“Lock ’em up, lock ’em up, they deserve it. Bastards.” So said some-one I thought I knew quite well, when told that I was going to a seminar entitled “Tackling crime the smart way”. Actually this person’s hackles rose before this, right when I mentioned Human Rights – the seminar was co-hosted by the Human Rights Law Centre. It seems this person saw red when I mentioned Human Rights. Now this person is smart, street wise and attractive – high personable. Yet the instant reaction to the idea of Human Rights, to any discussion of the ‘smart way’ to tackle crime was a reversion to what I’d call ‘Shock-Jock Dogma’. I reckon I could now guess this person’s view on asylum seekers. This has spoilt my planned relaxing weekend, I’ve puzzled over the reaction the whole time. I would also guess that this person knows people who’ve been in prison. And knows people who’ve been victims of violence, sexual abuse, drug addiction, acquired brain injury and mental illness. And has empathy with many fellow human beings. So why the blindness? (Obviously it is not me that is at fault, it just has to be the other.)
I see this as a failure of progressives’, of liberals’ (small ‘l’) means of engagement. We seem unable to communicate in any meaningful way with those who seem closest to the coalface. Joe Bageant wrote of this inability of (in the USA) Democrats to engage with many white poor people, the very people in whose interests that party proclaims to represent, in his books “Deer hunting with Jesus” and “Rainbow Pie”. Then again Alan Kohler had a chart that may explain it:
Regardless of the reaction of the person described above we at PCBYCP will report on the seminar and incarceration in general.
Cheers
Cecil Poole
STOP PRESS
“Competitive federalism” was explicitly pushed by the Coalition’s Commission of Audit, is implicit in Joe Hockey’s first budget and is likely to underpin the looming federalism white paper. And the nation’s big tax avoiders love it.