Two Articles: The Need for Wild Spaces, Reforming the Police
As always, there’s loads of interesting Colorado news to get to, including the governor’s spat with the Libertarian Party. As usual, I’ve been so busy I’m working to catch up. For now, I’ll mention my two latest articles published by Complete Colorado, “Balancing some wildness with tech-driven life” and “Don’t let ‘abolitionists’ thwart meaningful justice reform.”
The Need for Wild Spaces
I discuss my recent camping trip, the balance of nature and technology, children’s need for nature, and wilder yards. Here’s an excerpt:
We are creatures of nature; we are creatures of technology. The key is to get the right balance. The answer is neither a Rousseau- (or Kaczynski-) inspired “back to nature” movement nor a Borg-like conversion of the Earth to machinery. Rather, as humanity expands beyond eight billion people, the right approach is to use technology to continually make our lives better, including by protecting many wild spaces and by helping us to enjoy the wilderness in nature-friendly ways.
Read the entire piece.
The Need for Criminal Justice Reform
And here is part of my piece on reforming the criminal legal system:
If you are not deeply skeptical of American institutions of criminal justice as they now exist, you are either biased or just not paying attention. But we ought not throw out the crime-preventing policing baby with the tainted criminal-justice bathwater. We need to seriously reform police and prisons—along with criminal prosecutions—not get rid of them.
In some ways, the “abolitionists” stand in the way of sensible reform. If police and prisons are fundamentally corrupt and beyond saving, then any effort at reform is doomed. From the “abolitionist” point of view, trying to reform the criminal justice system is like trying to reform slavery. You can’t fix something that is basically evil. Of course, “abolitionists” do not fully believe their own nonsense, and so they do often work toward sensible reforms. Yet at root reform is fundamentally at odds with abolition. “Abolitionists,” when they do pursue reform, tend to do so in a half-hearted and pessimistic way.
Contra the “abolitionists,” criminal justice reform is possible and morally necessary. We can work incrementally toward a system that is consistently just and fair and that preserves individual safety and the public peace.
Read the entire piece.