RE: STEEMIT Openmic Week 106 - Gente (ORIGINAL) - Benjamín Mora
Hi @macoolette ! I'll start from the back to the beginning
The thing i'm operating with my feet is a loop pedal. When i press, it records guitar and/or mic. Thats why i played the hole song recording guitar and bass (bass line with the guitar) and the voices of the chorus while im singing.
The song is mine yes!
And the most important, why do i want to end up with the punishment system? That answer is very long, ill do my best to make it as brief as a reply shoud be, just sticking to what you mentioned.
When i started studying law i had the same opinion you havE, that punishment was good to prevent and control crimes, but a deeper look at the penal system, criminological studies and the history of penal punishment shows that jail has the exact opposite efect. The more you punish, the more crimes you have, the more people you trap and force to live under those inhuman conditions, the more (and worst) criminals you'll get, the less control you have.
Thinking in alternatives is not easy, because we were born and educated to believe that torture and prision solve those problems, and even when we understand that studies show that they just make it worse, we are afraid to keep "criminals free". Authors that propose abolishment of penal system are not lunatic lawyers that want to close jails in 24 hours and leave all problems unsolved, in fact, they are the only ones who want to really solve the problem.
The first point is to start with alternatives in the less harmfull crimes (like theft or marihuana possession) that are 90 percent of the reasons why people are in jail. Alternatives could be as mediation,comunity services (but while they are free, near the family that helps a lot, and away from hardcore criminals). In my country there are prisions where prisioners can study (elementary, highschool and some university careers), and the more they achieve, the more their sentences are shortened. Those are just examples of how to avoid or reduce punishment.
But the most important thing to understand is that you don't have to propose a fully eficient alternative, those things resolve themselves while the change is being done, one experience helps the other, and helps creativity. When slavery abolishment was proposed, abolitionists didn't know a fully efective alternative to make the economic and social system work without slaves, but they where sure that slavery had to stop anyway, and now we are better than those days (in fact the end of slavery and the beggining of the penal system as we know it today are extremely related -there is a netflix documentary called "13 enmend" that speaks about this, it is VERY GOOD.
@macoolette as i said, it's amazing for me to know that a song i wrote was the starting point of critical thinking and debate! There are thousands of things to say regarding crimes and punishment, but i don't want to bore you! If you are still interested, we can continue, it's a pleasure for me.
Thank you very much for your comment!! =)
I fully agree with what you mentioned about alternatives because we also have an open prison here in my country. I got the chance to visit that prison and you can never tell it is a prison if you were not told beforehand. It is a very wide farm where prisoners are not in prison but are free to till the farm for as long as they can. While talking to one of the locals there, he was saying that there are even many of the prisoners who do not want to be freed from there so they stayed. However, those are for lighter crimes or those who have served long enough that their sentence has been lightened.
How about heinous crimes? How about repeat offenders? Are we also going to put them in something like the open jail? While I agree that indeed punishment may cause more harm than good, I am still not in the position to fully oppose it when I do not have any proposed alternative. As they say, "If you oppose something then give a valid and reasonable alternative. If you can't give an alternative, you have to go with it."
Wow great example of alternatives you gave there!
I think that the most important thing to do is to understand that prision is torture, is slavery, is sadic, AND it spreads violence and makes the situation worse.
If that fact enters in peoples minds, changes and options will start reaching those minds. What we have today is the opposite, people moslty think that jail is fair, that we must punish, so peace changes are always (almost always) interrupted.
The most serious crimes are the most difficult to think of, especially when it's not the first offender's crime, and when the offender is some kind psyco with no empathy. But we can choose to leave THOSE cases untill we come to a wise solution. Prisions are overcowded, and more than 90 per cent of prisioners are there because of lighter crimes, so alternative solutions for lighter crimes will also help "hard criminals" to live in better conditions.
Maybe in 100 years of alternative experiences we will come to an alternative solution for harder crimes, and if we dont, the world will be better anyway.
So, i insist in the fact that it's a long way, and that real changes come from the inside, so what i plan to do is to pay atention to my thougts and feelings, to think critically, to be opened to unlearn old constumes and to try new ones, to read, to debate, to write and compose.
Its a big peasure to speak with you! thanks =)
Leave the cases of heinous crimes? Now, that is something I can not agree on. I had few opportunities to visit prison cells for outreach activities and I can say that the prisoners are not being tortured, maybe at least in those places we visited. Assuming that there are those who are being tortured, I would be sorry for them but I would rather have them tortured in jail rather than letting them on the loose and cause more damage to innocent lives.
When i said "we can choose to leave THOSE cases untill we come to a wise solution" i meant to keep sending to prision until we find a wise solution that doesn't involve danger to other citizens nor torture and inhuman punishments. First thing is to focus in lighter crimes, i insist. Changes in lighter crimes first.
Okay, that's what I can agree on. 😊