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Social Media, Public Shaming, and the Prospects for Prison Reform
Everyone always learns the wrong lesson from the Stanford Prison Experiment and the Milgram Shock Study: we always think it means that other people are horrible. We ignore the possibility that we might be horrible, too, given the right circumstances.
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Natural Experiment on Policing Underway
We’re about to find out what would happen if policing decreased by 66%-94%: It’s not a slowdown — it’s a virtual work stoppage. NYPD traffic tickets and summonses for minor offenses have dropped off by a staggering 94 percent following the execution of two cops — as officers feel betrayed by the mayor and fear…
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“A federal criminal investigation of Koch Industries West refinery in Corpus Christi, Texas, helped spark Charles Koch’s interest in the criminal justice system.”
Charles Koch is committed to reforming the criminal justice system: “We are not a nation of bad people. We are a nation that made some bad choices,” he said. “We’ve become addicted to severe sentences, to the point where we are mass-producing convictions in many courts, while not providing defense counsel on a timely basis.…
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Prison Abolition, Reform, and End-State Anxieties
Recently I’ve been thinking about a book by Erin McKenna which I read as an undergraduate: The Task of Utopia: A Pragmatist and Feminist Perspective. I read it then because it promised to bridge the divide between my favorite genre, science-fiction, and my interest in philosophy. But the book profoundly changed me, and I’m always surprised…