The ghost in the box
If liberty is inalienable natural right, as we hold it, how can the convicts be deprived of liberty as just punishment? The Bible does not consider imprisonment (as opposed to jailing before a trial) as the lawful mode of punishment. There is no "tradition" justifying this barabarian practice except for the perverted sadism of Germanic pagans, which was abandoned in the Middle Ages, only to be reinvented in the modern times.
Imprisonment, like slavery and serfdom, contradicts the very notion of liberty as the natural right, and its defense is as pathetic as was the defense of slavery. The favorite mode of such defense is claiming that the criminal still has his natural rights (that no one "alienated" these rights); he is limited in the exercise of these rights. This is called the theory of forfeiture.
...Many of us want to say that convicted criminal forfeit their human right to liberty for the duration of the imprisonment. But how can imprisonment be justified if human rights are [inalienable] properties of persons, part of the very fabric of their being as people? Some natural rights theorists responded by saying that imprisonment is thus unjustified, while others such as Locke said that a felon committing a crime somehow renounces his very humanity and becomes "a noxious Creature, like a Wolf or Lyon." (B. Orend. "Human Rights: concept and context", http://www.du.edu/korbel/hrhw/booknotes/2004/zwiebach-2004.html)
If one adopts Locke's view, there is nothing wrong (and Locke made a point of it - more than that, actually, as he was the chief architect of the Triangular Trade) with enslaving a criminal, as his liberty has been self-annuled anyway. Locke was consistent in his views, unlike his liberal followers. Enslavement is not tolerated, regardless of the corrective merit and costs; yet incarceration is fine. Is it? It is no finer or intellectually compelling than toleration of slavery. The whole institution must be dismantled regardless of all other considerations. Such gross abuse of liberty, our tradition, and scriptural teachings is intolerable.
I hope America would lead the world in eradication of this barbarity. This nation started as the alternative to imprisonment: the British convicts became indentured slaves but were given a chance of a new beginning as free people in a free country. In a short while, this country led the world in political freedom and then in prosperity. In Australia, the arid continent was turned into one of the wealthiest countries. What can we show for our "humane" prisons? Millions of broken human lives. Self-perpetuating schools of crime. People humiliated and reduced to dependency. The contrast speaks for itself.
Apart from this self-inflicted misery, forfeiture theory sets a dangerous precedent (again, just like the slavery). If people can forfeit their liberty in a socially-approved way, why can't they forfeit their other rights? Alternatively, if this theory is incorrect but imprisonment still needs be justified, natural rights must be redefined accordingly or rejected entirely. There has been the constant slide from the notion of natural rights as inborn entitlements towards the more flexible view of natural rights as "trump cards" in the battle of interests (Dworkin):
...rights trump non-right objectives, such as increasing national wealth. We can keep to the trumps metaphor while recognizing that some rights have a higher priority than others. Within the trump suit, a jack still beats a seven or a three. http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/rights/
It was bad enough when natural rights were declared to be arbitrary constructs. The new way of thinking reduces these rights to playing card games. This grotesque metaphor is presented as the most advanced thinking of the era. Such is a rational reaction to the gross inconsistency between the ideal and the reality, with imprisonment serving as Exhibit A for "intuition" (meaning, in this case, a few centuries of institutionalized abuse) contradicting the "simplistic" notion of inborn right of liberty. It is not coincidence that the modern prison system was shaped by
...the views of Jeremy Bentham. The notion of prisoners being incarcerated as part of their punishment and not simply as a holding state until trial or hanging, was at the time revolutionary. This is when prisons had begun to be used as criminal rehabilitation centers. (Wiki)
Bentham, the author of "Critique of the Doctrine of Inalienable, Natural Rights", was the staunch denier of the existence of natural rights, generously calling natural law theory "nonsense upon stilts". Look what this denial led to when his sensible utilitarian ideas were implemented. Now > 1% of Americans are rotting in Bentham's philosophical abstractions. And where is Mr. Bentham himself? Here he is, in his box:
This Victorian creep willed that "his skeleton and head were preserved and stored in a wooden cabinet called the "Auto-icon", with the skeleton stuffed out with hay and dressed in Bentham's clothes."
Here is the inventor of your "moral intuition" regarding the prisons, sitting in his pen and enjoying seeing his morbid fantasies played on the rest of the world.
