RE: The interesting history they don't teach in schools
April 22, 2015 at 9:29 pm
(This post was last modified: April 22, 2015 at 9:32 pm by Hatshepsut.)
(April 20, 2015 at 6:38 pm)francismjenkins Wrote: I'll even help you, here's a wiki article: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Restorative_justice
Or, a wiki on somewhat firmer citation basis: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Restorative...ocial_work
Wikipedia is a very fast way to get basic information albeit with doubts about the reliability of what you find there. Restorative justice emphasizes fines, community service, payment of restitution, and apologies made to victims at arranged meetings. We already do that to some extent here in the USA. Yet when trying to explain why crime and incarceration rates are lower in Sweden than in the USA, one should ask what else differs between the two countries besides the structure of their respective justice systems. Sweden, for instance, has a more racially and ethnically homogeneous population than the U.S. does. It doesn't have large disparities in quality between one public school and another. There are few widespread cultures of disaffection analogous to America's Hip-Hop to teach youngsters to reject the legitimacy of their broader social order in Sweden. Because of extensive housing, health, and child care subsidies, people in low-income occupations can make ends meet with somewhat fewer hours of work needed and much less financial stress than in the USA.
In short, although I think we could get mileage simply by shortening some of our draconian sentences and de-criminalizing consumer-level drug violations without loss of crime deterrence, transforming ourselves into a Nordic country may prove quite a challenge.
(April 20, 2015 at 5:42 pm)Cato Wrote: What about unsavory services, like emptying your shit from a septic tank? ... Extend this to all sorts of goods and services and you quickly revert to some sort of subsistence existence.
Which is what we had during the long era when anarchism actually worked. We lived all of prehistory in bands or small tribes that were essentially self-governing without rulers. But like other posters here I have a hard time imagining you can run a complex civilization without hierarchy.
