[Buddha-l] Re: Buddhist social deconstruction

[Dan Lusthaus]

Curt wrote:

> In Major Edict #5 Asoka
> praises the "officers of the Dhamma" for their work on behalf of
> prisoners - gaining the release of prisoners who have children or are
> aged, and looking after prisoners who are well behaved (see
> http://www.katinkahesselink.net/tibet/asoka1.html).

One has to know something about the customs of the times to recognize that
this is a very measured, and indeed restrictive stipulation. It was common
in China as well as India to offer major amnesties on regular occasions -- 
annually or on certain years (e.g., every seventh year), or to coordinate
with certain festivals or astrological/astronomical events, etc. In Pillar
Edict 5 (which can be found on the same site), it says:

"In the period [from my consecration] to [the anniversary on which] I had
been consecrated twenty-six years, twenty-five releases of prisoners have
been made."

So it was an annual event, on the anniversary of his "consecration" (=
coronation), an act of mercy believed to help insure continued rule (it had
cosmological as well as political dimensions). What "Major Edict #5" shows
is that these annual gestures of amnesty where not universal (he didn't
empty the prisons), but selective -- the old and infirm (who were now
physically harmless) and well-behaved breadwinners whose families needed
them for survival (there was no welfare system to pick up the slack). In
short, these were selective releases (some rulers did virtually empty their
prisons on certain pressing occasions).

The idea that prisons are unnecessary is naive, and dangerous. The idea that
inflicting dangerous predators on a defenseless populace is an act of
compassion is perverse. The idea that a kiss on the cheek and a mantra will
extirpate dangerous criminal tendencies from all criminals is, itself,
criminal.

If you've never had a conversation with someone that you quickly realize is
willing and able to kill you right there on the spot should the merest shift
in wind or mood strike him, a realization that makes you tremble to your
depths, then you are not in a position to fully appreciate what is at stake.

The necessity of prisons is not to be conflated with:
1. issues of false imprisonment,
2. substandard prison conditions,
3. overly harsh sentencing (or the obverse)
4. police brutality and corruption
and the plethora of other issues that clear thinking people would wish to
curtail and reform.

It is about those people who have done horrible, unimaginable things, and
will do them again, next time perhaps to someone you know.

When I was in Britain about a year and half ago, the big news was some
fellow who had massacred his wife and family and, once he had served his ten
years (!) had been released, marrying some woman who had become interested
in him while he was in prison. It was current news because he had just
massacred wife #2, apparently in a brutal fashion similar to what he had
done to his previous, deceased wife. While the talking heads on tv were
defending the idea that the release after the ten year sentence was
justified (for similar reason to the ones floated on this list), the second
wife's surviving brother was hardly in agreement. My compassion melds with
his outrage. I wasn't in Britain long enough to learn the final disposition
of the new crime. (incidentally, this coincided with the slaughter of the
children in the Chechnyan school -- which the British journalists were too
PC to label an act of "terrorism," a terminological hesitance that a panel
reviewing the BBC's practices has recently highlighted for criticism
http://www.bbcgovernors.co.uk/docs/reviews/panel_report_final.pdf  ). A
squeamish incapacity to deal with violent people, masked by the reassurance
that this incapacity was a sign of high moral sensibilities. Interesting,
but dangerous.

Dan Lusthaus