Harvard Kennedy School Hosts ‘Restorative Justice’ Advocate Who Wants to Abolish Prisons
“What we know from the overwhelming evidence is that prison is likelier to produce more harmful outcomes”
A lot of Americans are suddenly wondering where all the radicalism on college campuses came from. Well, it begins with constant messages like this one.
The College Fix reports:
Harvard Kennedy School hosts ‘restorative justice’ advocate who wants prisons abolished
This past Wednesday, Harvard’s Kennedy School hosted Danielle Sered, a “restorative justice” advocate who wants to do away with the nation’s prisons.
Sered (pictured) is the executive director of Common Justice which, according to its website, “develops and advances solutions to violence that transform the lives of those harmed and foster racial equity without relying on incarceration.”
The Crimson reports Sered told the Zoom discussion that her “end goal is the full abolition of the prison system.” To help make this happen, she wants to “make fewer things illegal […] arrest fewer people, [and] prosecute fewer people who are arrested.”
Sered also blasted prisons for putting people in “cages” where they get “[sexually] assaulted” and “degraded.”
“The core features of prison are shame, isolation, exposure to violence, and an inability to meet one’s economic needs,” Sered said. “So we’ve baked into our core responses to violence precisely the things that we know generate it. It’s like showing up at a house fire with a hose full of gasoline and acting surprised when the flames rage higher.”
Sered also contrasted the recidivism rate in prisons with that of Common Justice, her own organization.
“What we know from the overwhelming evidence is that prison is likelier to produce more harmful outcomes,” she said. “It has recidivism rates, in some places, upwards of 80 percent.”
“If Common Justice had an 80 percent failure rate, we would not all be together today,” she added. “I would not have been on your invitation list.” …
“Common Justice — since our inception — has had fewer than 7 percent of our participants terminated from the program for new crimes on our watch,” she said.
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Comments
It’s a sign of the times when the actors in tv commercials match the racial make up of our prisons.
Fur shure.
Thanks for the chuckle.
No matter what name you give it, some system must exist that protects the common citizen from the dangerous.
It’s all trade-offs — What does a society want to spend its finite resources?l on?
Like it or not, REALLY REALLY DANGEROUS HUMAN BEINGS EXIST. And are being born every day.
Restorative justice–no–it’s just a program to excuse criminals and unleash them again on the innocent public
We don’t have time for this idiocy.
Just doxx her address and let nature take its course.
So does she think charges should be dropped against President Trump?
I agree that fewer things should be illegal. I also agree that imprisoning people is not a good idea, and should be avoided if at all possible. Use restitution wherever possible; if the criminal can’t pay, make them work it off. The 13th amendment specifically permits this. And bring back corporal punishment for crimes where restitution is not possible or applicable.
“What we know from the overwhelming evidence is that prison is likelier to produce more harmful outcomes” This woman ignores the harmful outcomes resulting for victims of repeat offenders. Look at New York City and Los Angeles, where the DAs release violent criminals to go out and do more of what violent criminals do. How is that justice for the law-abiding public? Leftists live in an alternate reality.
She’s not advocating simply releasing them. She’s advocating alternatives to imprisonment. I agree with her, though I suspect she would violently disagree with the alternatives I would propose.
Fine. Tell all judges to send sentenced convicts to Sered’s house. See how long her opinion stays that way.
Danielle and her family would be slaughtered and she would have a fleeting moment of surprise. and horror.
However, if we didn’t have to put all our money into foreign wars (vote Trump!) we might be able to think about turning prisons more into opportunities rather than ugly cages with mean people. Sounds crazy, but Timothy Leary wrote about his experience rehabilitating prisoners treating them using LSD (the right way instead of the CIA way) and the recidivism rate dropped impressively. He did mention that the Warden was more interested in the blueprints for his new prison though.
1. Where do we find these people?
2. Does every society produce people like this?
I believe in the concept of restorative justice, but in only works when the criminal is repentant.
We have to keep penitentiaries for those who refuse to repent.