Yeah I’ve been seeing a lot of folks act like all Americans are absolute barbarians who revel in our nation’s cruelty, but prison abolitionists still operate here and plenty of communities here are actually putting rubber to road for rehabilitative justice.

And as you say, it’s fucking hard. You want to give people chances but you need to prioritize victims safety and rights, and the fact is there are bad actors in every group. And that’s not even getting into situations where life is a hell of a lot easier when you keep giving one person more and more chances.

I’ve been fortunate enough to know some folks in the prison ab scene and they’re good folks trying to do right by the sorts of folks nobody else is gonna. And I’ve come to the conclusion that you can judge a society by how it treats its criminals. Who will defend the unsympathetic? Someone’s gotta, otherwise you’re a hop skip and a jump away from having a role where the worst people can get official sanction to be their worst selves. Round here the prison guards are often just as bad of people as the prisoner.