Op-ed recommendation: “Until we treat rapists as ordinary criminals we won’t stop them”

not all convicts are in an open prison** and are allowed to e.g. work and only sleep in the prison cell. but this is not the default and mostly part of the rehabilitation plan at the end of the prison term.

your video is about one experimental facility, and while I think this is a Good Thing not all prisons have “no locks or guards”.

Norway’s system is focussed on resocialisation, though. see Breivik’s conditions of detention, probably not even thinkable within the US prison complex.

* started to reply before you edited your post
** as approach common in Europe, the Marshall Project had a series of articles about German prisons, in a slightly less excited style compared to Moore : )

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Thanks for the clarifications.

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6 posts were split to a new topic: Eugenics?

At 4:25 he goes to a maximum security facility.
And it has a recording studio. Each inmate has a private room and their own bathroom.

So… yes, locks, but still a vastly different place with a focus on rehab.

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Hah that sounds about right. I’d have been young enough when I read it to be very taken with the idea. They’re also not clear on how it’s enforced … just ask me how easy it is for a dude to avoid paying child support for 15+ years.

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Speaking as an actual human woman who has reproduced, I can tell you I made the decision based on lust and stupid hormones.

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is it a useful thought experiment or isn’t it more suitable to block a discussion about a prison system? it reminds me of the all-or-nothing reasoning line used in arguments about gun regulations: no grey scales, the only thinkable next step is a complete ban.

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It’s bizarre to me, that one person says, “crime”, and suddenly the response is “prison”.

Americans have a rich vocabulary for describing criminal acts. Everything from, “driving while black”, to, “spitting on the sidewalk”.

Yet, according to the article, there’s a huge subset of men who rape, who have convinced themselves that it’s not actually a crime. With all the continuous stream of infotainment regarding true-life criminal stories, its a glaring ommission. We’re being sold a lurid story of violent crime on the rise (when the opposite is true) but rape as a violent crime somehow stays firmly in the blind spot.

No, this is not about the efficacy of prison. That’s exactly the kind of red herring people bring up when they don’t want to talk about rape as being a problem.

When I first started hearing the phrase, “rape culture” I thought it a strident hyperbole. And it’s not a phrase that helps change anyone’s mind. But the deeper this country sinks, the more apt this term becomes.

If raping someone had the social stigma of even just a parking ticket, fewer men would rape.

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I don’t think it’s that. I think they know it’s a crime, but they have defined “rape” in their heads to mean “a stranger leaps out of the bushes and grabs a woman for the purpose of sex”. Things like “too drunk to say no” or “she was making out with me so she must have wanted to” or “I bought dinner and pressured her about it until she gave in” don’t register as being that crime.

These are the same sorts of people who think men cannot be raped by women, because men are “always” up for sex.

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It’s not a clinical term, though, and as such it’s use when talking about issues relating to mental health etc. is limited and unhelpful. Whyn’t talk about demonic possession?

Because in one case, a demon-possessed person has no agency. A sociopath does, they just don’t give a shit about other people.

Idk what that means though, other than “bad person,” which is vague and nebulous. And as a clinician I can tell you there are better, more clinical terms, but even civilians know this, you indeed know this.

Look up clinomorphism, and think for a minute, maybe you’ll have something more to add? Something useful?

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I think that short of murder, rape is the most violent crime: profound physical and psychological damage that further extends to harm whole families, relationships, and lives; why shouldn’t rapists be viewed and judged in ways commensurate with the crime?

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I speak vernacular, my specialties lie in entirely useless fields like Chess. An Aspie has no idea how other people think or react - very poor at reading social cues. An asshole can read cues just fine and chooses to do it anyway. I have no more specific term than sociopath to describe such an individual. Maybe you as a clinician can contribute a more specific descriptor?

DSM V is easily stolen last I heard.

Sorry the pissiness (not a clinical term) is unwarranted.

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Hey, totally understandable. World is going to shit right now, we’re all on the verge of nuclear war, and the goddamn dog barfed on my bed. Snark is totes cool, bro.

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Ah the old canem vomitus, nasty!

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It’s not a clinical term, though, and as such it’s use when talking about issues relating to mental health etc. is limited and unhelpful.

This is false. Opening up discussions about mental health by recognizing and using common language while still being specific is perfectly possible (not limiting) and makes the world a better place (helpful). Words have meaning that you can get from context or from a dictionary. Often, but not always, the meaning is congruent with the clinical usage (see Merriam-Webster on sociopathy for example). The meaning is subject to change. People with degrees don’t get to control the English language.

It’s a non-clinical term with many unhelpful and misleading overtones, is more my point, not merely that it’s not a clinical term. But I should admit that the DSM and all “professional” tomes have the same kind of misleading, judgmental, frame-y language, 'cause, well, that’s language, man…

I hear you, though, about being gatekeeper-y and gross with words, which I’ll cop to, I thought I was being brave Horatius but was really being a butt.

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