All the talk of violations of human rights is so much hot air until prisons are abolished and this creep's spirit is released to where it belongs. Take the beam out of your own eye before pointing to the specks in other people's eyes.
Imprisonment, like slavery and serfdom, contradicts the very notion of liberty as the natural right, and its defense is as pathetic as was the defense of slavery. The favorite mode of such defense is claiming that the criminal still has his natural rights (that no one "alienated" these rights); he is limited in the exercise of these rights. This is called the theory of forfeiture.
...Many of us want to say that convicted criminal forfeit their human right to liberty for the duration of the imprisonment. But how can imprisonment be justified if human rights are [inalienable] properties of persons, part of the very fabric of their being as people? Some natural rights theorists responded by saying that imprisonment is thus unjustified, while others such as Locke said that a felon committing a crime somehow renounces his very humanity and becomes "a noxious Creature, like a Wolf or Lyon." (B. Orend. "Human Rights: concept and context", http://www.du.edu/korbel/hrhw/booknotes/2004/zwiebach-2004.html)
If one adopts Locke's view, there is nothing wrong (and Locke made a point of it - more than that, actually, as he was the chief architect of the Triangular Trade) with enslaving a criminal, as his liberty has been self-annuled anyway. Locke was consistent in his views, unlike his liberal followers. Enslavement is not tolerated, regardless of the corrective merit and costs; yet incarceration is fine. Is it? It is no finer or intellectually compelling than toleration of slavery. The whole institution must be dismantled regardless of all other considerations. Such gross abuse of liberty, our tradition, and scriptural teachings is intolerable.
I hope America would lead the world in eradication of this barbarity. This nation started as the alternative to imprisonment: the British convicts became indentured slaves but were given a chance of a new beginning as free people in a free country. In a short while, this country led the world in political freedom and then in prosperity. In Australia, the arid continent was turned into one of the wealthiest countries. What can we show for our "humane" prisons? Millions of broken human lives. Self-perpetuating schools of crime. People humiliated and reduced to dependency. The contrast speaks for itself.
Apart from this self-inflicted misery, forfeiture theory sets a dangerous precedent (again, just like the slavery). If people can forfeit their liberty in a socially-approved way, why can't they forfeit their other rights? Alternatively, if this theory is incorrect but imprisonment still needs be justified, natural rights must be redefined accordingly or rejected entirely. There has been the constant slide from the notion of natural rights as inborn entitlements towards the more flexible view of natural rights as "trump cards" in the battle of interests (Dworkin):
...rights trump non-right objectives, such as increasing national wealth. We can keep to the trumps metaphor while recognizing that some rights have a higher priority than others. Within the trump suit, a jack still beats a seven or a three. http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/rights/
It was bad enough when natural rights were declared to be arbitrary constructs. The new way of thinking reduces these rights to playing card games. This grotesque metaphor is presented as the most advanced thinking of the era. Such is a rational reaction to the gross inconsistency between the ideal and the reality, with imprisonment serving as Exhibit A for "intuition" (meaning, in this case, a few centuries of institutionalized abuse) contradicting the "simplistic" notion of inborn right of liberty. It is not coincidence that the modern prison system was shaped by
...the views of Jeremy Bentham. The notion of prisoners being incarcerated as part of their punishment and not simply as a holding state until trial or hanging, was at the time revolutionary. This is when prisons had begun to be used as criminal rehabilitation centers. (Wiki)
Bentham, the author of "Critique of the Doctrine of Inalienable, Natural Rights", was the staunch denier of the existence of natural rights, generously calling natural law theory "nonsense upon stilts". Look what this denial led to when his sensible utilitarian ideas were implemented. Now > 1% of Americans are rotting in Bentham's philosophical abstractions. And where is Mr. Bentham himself? Here he is, in his box:
This Victorian creep willed that "his skeleton and head were preserved and stored in a wooden cabinet called the "Auto-icon", with the skeleton stuffed out with hay and dressed in Bentham's clothes."
Here is the inventor of your "moral intuition" regarding the prisons, sitting in his pen and enjoying seeing his morbid fantasies played on the rest of the world.
All the talk of violations of human rights is so much hot air until prisons are abolished and this creep's spirit is released to where it belongs. Take the beam out of your own eye before pointing to the specks in other people's eyes.