[HN Gopher] Kropotkin escapes from prison
___________________________________________________________________
Kropotkin escapes from prison
Author : item
Score : 244 points
Date : 2021-12-10 22:02 UTC (1 days ago)
(HTM) web link (crimethinc.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (crimethinc.com)
| elihu wrote:
| Today I learned that buoyant inflatable balloons have been around
| a lot longer than I thought.
| tempodox wrote:
| The Montgolfier brothers demonstrated the first hot-air balloon
| in summer 1783. They also invented parachutes.
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Montgolfier_brothers
| Someone wrote:
| I don't think the article states it was inflatable. It still
| may have been, though.
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Toy_balloon#History:
|
| _"The first rubber balloons were made by Professor Michael
| Faraday in 1824 [...] Latex rubber toy balloons were introduced
| by pioneer rubber manufacturer Thomas Hancock the following
| year in the form of a do-it-yourself kit consisting of a bottle
| of rubber solution and a condensing syringe. Vulcanized toy
| balloons, which unlike the earlier kind were unaffected by
| changes in temperature, were first manufactured by J.G. Ingram
| of London in 1847 and can be regarded as the prototype of
| modern toy balloons."_
| aasasd wrote:
| Pretty sure floating under giant balloons was a vaguely regular
| pastime of wealthy people in the nineteenth century, and
| perhaps earlier.
| hutzlibu wrote:
| And a good reminder to keep your plans simple.
|
| "In fact, on that morning, his friends had discovered that
| there was not a single red balloon for sale in all the markets
| of St. Petersburg. At length, they obtained an old one from a
| child, but it no longer flew. In desperation, they bought a red
| rubber ball and attempted to inflate it with hydrogen; but when
| they released it, it floated only a few feet up, stopped just
| short of the top of the courtyard wall, and drifted back down
| to them. Finally, they tied it to the top of a woman's
| umbrella, and she walked back and forth on the street, holding
| the umbrella as high above her head as she could--but not high
| enough".
| ggm wrote:
| A wonderful film in hypothesis. All the necessary qualities for a
| great escape movie.
| buttercakes wrote:
| Crimethinc still exists???
|
| Crimethinc still exists and it's digital content is being shared
| on hackernew????
|
| _Blinking meme gif_
| [deleted]
| throwaway81523 wrote:
| Uncontracted title: "June 30, 1876: Peter Kropotkin Escapes from
| Prison, A Tale of Derring-Do on the Occasion of His Birthday".
|
| I had wondered who the heck Kropotkin was.
| ashtonkem wrote:
| For those wondering, Kropotkin was a Russian anarchist
| philosopher. He's most famous for "The Conquest of Bread".
| throwaway81523 wrote:
| Thanks, I had heard of the philosopher though didn't know
| anything about him. What I was getting at though, was that
| the misleading title made me think Kropotkin was somneone who
| had escaped, like, yesterday. And I thought "Kropotkin who?".
| There has been some Biden-Putin theater in the news lately
| that I haven't paid attention to, so I thought Kropotkin
| being locked up must have something to with that.
|
| TLDR: Dan G, can you fix the title to say Kropotkin escaped
| from prison in 1876 rather than just now? Thanks.
| TaylorAlexander wrote:
| Yes and I also find the term "libertarian communist" useful
| to describe him (and myself).
| pcthrowaway wrote:
| Those two things seem at odds to me.. how do you consider
| yourself both libertarian and communist?
| ashtonkem wrote:
| It's also worth mentioning that "libertarian" was a left
| wing term until it was self consciously co-opted by a
| right wing American in the early 20th century. So how
| Kropotkin would understand that word and how we
| understand it varies significantly.
| TaylorAlexander wrote:
| You probably don't want to watch a 52 minute video on
| that exact question but I did recently make one:
|
| https://youtu.be/KFcd5EQgMEQ
|
| But there have always been communists who want to
| organize production communally using purely voluntary
| means. I want to get together with other people like me
| and build and operate a "means of production" we control
| as I believe it is in our benefit to do so. But I have no
| interest in and explicitly oppose using force to coerce
| anyone into participating.
|
| That's exactly what Peter Kropotkin thought too, way back
| in the late 1800's. I am opposite from authoritarian
| communists who believe that a powerful state should be
| used to force communism on people. I, like Kropotkin,
| oppose that.
| balsam wrote:
| Then you might be delighted to find out that the
| aristocrat Oscar Wilde took that one step further and
| even considered himself both hedonist and
| (libertarian-)socialist. Much odds!!
