Is long-term solitary confinement torture?

[reverendjeremiah]

P.S. - this post steers me back towards the original topic at the end. Sure, we are having fun with the anarchy thing...but this thread is solitary confinement and jails and stuff.

Epi..dont get me wrong...I enjoy our heated discussions. Please dont think I hate you. In fact I look forward to what you post next.

So we arent asking for certificates now? Fine.. Im glad you eased off.

A question for you, Rev: How would you preserve the safety of such beings in a prisonland setting?

I have never ONCE spoke of a "prison land". Others have. I have not. The closest thing I have spoken of imprisoning someone is putting the worst clinical offenders in a high security sanatarium with professional help. I have no problem putting rapists and serial killers in this system to study.

I have, on the other hand, spoken of "banishment". Banishment doesnt mean "prison land". Banishment means "get the fuck out of our community and do not come back!"

Rev, I did some looking into Christiania. It is not a dreamland, you are right, but it has major problems with organized crime, particularly with regard to drug trafficking. Not all drugs are legal there and the white supremacists seem to have taken both marijuana and hash sales by the throat-with violence toward anyone who is either a competitor or a detractor.

Where I grew up had major problems with organized crime in my neighborhood as well. They had shit loads of cops, red tape, government officials, prisons, etc...etc... yet they still had a problem just as much as Christiania had in certain times. If you are using organized crime as a failure of a system, then I conclude that every single government model has failed based from your logic.
I am reading a book on someone who lived in Christiania, and he paints a much different picture than you paint...and he at first didnt want to stay there.

They used to have all drugs legal there until the surrounding government decided to mop their heroin addicts into the Christiania community. In other words, a government that claims to have all the answers had to mop its shit into an anarcho neighbor. This is a "win win" choice for the government of Denmark
#1 - Denmark has less Heroin addicts, which makes the govt seem like they are doing a great job
#2 - Denmark can now point an extra finger at the hated anarchists by claiming they have so many heroin addicts and addicts dying in their streets, and that Christiania should be shut down.
Now I have no problem with banishing people like that from a community, but this communities beuracracy targeted a specific neighbor to send their trash into. Kicking them out is fine. Sending them to a perceived enemy is an attack.
As far as the drug trade, they are the anarcho-capitalists. They act different ways to different people. Visitors are treated as suspect, residents are treated better. I personally do not care much for the capitalist element in Christiania, but they do. And I will also point out that elements like that exist in government societies as well. The only difference is that in Christiania they can stand out more in the open.

I wouldn't say it is "going strong." It has had many battles with authorities, especially as a haven for criminals, and since it doesn't have any effective means to combat crime, it seems to contain both a blessing and a curse for those who simply wish to live their lives there.

ITS AN ANARCHAL SOCIETY! Its going to have criminal elements.

Governmental societies have criminal elements as well, all of them stretching all the way up to their supreme leader.
rape exists with and without a government
Greed exists with and without a government
hatred exists with and without a government
racism exists with and without a government
Man, I can keep going and going on this list. Your government has this problem just as bad as Christiania.

Now...how about pointing out what you DONT see. Because what you DONT see is what is important, and not immediately noticeable to those who close their minds to such things...you do not see:
corporations fucking their community over
Governments taxing people to death
Governments telling you what religion to believe
Government telling you how to live your life
Government telling you what is right and wrong
Lobyists
segregation
corrupt stock markets
people getting kicked out for not paying rent
governments supressing open and free comerce
rich bastards hogging land and natural materials
governments telling you that you must use the official currency
no cops - the people police themselves
No traffic congestion
Man, I can go on and on with that list.
to suggest that an anarcho society cannot function is the same as suggesting that atheism causes people to go out on killing sprees. It is a suggestion that people do not know how to naturally organize and live together without someone (government or god) threatening them with punishment if they dont heed authority.

In addition, it is no prisonland.

??? What does that mean..I dont understand?

It was founded by hippies and squatters, not supermax criminals whose population contains rapists and murderers. Suggesting that an anarchist state would work for such people would merely promote might makes right until enough people had been hurt that the rapists and murderers were either killed themselves or incarcerated again (or perhaps exported, an then what, if they couldn't manage their own trespassers?). I'm not sure that your contention that violent criminals could be located in such a spot and remain there peacefully. 900 hippies in one place doesn't seem to be an adequate basis for a replicable system of self-government, especially by convicts.

Super criminals, in my opinion, exist regardless of law or not. they exist regardless of government or anarchy. In fact, I am willing to argue that a government allows criminals to organize even better, and find their fingers inall of our wallets even easier.

I do not want to repeat myself. I have mentioned in older posts how I feel about this.

also, I am quite upset that you have gone the "hippy" route. You might as well argue that they all love Hitler as well. You should make up your mind. Are they all hippies? Or all white supremecists drug dealers who are violent? Stop trying to over generalize and rethink that statement you made please. If you dont like it, then just say you dont like it. regardless, please do not over generalize an anarcho system...its much more complex than you may realize.

Given the community's start as a children's playground, one of the saddest things I see in Christiania is a beautifully handcrafted wooden children's playground, painted in rainbow colours that sits empty and unused. There are no kids to be seen, just a dozen drunks and drug addicts crouched along the walls in front of it.

Sounds like the imagery of most major cities to me...so what do you suggest? Round up the drunks and throw them in jail? Force children to play there? tear the park down to keep the drunks away?

And perhaps even more tragic is the amount of drugs that are openly sold to kids in Freetown. Throughout the day I see handfuls of kids biking in, no more than 14 years old, buying weed from the dealers. It's a sad failure of both Freetown and the Danish authorities to address the problem that clearly exists here.

GASP!!! OMG!!! teenagers actually doing what they want!!! We should send in an officer to take the pot from that kid, put hi in handcuffs and put him through the system. First they can book the kids in juvenile hall and cost the parents somewhere around $500 for bail. Then we can pull the kid and his parents up before an authority figure that beats a hammer on his huge desk reminding him and his parents how bad smoking weed is, and how it is so horrible that humans deserve to be put in a cage like wild animals for it. Then we can decide to put him in a reform school. Thats it. We can take him from his parents and lock him up in a school where we can teach him how horrible marijuanna is.

That would fix everything.