Do You Care What Thor Said About Punishing Crime?

As an Atheist Abolitionist. I was even willing to give this book a chance after the author went out of his way to frontload the opening paragraphs with praise for the police in a no doubt futile attempt to reassure "I'm Not Racist, BUT's" that he's "One Of The Good Ones." But after the overwhelmingly profound and inciteful first half calling out the inherent racism, ineffectiveness and brutality of not only the so-called "War On Drugs," but the parallel wars on immigrants, mental illness and even non-white school students as young as seven, the Christian history, preaching and citation of scripture in the second half of the book left me rolling my eyes. Because to put it in perspective for any Theists who are reading this review, I honestly care as much about what the Bible, Qur'an, Tanakh, Vedas or Book Of Mormon say regarding the treatment of people who commit crimes as you would care about what a 4000 year old tablet carved by the Priests of Ra has to say on the subject.

On top of which, the fact that the author is only calling for an end to "MASS" incarceration, and therefore, merely preaching reform and not abolition also means that he's ignoring his own arguments. Because just as the police cannot be 'Reformed,' the fact that as he himself points out, the entire concept of imprisonment is built upon the conceit that so-called 'Criminals' are a separate, inferior threat from which society needs to be protected means that it can never be reformed into a method to achieve the restorative justice which he advocates. Instead, the starting point for restorative justice must inevitably be that the person convicted of committing a crime is a person to be rehabilitated, treated, and in short, always regarded as a human being who committed a crime. Not an animal to be caged, a problem to be dealt with or a legal slave to be exploited. So while, as I say, this book does contain some vital insights into the nature of the problem, there are other, far superior and thoroughly secular books such as "The New Jim Crow" & "Chokehold" which I would recommend first. And unless you're an American Christian who needs arguments and Biblical citations to help convince fellow Christians that Mass Incarceration is a problem, then I'd recommend skipping the second half altogether.

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