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Soul_of_Man_Under_Socia
| lis...
| ashtonkem wrote:
| None of those terms are on opposition.
| TaylorAlexander wrote:
| Hedonist libertarian socialist makes perfect sense to me
| and describes me and many of my friends. A lot of
| socialists want collective power so we can reduce working
| hours and spend more time with each other having a good
| time.
| southerntofu wrote:
| Well in the history of communism, both were synonyms
| until Marx and Lenin popularized the "dictatorship of the
| proletariat". The 1871 Paris Commune (150y anniversary
| this year!) although it had some minor authoritarian
| components was profoundly anti-authoritarian and its
| massacre gave birth to the modern anarchist movement and
| the famous black flag (as worn by Louise Michel to
| commemorate the dozens of thousands of civilians and
| Communards executed by French army).
|
| The common understanding of communism used to be (and
| still is in many cultures/circles) the
| redistribution/decentralization of power _and_ resources.
| The February "revolution" in 1917 in Russia was famously
| very decentralized with "soviets" (base assemblies)
| popping up everywhere (as trade unions, as local
| councils, etc) and organizing from the bottom up without
| a central authority. That is, until the october
| revolution during which Lenin and Trotsky and their
| power-hungry friends started literally hunting down all
| the anarcho-communists with their secret police in order
| to build their State-capitalist dystopia.
|
| If you're curious about more details about anarcho-
| communism and its varied history, I would recommend Emma
| Goldman's autobiography (which goes into great lengths
| about propaganda vs reality in bolshevik Russia) or
| Martha Ackelsberg's account of the Spanish revolution
| (1936) "Free women of spain". There's of course a lot
| more to be read on that topic if you're curious, but i
| found these two books to be very broad introductions to
| anarchism although they don't cover all the topics that
| intersect with anarchist politics (eg. anti-colonialism).
| Ar-Curunir wrote:
| Libertarian became co-opted to mean the modern "right-
| libertarian" only in the 1960s; before that it basically
| meant anarchist.
| garmaine wrote:
| Which has even less to do with communism though.
| TaylorAlexander wrote:
| Kropotkin described himself as an anarchist communist in
| the 1890's. There is a lot of historical meaning in the
| combination of those terms.
| Ar-Curunir wrote:
| Communism != Marxism.
| southerntofu wrote:
| In principle i agree, yet there is a distinction to make.
| There are anti-authoritarian marxists who argue that by
| the end of his life Marx himself had become critical of
| his own theories (eg. dictatorship of the proletariat).
|
| But yes, we'll agree that the most widely-known brand of
| marxism is in fact the very _opposite_ of communism (as
| defined by a Stateless /classless society).
| southerntofu wrote:
| On the contrary, both in anarchist and marxist philosophy
| communism is defined as a society without State and
| social classes. While anarchists believe (and practice!)
| in dismantling the established social order here and now
| by systematically questioning power structures, marxist-
| leninists promoted the idea that building a "dictatorship
| of the proletariat" was a necessary step for a revolution
| to seize the repression means of the bourgeois State to
| make sure to go towards communism. This disagreement is
| what led to the fork of the 1st Internationale in the
| late 19th century.
|
| As history has shown, reestablishing the old forms of
| power (centralized State, political police, prisons,
| work) for the sake of the revolution didn't help to
| achieve any communism ever (USSR was profoundly anti-
| communist beyond the appearances: the secret police
| fought against all self-organized communes like Cronstadt
| or the peasant soviets of Ukraine). That's why anarchists
| to this day refer to marxism-leninism (what capitalists
| call "communism") as State-capitalism: it has the same
| structures and power balance than capitalism, with the
| difference that power is held not by the bourgeoisie but
| by a so-called avant-garde. But for the common people,
| the situation is very similar, as the promised
| Stateless/classless society is nowhere to be seen.
| ashtonkem wrote:
| Marx eventually clarified that he thought the
| "dictatorship of the proletariat" would not be a
| dictatorship, but instead rather radical democracy. With
| the benefit of hindsight, we can say that the anarchists'
| criticism of Marx and his dictatorship of the proletariat
| were spot on, and that such structures rapidly became
| authoritarian and self serving.
