1. Provide a Job Corps http://www.jobcorps.gov/home.aspx or similar alternative to high school for every student who requests it. Job Corps provide training opportunities, housing and financial support, and most importantly, they do not subject students to the humiliating experience of taking tests that they are bound to fail by design.
2. Provide mental health care on demand for anyone who requests it.
3. Decriminalize possession and sale of drugs.
4. Establish sentencing guidelines that mandate incarceration alternatives (community work etc.) for non-violent offenders, and limit incarceration only to violent offenders and other serious crimes.
5. Create public works for people who are unemployed.
These are all attainable goals that do need to wait for the revolution, and they will have a far greater effect on the poor than all the babbling about evils of capitalism.
On Wed, Oct 23, 2013 at 1:29 PM, Wojtek S <wsoko52 at gmail.com> wrote:
> Michael: " He said some time ago that we should abolish the prison
> system. "
>
> [WS:] Very clear and concise indeed. A sure way to lose whatever little
> public support the left in this country still has.
>
> FYI: Prisons exist in any system capitalism, socialism, and anything in
> between for a very simple reason - there will be always people who hurt
> others to get what they want. This is a no brainer, and only a delusional
> person believes that crime will go away after a change of the system.
> Contrary to leftist mythology, poverty is not the cause of crime because:
> 1. most poor do not commit crimes and 2. many well-off people commit
> crimes, probably more so than poor people, they are just not caught.
> Criminology offers many possible causes of criminal and delinquent
> behavior, and poverty has not received much empirical support. However,
> poor people are disproportionally victims of criminal behavior so the crime
> is of more concern to them than to an average middle class suburbanite.
>
> So if capitalism enters the crime scene, it does so by subjecting the poor
> to criminal victimization to a much higher degree than it does to more
> affluent social strata. Reduction of poor victimization should be
> addressed instead of floating ludicrous proposals of releasing the criminal
> element back to the communities that they victimized. And also getting
> serious about prosecuting white collar and corporate crimes.
>
>
>
> --
> Wojtek
>
> "An anarchist is a neoliberal without money."
>
-- Wojtek
"An anarchist is a neoliberal without money."