepare the way here.
I would also say you need to build more prisons. Lots of them if need be. This is taboo and unappealing for a host of reasons, including cost. To say nothing of hiring the security for it. But at present it’s no secret that American prisons tend to be hugely overcrowded and understaffed, which is one reason for the power of gangs and in prison criminals. The goal of this is ultimately to be able to spread out the prison population. Including greater ability to quarantine death penalty cases or the worst of the worst like El Chapo from General Population in order to isolate and humiliate them, and to spread Gen Pop out on a wider scale so that they have some more room to stretch their legs, but also have more eyes on them from staff. This would be to try and lessen the turmoil in Gen Pop, to make it easier to do the “rehabilitation” thing everyone loves talking about but which often does not happen, and to create a population profile closer to those in some other countries like Sweden (yah I know, using Sweden as a positive counterpoint in current yeah). The idea here is to try and filter wheat from chaff, identifying those that are relatively minor offenders or exceptional ones who probably would not re-offend and who would be more receptive to being rehabilitated, and those that are basically unlikely to be rehabbed. Habitual or hardcore criminals who you focus on punishment and containment with, either executing them or focused on long term detention.
The idea is you try and give people the best possible chances to get their act straight if their crimes warrant it, making prison a more secure and less crowded (and thus more peaceful or at least contained environment) so you try and leaven rehab and punishment so they have some grounds to head back out with marketable skills and hopefully connections and hope they don’t come back. If that fails or the crime is that serious, you focus on basically dumping them into a dark hole they do not come out of for as long as their sentence lasts, or never/until execution, where they are kept in humane and secure conditions but that is it.
Crime has many faces and many roots, and unfortunately many of them are cases where justice and law enforcement are ill equipped to manage. But at the same token it can only go that far. Understanding and even empathizing with the criminal does not necessarily have to mean justifying them or arguing they don’t deserve punishment (in many cases I’d argue it justifies the opposite). And while I’m prepared to at least consider a lot of “prison reform” or “police reform” initiatives that the progs do (have even considered the wisdom or lack thereof of “social workers” and Cops, namely sticking one per patrol car or “shop” to work with the police, in a subordinate role with the idea of having them stick in the car if things get hot or at risk).
But most of it strikes me as either Trojan horses for C-P style overburdening and collapse, or hopelessly naive. And I say this in spite of knowing how there are flaws and problems with my broad concepts that I haven’t seen yet and how you’d need more careful management.
LOL. Sometimes you just have to laugh.
The proposed “remedy” is a kind of REPARATIONS on a—in this case—municipal scale.**
(Ultimately, the plan is to make it GLOBAL.)
The actual goal is destruction…
…after all, WHO owes WHOM what? (And ACCORDING TO WHOM??)
** One can, likewise view (excuse?) Tim Walz, Newsom, Pritzker and most blue governors—as promoting reparations in their respective states…not to mention “Biden”, overall.
“…as a last resort.”
This assumes that there will be any remaining police to call…
…keeping in mind that Madmani is a radical, utterly dishonest (but I repeat myself) far-left/Marxist ideologue.
Ah well, HOPE springs eternal in the human breast…
They remind me of Thomas Szasz, who thought mental illness was a construct to control people.
Sure, crazy isn’t crazy and theft and violence are fine as long as a victim does it.
Civilizations sometimes die by suicide.
The prisons won’t go empty though; they’ll be full of the Marxist’s enemies.
Got a friend who moved to NYC from Texas some years ago. Proudly leaving his Texas roots behind and being progressive. Currently, he is nervously thinking about voting against himself.