Exactly. The issue you run into is always that bad-faith actors are going to intentionally misuse laws and regulations, unless you write them to be very narrow. Most laws dealing with censorship need to be at least a little broad so that minor tweaks don’t allow the targeted material to be tweaked to avoid regulation. But as soon as it’s broad enough to prevent really repellent speech, it can be used against people that are already marginalized.
“Re-education” is an interesting question though. How are you defining that? We already know that we would sharply reduce recidivism rates if we made sure that incarcerated people were put in substance abuse programs and given access to college degree programs. (And those college programs cost less in the long run than recycling people through the criminal justice system again.) Does that count as re-education? What about having group therapy, so that people who had hate-crime multipliers had to confront their racism, etc.? Is that re-education?
If the condition of parole is successfully completing substance abuse treatment, isn’t that a forced–or heavily coerced–brain washing? If it isn’t, then what’s the bright line between them?
The person in this scenario could still choose to go to jail instead of rehab. They could also slack off in rehab and start using again once they are released if they so chose. Obviously these are not ideal solutions but the person still has some kind of choice in the matter. Hopefully they would take it seriously and choose not to go back to drugs.
“Re-education” would be if they were sent to some kind of Clockwork Orange style reprogramming process where these choices were taken away from them, making them unable to ever do drugs again wether they wanted to or not.
Exactly. The issue you run into is always that bad-faith actors are going to intentionally misuse laws and regulations, unless you write them to be very narrow. Most laws dealing with censorship need to be at least a little broad so that minor tweaks don’t allow the targeted material to be tweaked to avoid regulation. But as soon as it’s broad enough to prevent really repellent speech, it can be used against people that are already marginalized.
“Re-education” is an interesting question though. How are you defining that? We already know that we would sharply reduce recidivism rates if we made sure that incarcerated people were put in substance abuse programs and given access to college degree programs. (And those college programs cost less in the long run than recycling people through the criminal justice system again.) Does that count as re-education? What about having group therapy, so that people who had hate-crime multipliers had to confront their racism, etc.? Is that re-education?
To me the examples you listed would just fall under “education”. The term “re-education” heavily implies imprisonment and forced brain washing.
If the condition of parole is successfully completing substance abuse treatment, isn’t that a forced–or heavily coerced–brain washing? If it isn’t, then what’s the bright line between them?
The person in this scenario could still choose to go to jail instead of rehab. They could also slack off in rehab and start using again once they are released if they so chose. Obviously these are not ideal solutions but the person still has some kind of choice in the matter. Hopefully they would take it seriously and choose not to go back to drugs.
“Re-education” would be if they were sent to some kind of Clockwork Orange style reprogramming process where these choices were taken away from them, making them unable to ever do drugs again wether they wanted to or not.