| widespace_ wrote:
| Not really, Anarcho-Communism, while not Marxist, is
| communist insofar as it is one of the remaining strains
| of "Idealistic Communism" as Marx and Engels would call
| the various worker's movements from before Marx'
| Scientific Materialism.
| southerntofu wrote:
| For more precision, the term "libertarian" (libertaire)
| was popularized in French language following the Lois
| scelerates outlawing any anarchist propaganda (1890s)
| under the 3rd republic [0] at a time when a few
| anarchists were openly murdering some of our overlords
| for their crimes against the people and such practice had
| widespread popular support (except in the bourgeoisie of
| course). There's even entire songs dedicated to the
| dynamite as a tool of emancipation against our masters,
| and to popular heroes like Ravachol (who bombed corrupt
| judges) and Emile Henri (who accidently, that's the funny
| part, bombed the commissariat in La rue des bons
| enfants).
|
| So yes in the english-speaking world since the 50s/60s
| with Hayek and Randt) "libertarian" started to take a
| capitalist meaning. But it's worth noting that this
| doesn't expand to other parts of the world: in french-
| speaking cultures the capitalist libertarian movement is
| almost non-existent, and we use the distinct
| "libertarien-ne" word borrowed back from english for when
| we actually need to the american movement: "libertaire"
| certainly refers to the anti-authoritarian anticapitalist
| movement to this day.
|
| [0] Yeah if you believe France is the country of human
| rights, that's just a myth. The 3rd republic had the same
| slogan (Liberte, Egalite, Fraternite) and flag (the Paris
| red & blue holding tight the royalist white) than the
| 5th, yet had widespread slavery and apartheid (following
| the "code de l'Indigenat") and women had no civil rights.
| French public schools was famously established in the
| 1880s as a means to expand the French colonial empire's
| reach. Don't even get me started on how broken/racist the
| 5th republic (since De Gaulle) is! :)
| guerrilla wrote:
| Here's an introduction to the term [1]. For the slightly
| more general concept of anarcho-communism, i.e. the main
| strain of anarchism in the world, [2]. For the even
| broader concept of libertarian socialism, see here [3].
|
| 1. https://libcom.org/library/libertarian-communism-
| introductio...
|
| 2. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anarcho-communism
|
| 3. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Libertarian_socialism
| hutzlibu wrote:
| He was also a biologist, countering Darwin by stating there
| is as much (or more) cooporation in nature as there is
| conflict
|
| https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mutual_Aid:_A_Factor_of_Evol.
| ..
| FabHK wrote:
| He countered social Darwinism, not Darwin (don't think
| Darwin fell for these fallacies).
| southerntofu wrote:
| He went further, arguing that mutual aid is the
| practice/axiom that enabled most societies (human or
| otherwise) to survive and evolve thus far.
| issa wrote:
| Worlds Collide. I did not expect to see something from crimethinc
| on Hacker News. Any other xvx tech people please say hello.
| buttercakes wrote:
| Same here.
|
| Thought the crimethinc cult died with GWBs presidency. They
| definitely disappeared from the punk scene (for the better)
| southerntofu wrote:
| > They definitely disappeared from the punk scene (for the
| better)
|
| Not aware of inter-group shenanigans so feel free to
| elaborate, but some Crimethinc publications (like "To change
| everything") have been very popular in the anarchist punk
| scene in some places i've visited across Europe in the past
| 10 years.
|
| More lately, two articles of theirs were widely-enough shared
| that they reached my ears without the help of my RSS feed
| reader:
|
| - https://crimethinc.com/2020/04/10/and-after-the-virus-the-
| pe...
|
| - https://crimethinc.com/zines/seven-myths-about-the-police
| wonks wrote:
| And talking about Kropotkin no less!
| cycomanic wrote:
| For those who don't know who Kropotkin was, I highly recommend
| reading up on his live. Both his live and the live of Bakunin are
| extremely fascinating, as are their political philosophies.
| jerzbuzek wrote:
| I first saw some of the story retold in Matt Ridley's book
| Origins of Virtue [1]. It must've left an impression, since I
| still remember it, if only in the barest outline.
