Comment by bbarnett
2 years ago
Mob justice existed too. And execution for minor crime, with king's justice.
Modern western police forces, with all their foibles, are far, far, far better than mob justice.
Are people even aware of history, and how absolutely bloody it was, with an immense lack of personal rights?
Fixing what's broken now is good. Trying to pretend it is worse than what was before, is absolutely absurd and laughable.
It's not so clear cut. At least admit that a lot of thought has been given to this, none the least by Foucalt's famous essay on this topic, Discipline and Punish.
Foucalt has his critics, but it's not immediately obvious that the massive incarceration problem in some Western nations is better than public execution at the whim of monarchs. And some forms of torture, Foucalt argued, have changed from the theatrical and public to the more subdued torture of everyday lives of prison inmates.
Remove the US from the list of western countries and it must be better today, yes?