News
Punishment is the pandemic
Tuesday, 12 May 2020
Our Chair of Trustees, Charlie Weinberg, has written a piece on the problems of punishment for the website of Abolition, the US-based journal of radical and insurgent politics.
In the piece, Charlie develops the argument she first explored in this article on our website, about the difference between containment and control.
What it is about punishment that makes it simultaneously both compelling and destructive?, she asks. Why do we depend on punishment as a means of revoking the rights of those we believe do not deserve them?
“Punishment does not ‘contain’ our anxieties or enable us to digest the unbearable”, Charlie writes, “rather, it creates further anxieties (how much punishment is ‘enough’)?”
You can read Charlie's piece here.