|
| [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Origins_of_Virtue
| tkgally wrote:
| The passage from Kropotkin's memoir about his prison escape
| appeared in a Russian textbook I used in college [1]. It was much
| more interesting than typical foreign language textbook material.
|
| Addendum: The Russian version of Kropotkin's memoir, published in
| London in 1902, is at [2]. Thank you again, Internet Archive.
|
| [1] https://www.worldcat.org/title/eyewitness-selections-from-
| ru...
|
| [2]
| https://archive.org/details/zapiskirevoliuts00krop/page/342/...
| tkgally wrote:
| The English version is at [3]. According to the author's
| preface to the Russian edition, he wrote it in English at the
| request of the editor of the _Atlantic Monthly_ , where it was
| serialized. He then supervised the translation into Russian.
|
| [3]
| https://archive.org/details/dli.bengal.10689.13354/page/n353...
| rllearneratwork wrote:
| an entitled (born in aristocrat, land-rich family) propagandist
| who worked hard to ruin his country (Russia) by pushing it
| towards communism/socialism.
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peter_Kropotkin#Activism_in_Ru...
| Avshalom wrote:
| Kropotkin was an anarchist and generally opposed to communism.
|
| Wars have been fought over the distinction.
| hispaman wrote:
| Not really, left anarchists and communists are after the same
| goal through different means. Kropotkin and Marx went back
| and forth, often disagreed, but only on matters pertaining to
| authority. Ultimately they both wanted a stateless classless
| and moneyless society.
| pugworthy wrote:
| > Wars have been fought over the distinction.
|
| And people downvoted.
| sudosysgen wrote:
| You are overstating the opposition. Kropotkin was generally
| friendly with Lenin and met with him shortly before their
| deaths where they were quite cordial though they disagreed,
| and he did return to the Russia while it was ruled by the
| bolsheviks.
|
| While he did think the Bolsheviks would not achieve communism
| because of the over-centralization of their rule, he still
| supported their goals and thought the October revolution was
| worthwhile despite being bound to fail even if only as an
| experiment on how to better introduce communism.
|
| Kropotkin was thus both an anarchist and a communist and was
| cordial and cooperated with authoritarian communists.
| incompatible wrote:
| Yes, Kropotkin's anarchism is a form of communism without
| government. The anarchists formed a separate faction from
| the Marxists in the IWA. The anarchists in Russia were
| finally suppressed by Lenin following the Kronstadt
| Rebellion in 1921.
| southerntofu wrote:
| > Kropotkin was thus both an anarchist and a communist and
| was cordial and cooperated with authoritarian communists.
|
| Cordial yes. But he was not "friendly" and did not
| "cooperate". Famously, Kropotkin could not be hurt by Lenin
| as he was a very popular figure and hurting him would have
| strongly destabilized his power. So he tried to bribe him
| with public money, which Kropotkin refused because it was
| handed out as a privilege for him specifically and not a
| fundamental right for all. So he ended up dying in misery
| in a small cabin in the woods.
|
| Emma Goldman's autobiography contains some accounts of this
| story.
| jltsiren wrote:
| I think we are dealing with multiple meanings of word
| "communism" here.
|
| Anarchists are opposed to communism in the commonly
| understood sense: a centralized state ruled by the
| communist party. Kropotkin was friendly with the
| Bolsheviks, who had not become communists in that sense
| yet. He supported the October Revolution, but he quickly
| became critical of Bolshevik rule afterwards. He believed
| it would not lead into communism in the sense the word was
| understood at that time: a society based on common
| ownership of the means of production without state or
| social classes.
| sudosysgen wrote:
| A centralized state ruled by a party is not the commonly
| understood sense, or people would think that all
| dictatorships are communist, which they don't. In either
| case, it is bizarre to try to correct the record with
| something that is in and of itself a misunderstanding.
|
| The Bolsheviks were very forthcoming. They professed from
| even before the revolution that they were aiming for a
| pretty centralized state ruled by a vanguard party. They
| never pretended anything else. It is only after the death
| of Lenin that they started diverging more and more from
| what they originally professed.
|
| Kropotkin was critical of the Bolsheviks from before the
| revolution and actually became more amicable to them
| after the revolution than before. Indeed he found the
| fact that they had managed to lead a revolution to be a
| profound good for humanity that would, in his own words,
| "enlighten the path of the civilised countries for at
| least a century", and agreed that the Bolsheviks were
| communists just as well as him, only that they would be
| eventually unsuccessful.
