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Notes -
+1 on the "Good post." It also brought to mind another video I watched recently. A woman who's a prison abolitionist, addressing critics who ask the "So what do you want to do about rapists and child molesters, then, just let them go free?" question.
She spoke at great length about her own horrific abuse, being raped by her best friend's stepfather, who also molested her best friend, and her experience of having to go through the court process, being torn apart by the defense attorney, being sneered at by the police, only to discover that her rapist's supposed 10-year-sentence was reduced to 5 without her being notified or consulted. And how the prison system would abuse him and make him worse, and how she was also revictimized and abused by the process, and never asked what she thought justice should look like, because it was all about "punishing" her abuser and not actually addressing the needs of the victim. What she wanted, she said, was for her abuser to acknowledge what he did and apologize, which he obviously would not do when it would amount to a confession and be used against him.
It was a very passionate and emotional argument. I could see her point of view.
And yet... the holes in her thinking were glaringly apparent. Did she really think that, absent the threat of punishment, the right sort of mediator would get her rapist to give her an apology sincere enough to make her feel better? And what if his other victims did want to see him behind bars? For all her cataloging of the horrors of the "carceral system," she never really did get around to answering the key question: what do we do with very bad people who will hurt other people again if not imprisoned? I imagine it's somethingsomethingmumblerestorativejustice, because they really do believe that rapists and child molesters are produced by "the system" and if the system weren't so terrible, we wouldn't have rapists and child molesters.
So, yeah - this was an extreme case, but very much "woman wanting the system to focus more on victims, less on perpetrators." Of course I know there are men in the prison abolition movement too, but I notice they tend to stress the racism angle more. (This woman did of course hit the "Prison especially victimizes marginalized communities" talking points.)
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