#Separation studio alternatives drivers
#Separation studio alternatives series

They create barriers to victims getting answers to their questions. Prisons separate people from those to whom they owe a debt, they preclude discussion and conversation. That is some of the hardest work any of us will ever do. I do the enormous labor of becoming someone who will never cause that harm ever again. I make things as right as possible, ideally in a way defined by those I hurt. Accountability means that I acknowledge what I've done. Punishment is something someone does to me, all I have to do to be punished is not escape it. In fact, I think they couldn't be more different. As you say, justice for victims, can you give me just a shortlist of why those goals aren't being met?ĭanielle Sered: Prison is antithetical to accountability, which is confusing because we often use the terms punishment and accountability interchangeably. There's also the question of deterrence and rehabilitation. Our picture of who crime victims are and what crime victims want is artificially monolithic and distorted in a way that means that we are enacting things in their names without ever having actually asked them what it is they want.īob Garfield: You mentioned safety, you mentioned punitiveness. We've heard mostly from white women like me, even though a young man of color is 10 and a half times more likely than I am to be robbed or assaulted and even likelier than that to be killed. The truth is in our public discourse, we have heard from a tiny fraction of crime victims and largely from a non-represented fraction. The other assumption that animates our appetite for punishment is the assumption that that's what crime victims want.

That's not what a society that wants to be safe does. We've baked into our central response to violence exactly the things that generate it. The four core features of prison are shame, isolation, exposure to violence, and an inability to meet one's economic needs.

#Separation studio alternatives drivers

We know in that business know that the core drivers of violence are shame, isolation, exposure to violence, and inability to meet one's economic needs. If our aspiration is to produce safety or to heal victims or to help people become people who will never cause that harm ever again, then prison has very little to offer for us. If our aspiration is to perform punitiveness, then we should lock them up for a really long time. The question comes when we start to answer how, and it depends on what our aspiration is. What's wrong with that assumption?ĭanielle Sered: The fact that people who cause serious harm need to be dealt with is entirely right. Someone does something violent and the best thing to do is lock them up for as long as possible, which doesn't on the face of it sound like a foolish proposition, rapist, murders, people who kick old ladies in the face on subway cars, they need to be dealt with. Danielle, welcome to On the Media.ĭanielle Sered: Thank you so much for having me.īob Garfield: Let's start with assumptions. Danielle Sered is the executive director of Common Justice, an organization based in New York City that has pioneered the practice of restorative justice with violent offenders at a local level. One based not on punishment, but on truth and reconciliation. We've talked about how the law and order approach doesn't work and that we don't want to keep locking people in jail for every infraction, but that raises the question what then do we do to address injustice when it appears? Rather than the isolation and violence that prison breeds, some advocates propose there should be a new approach.

#Separation studio alternatives series

It was part one of a three-part series we're calling repairing justice. If you haven't heard it yet, be sure to check it out. I'm Bob Garfield.īob Garfield: Last week on the show, we examined the power of the prosecutor in our justice system-ĭanielle Sered The DA is even more powerful than judges, criminal defense attorneys, probation, the governor, the mayor, anyone,īob Garfield: -and how voters are electing a new wave of so-called progressive prosecutors to try to in the tide on mass incarceration.