|
| In any case, the sense the word is understood by many at
| this time is itself a misunderstanding. There is a reason
| why China agrees that their system is not communism, and
| indeed the word is still used in the way it was intended
| originally by a great many people. Taking it to be the
| common sense in English instead of the correct sense is
| to be in error.
| design-material wrote:
| What are the varying/conflicting definitions of Communism
| here, and which one is the 'correct' one?
| sudosysgen wrote:
| One is : a society that is not capitalist, ie, the means
| of production are owned by the workers.
|
| The other is, apparently, a centralized society run by
| people that call themselves communist.
| guerrilla wrote:
| > One is : a society that is not capitalist, ie, the
| means of production are owned by the workers.
|
| Among living socialists and communists, I'd argue that
| that is actually their definition of "socialism", while
| their definition of "communism" is a moneyless, classless
| and stateless society, the idea being that the former
| could lead to the later if implemented. All three words
| have changed their meanings over the last 200 years
| though. To most people today, "communism" just means an
| authoritarian state ruled by a communist party with a
| centralized economy and "socialism" means widely
| different things to different people depending on where
| you live and what media you read.
| hispaman wrote:
| Well, this is a dead thread but I thought I'd help out
| anyway.
|
| What Russia did in the 20th century was called a workers
| dictatorship, and was meant to be a transition into
| communism, which is defined as a stateless and classless
| society. So, calling what Russia did 'communism' is a bit
| like calling what the fascists did 'capitalism', and then
| saying that because it didn't work, therefore capitalism
| doesn't work. Anarchists have generally stood against
| workers dictatorships because they seem to be an
| ineffective way of achieving communism, but they do want
| communism.
|
| Soviet rule was at best state-capitalism, with the
| government creating market quotas, trading with other
| countries, annexing other countries for their resources,
| and ultimately still doing everything capitalist
| countries do, but with more state-intervention.
| jltsiren wrote:
| A centralized state ruled by the _communist_ party is the
| commonly understood meaning. You almost certainly
| understood the intent before you mistook the explanation
| for a definition, dropped the word "communist", and
| argued against a literal interpretation of the words.
|
| Pre-revolution Bolsheviks argued that a centralized
| socialist state was a necessary step before achieving
| "true" communism. Kropotkin disagreed (one meaning of
| "critical") with that. He supported the February
| revolution and returned to the country after that, but he
| refused to take a position in the moderate socialist
| government. Kropotkin gladly supported the October
| revolution that replaced the moderate socialists with
| radical ones. He was strongly opposed to (another meaning
| of "critical") the "war communism" that emerged after the
| second revolution, and he didn't live to see the period
| of state capitalism that followed.
|
| In any case, the system we currently understand as
| communism didn't emerge until around 1930, making it
| irrelevant when talking about Kropotkin.
| sudosysgen wrote:
| Kropotkin was equally as opposed to war communism as a
| centrally planned economy and as opposed as he would have
| been to the NEP.
|
| I don't think that, after thinking for a few seconds, the
| regular person would arrive to the conclusion that the
| USSR was only communist because of the name of the ruling
| party.
|
| I also don't agree that, if people were introduced to
| society like the USSR with the only exception that they
| had decentralized planning, would conclude that it wasn't
| communist anymore.
|
| Similarly a lot of people in the US have called the
| economic system of the AANES communist despite being
| neither centralized nor run by a communist party. All the
| people that called Bernie Sanders a communist despite him
| not being a member of the communist party also don't
| agree. Largely from, you know, collectivizing agriculture
| and seizing a third of the productive capital to then put
| it under the control of soviets.
|
| In summary I don't think that people commonly understand
| communism as being dependent on the name of the ruling
| party.
| jltsiren wrote:
| Words gain meaning from their usage. Instead of
| definitions, there are explanations and examples.
|
| In the widely understood meaning, communism refers to a
| centralized state ruled by the communist party. Not by
| something called a communist party but by something that
| is a communist party.
|
| The USSR was the canonical example of a communist state.
| States similar to it are generally seen as communist
| states, while states that are too different are not.
