democratic development and criminalisation:

(for more on "justice" see John RAWLS and www.bpb.de)


"rulers" (ruling groups in governments and administration) extremely turn to 
law-dominated anti-self-determination (alienation) of personal life since 
approx. 1985.

this is worth a look from psychosophy and critical psy~ considerations:

usually, all criminals and victims are in a personal relation:
while family members (for example, in a murderer case) have an obvious relation
(and during decades of living in that relation, 1 certain moment and situation 
becomes the "murder" moment),
this is probably equally true for "unknown" criminal/victim situations:

either a personal relation (of antipathy, for example) is instantly created
by the participating persons (criminal(s) and victim(s)), or by a prejudgee,
or by their hostile personal/emotional/intelligence structures etc.

(if there were sympathy, the crime would be diminished, would not take place,
the consequences would be less tragical etc. -- see any interaction with
police psychologists, for example, in hostages cases, with suiciders etc.)

considerations to that should include, therefore, at least
a) considerations to what happens mentally
b) considerations to the political background i.e. democratic justification
"around" things happening and/or technically possible

a) see above

b) political considerations to that:

(politics is where more than 1 person is "within reach" of others,
be it desired or not and whether someone in interested "in politics" or not)

1. of course, making people "criminals" is a pure definition 
-- more than 50% of prisoners in the "free west" are victims of
"disobedience"criminality" in its various forms, from wrong parking to drug consumation

2. most people push prisons and prisoners "away" from their consciousness 
-- as long, someone is not prisoner herself or himself, common thinking is
"probably it is ok, probably only bad people are in jail" or the like;

3. this is often justified (and stabilized by "public" propaganda) by arguments 
such as "aren't you afraid of murderers running around freely?" or 
"do you think it is right to rob a handbag?" etc.
-- i.e. it is commonly attempted to create a logical and emotional link from 
"what is (defined to be) criminal" to something nobody really would like.

4. what is cheated away, is the fact that human beings should simply deal with 
each other's existence under whatever circumstances (including "evil" and 
"undesired" behaviour: a "murderer" is a "murderer" at a certain time and a 
certain circumstance towards certain (an)other person(s) 
-- and most certainly a "murderer" is not a "murderer" from her or his birth
until their (natural) death, i.e. if they were not prosecuted etc.:
it is an action of time (moment), circumstance and person(s), victim(s)

5. that same analysis is true for every other "criminality" ever committed or ever thinkable to be committed.

6. literature for that

7. therefore, prisons do not make sense at all 
-- in an information society, an orderly process at court with condemnation 
= creating the right to be legally designed as "a murderer" or "a robber" etc., 
disliking violence is much better created than jails could ever do

8. in contrary: on the longterm, it should be considered whether the right of
publicly designing "(s)he is a murderer/robber" etc. could be replaced by other 
means respecting the person of that murderer/robber etc.

9. democratic justification of any "justice" 
-- as well of a court process as proposed in point 7. above, instead of what 
happens now, usually; and court processes have nothing to do with justice,
what is commonly called "justice" is an institutionalized and ritualized 
REVENGE (or prevention of private revenge) or even a big brother surveillance
instrument --
would mean at least that judges and jury consist of corresponding portions
of men, women, prisoners (!) inmates and former prisoners,
corresponding to the population of the "justice" influenced area

10. reportedly the USA have over 2 million prisoners, 2003 
-- how should that be democratically justified?