We put human beings in prison not criminals
At her majesty’s pleasure, an article on Salon today, reveals a lot about the human condition.
Last year author Peter Kurth was imprisoned for essentially being obnoxious on an airplane. It’s strange to think we’re living in a time where simply being a rude customer is enough to get you thrown into jail.
The laws in place allowing such a thing are meant to address terrorism, and even though Kurth is clearly not a terrorist, we’re willing to mold and adjust these laws for the sake of teaching him a lesson. Well really who knows why it was decided he should go to jail, because obviously this seems like the most difficult possible way to handle such a solution.
The approach we’ve taken to terrorism is mostly crap, and doesn’t make us any safer. Instead we’ve bent these laws to legalize all sorts of discrimination and pettiness. If anything we’ve taken away precious resources to baby sit the public and make sure they’re not bringing more than 3oz of shampoo on a plane, and damned if it’s not a ziploc bag.
Our current (and when I say our I mean British and American) prison systems also are not working. They’re full of people on drug related offenses. If we choose to, we can intervene before it comes to this. Instead we put non violent offenders with rapists and murderers because somehow dehumanizing and degrading someone is supposed to starve out addiction or slap on the wrist.
Other lessons learned: Perhaps everyone doesn’t hate Americans and think we’re all complicit in our president’s actions. I should write every day even when I don’t have anything to talk about for the sake of discipline, and you never know what might come out. We have very strange ideas about what it means to be gay, when engaging in same sex acts is considered heterosexual so long as you pretend to take no pleasure in it.