| Decentralized states otherwise similar to the USSR have
| never existed, so we don't know if people would consider
| them communist states.
| Avshalom wrote:
| No I suspect Sudosysgen and I are working off
| sufficiently similar meanings of communism. I just made a
| very simple counter-post to what I felt was a bit of
| inflammatory nonsense and Sudo felt it was over-simple.
| On my part I meant "generally" in a philosophic sense
| rather than "stridently and consistently" and should have
| been clearer that the wars/battles fought between
| anarchists and communists weren't, like, at the behest of
| Kropotkin or anything.
| vkou wrote:
| The Tsarist autocracy that he was chafing against was doing a
| pretty good job of ruining its country prior to the February
| revolution.
|
| And if the provisional government did a better job of turning
| that train around, it's unlikely the October revolution would
| have been successful.
| dang wrote:
| Please don't take HN threads straight into ideological flamewar
| hell. That's just what we don't want or need here.
|
| https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
| ChrisArchitect wrote:
| Why is this on here? What's the significance and should have kept
| the missing date from the post title
| atdrummond wrote:
| My guess? It's interesting and humorous.
| southerntofu wrote:
| Personal interpretation: it's about physical security
| (infrastructure hacking), physics (arc vs line trajectories),
| cooperation and secret signalling (some sort of steganography),
| and refusal to submit to unfair centralized authorities. All of
| which are favorite topics of HN from what i could see so far.
|
| EDIT: As for the date, the article was published for
| Kropotkin's birthday apparently.
| kingcharles wrote:
| That was great.
|
| While in jail I only had two serious opportunities to escape. The
| first an unscheduled incoming call from an embassy official meant
| I was brought to a secure area to use a special phone. It was
| right by the sally port [0] which normally has at least one door
| closed. Both were open. I could have run directly out to the
| street. The guards do not carry their guns inside the jail.
|
| The second was on a run to a civil court appearance. I was
| carrying a huge weight in legal work, which is near impossible
| when your hands are cuffed tight to your waist. I told the guard
| he would need to carry the documents. He scoffed at the idea of
| this extra work. He checked my record and noted that I had no
| violence and no staff attacks and decided to leave me totally
| uncuffed so I could carry the items. When we arrived at the
| courthouse we had to park nearby and I got to walk down the
| street without any restraints. Again, I could have run, although
| the guards carry guns when they are outside the jail.
|
| This made us laugh while I was locked up - murder suspect escapes
| while guard is in the McDonald's drive through:
|
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2fldI4DXuwk
|
| [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mantrap_(access_control)
| seer wrote:
| As far as I know in the country where I live non violent
| criminals are treated much more leniently. They have
| "vacations" where they can go back to their families for
| holidays like Christmas and special events.
|
| If they do run away they'll get a much bigger sentence, so
| people just return so they can get it over with.
| daniel-cussen wrote:
| In America too, they frequently let the convicts go to their
| mother's funerals.
| Waterluvian wrote:
| Surely even if they had guns, murdering you is not an
| appropriate response to a possible escape?
| raffraffraff wrote:
| It's America though
| AnimalMuppet wrote:
| Depends on how dangerous the criminal is. For a serial
| killer? Yeah, it might be.
| teh_klev wrote:
| Even a "suspected" serial killer isn't a serial killer
| until convicted and jailed as such (innocent until proven
| guilty) if they had access to the street to try and make
| their getaway.
| PeterisP wrote:
| If they are escaping prison, that presumes they have been
| convicted.
| Someone wrote:
| I think the strict distinction between jail and prison is
| American English, and not even that, in informal speech.
|
| Compare for example https://www.oxfordlearnersdictionarie
| s.com/definition/englis... (British English) with
| https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/prison and
| https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/jail (US
| English)
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Prison also says _"In
| American English, the terms prison and jail have separate
| definitions, though this is not always followed in casual
| speech."_
| seoaeu wrote:
| The whole "innocent until proven guilty" entitles the
| accused to certain rights, but it doesn't mean everyone
| has to act like they are 100% definitely innocent. Taken
| to the extreme, that would mean you couldn't even
| _arrest_ someone suspected to being a serial killer until
| they were convicted. Would make it a little difficult to
| make them stand trial...
| watwut wrote:
| The question is about killing the suspect.
| PeterisP wrote:
| Depends on the jurisdiction, but at least where I live, yes,
| preventing escape from imprisonment is explicitly listed as a
| legally permitted reason for officials (both prison guards
| and police) to shoot someone.
|
| In general (but not always, not in e.g. armed escape) there
| is a requirement of warning, giving a chance to surrender
| without violence, but if they refuse to surrender, the
| society has decided that it is acceptable to shoot to kill.
| It's not murder (murder being unlawful killing), it's
| enforcement of the designated proper punishment (staying
| imprisoned for a certain time) by the threat of death. The
| death penalty isn't appropriate for most (or even any)
| crimes, other penalties are, and they are free to take (and
| expected to take) those other penalties and avoid the risk of
| death - however, if they intentionally refuse the appropriate
| punishment (prison sentence) and try to escape, that is their
| own choice of putting their life on the line.
| micromacrofoot wrote:
| some people get murdered before they even get to jail
| Avshalom wrote:
| I don't know about jail/prison guards but for cops the
| official standard for shooting some one who is running away
| is something like "reasonable belief that you are a danger to
| the community", "reasonable" might not be the specific
| standard but regardless it's pretty trivial for an attorney
| to argue that a guard believed (in the moment, and they only
| have to believe _in the moment_ ) they were justified.
|
| edit: here we go
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tennessee_v._Garner "the
| officer has probable cause to believe that the suspect poses
| a significant threat of death or serious physical injury to
| the officer or others." that is of course for a suspect. If
| you've been convicted the standards are probably much lower.
| einpoklum wrote:
| In many (most?) countries, cops often get away with killing
| people without actual cause which could justify a non-cop
| killing a person. And if the person killed is stereotypically
| disdained (prisoner, member of oppressed ethnic group,
| homeless person etc.) - then they almost always get away with
| it.
| vmception wrote:
| In the US, they can and do create any quantum theory of your
| potential actions as legal justification for any preemptive
| action in their local department's catalogue of actions,
| which you will never be privy to at the time. You are also
| not privy to the exact way in which you cease being an
| eliminable quantum threat, which may be nonexistent.
|
| In some departments, officers have been fired for _not_
| eliminating a threat that the officer felt didn't need to be
| "eliminated".
|
| So extrajudicial capital punishment for basically anything is
| legal in every state and territory in the US.
|
| "Justified" only means that the action the officer chose was
| one of the equally weighted choices in the department's
| current catalogue. It is not a tiered response, it is only an
| available response.
| kingcharles wrote:
| As an aside to this, I was coming back to jail from court one
| Friday when a guy slipped his cuffs (often really easy) and
| ran off down the street. The guards actually did not shoot
| him, but ran after him and tackled him to the ground.
|
| On return to the jail I had the guard run his name to find
| out how serious his alleged offense was. "He wasn't even in
| for a crime!" said the Guard. "WTF?". "He was only booked for
| the weekend - he hadn't paid child support." Now facing 5
| years in prison for escape.
| d0gsg0w00f wrote:
| What were you convicted of?
| kingcharles wrote:
| Sorry, it's often unclear because of the way the word "jail"
| is used in English to mean both a pre-trial detention
| facility and a prison for the convicted.
|
| I've never actually been convicted of a crime. I was in a
| pre-trial facility.
| chmod775 wrote:
| Many western countries don't even bother trying to prevent in
| escapes for some of their prisons. For instance in Germany
| about 20% of prisoners could run away daily - when they leave
| the prison to go to work or whatever ("open prisons"). But less
| than one in a hundred do. I probably don't need to tell you
| about some of the special Scandinavian prisons.
|
| Most people just want to get their sentence behind them, not
| become a fugitive. It likely was the same for you.
| LegitShady wrote:
| a 1% escape rate seems egregious
| atdrummond wrote:
| Wouldn't it be less than 0.2%? It parsed to me as less than
| 1 out of 100 out of those who have the opportunity via work
| release or other community integration initiatives.
| chmod775 wrote:
| Yes. I should have clarified that.
| dustintrex wrote:
| Once you're in open prison/work release etc you're
| usually both at the tail end of your sentence and
| enjoying much better conditions than you were earlier,
| both of which are major disincentives to risking
| resetting the clock.
| exolymph wrote:
| Great demonstration that luck is always an essential ingredient!
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