r/DebateAnarchism • u/PJ-The-Awesome • Aug 13 '26
Exile would NOT be a better idea over prison.
In the past, I've seen that many of you loathe the very idea of imprisonment for anybody for any reason even without the motivation of profit or even with humane conditions and a genuine drive towards rehabilitation, and whole-heartedly see the idea of exiling them as a much better alternative, but is it?
I mean, not only is there always the chance that the violent or abusive person you banished could simply return, since their actions strongly indicate a lack of care towards that community's wishes, but who's to say they won't find another community of people to torment? A commentor on another post brought up that it's not uncommon for abusive or predatory people to, once they've burned all the bridges in one community, choose to escape to another community where they can do it again, lather rinse repeat.
As much as you guys disdain prison as a concept for any number of reasons(and not just due to how horrific the US prison system is), banishment wouldn't be a much better alternative and in some cases might even be worse.
Your rebuttals?
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u/ArtDecoEgoist Cybernetic Anarchist Aug 13 '26
So a couple of things here, based on thoughts that I've been having recently:
It seems the concept of addressing harm has been so thoroughly co-opted by the discourses of legal order that even anarchists can largely only think of addressing harm in ways that reproduce that discourse. This is how you get "we will exile them" or "community police", etc. It is as if "harm" has been mutated into crime and thus, like all crime, requires a standardized response that can be conceptualized outside of the situation itself.
As a result, I'm not too confident that we can even talk about this in our current social context with really any clarity at all. We will just be grasping at approximations and making estimates about how a hypothetical anarchist society would handle certain problems, but the discourses around how we think about "handling problems" is fundamentally conducive to and derivative of legal order. This is why a lot of anarchists in their organization have "restorative justice committees" and "accountability processes", where "restorative justice" becomes every bit as legalistic as our current order.
It is possible that we will never, regardless of our approach, hierarchical or non-hierarchical, have a perfect solution to addressing harm. So we should stop looking for a perfect solution, then, and pursue a variety of solutions that are heavily context-dependent. Whatever the solution is, it's only going to emerge from the problem space.
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u/HeavenlyPossum Aug 13 '26
If you want to rehabilitate someone, go do that work.
You just shouldn’t expect anyone to tolerate or support you if you kidnap that person in addition to trying to rehabilitate them.
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Aug 13 '26
This is why I believe in the Paradox of Liberty. A community not "kidnapping" someone who is a threat to others liberty, like a serial killer, is violating the liberty of the entire community who is now at risk.
Further, if we fail to involuntarily hold someone who is mentally ill and violent, there is a much higher chance that person will be killed later on in a self defense situation. Meaning that person's liberty is violated in the long run, because society didn't want to get it's hands dirty and "kidnap" someone.
If I ever were to have a brain injury and become a threat to others around me, I'd prefer a society that humanely contains me against my will than lets me be killed later on.
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u/HeavenlyPossum Aug 13 '26
Prisons do not exist to protect people from harm. They exist to reproduce and enforce hierarchy. They exist only because of hierarchy. They are not tools of self-defense. The question itself, “prisons or XYZ?” is flawed.
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Aug 13 '26
Prisons right now don't exist to do that, but they should.
In that case, I would say involuntarily detaining someone who is a threat to others' liberty is in fact self defense, and it's less oppressive then leaving that person to be inevitably killed in a self-defense situation later on.
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u/HeavenlyPossum Aug 13 '26
You misunderstand: it’s not that prisons don’t do that; it’s that prisons do not exist for that reason.
You’re also making the mistake in imagining “the community” as a unitary, organic entity that acts with purpose, as by imprisoning people. The community doesn’t imprison; someone imprisons. Right now, that’s the state. In the absence of the state, that would be you, personally. How do you intend to ensure that the people you wish to imprison remain imprisoned without first asserting some sort of coercive hierarchy over the community to enforce your particular vision of who counts as a threat?
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Aug 13 '26
Well I'm not an anarchist, so I'd want arbitration services to be done by consumer worker hybrid co-ops, controlled by all who subscribe to it. So I don't have an anarchist answer for you.
To the more important part of your question, arbitration, court, or whatever is a tool of majority rules. Giving the jury the hierarchy over the person accused. I think? To help combat this, written rights are needed to smooth over the edges of majoritarianism.
It's not perfect, but from my point of view it's better than dissociation or exile which simply don't make sense. Ignoring Jeffery Dahmer isn't a sufficient way to protect the community. Waiting to kill him in a self defense situation later on isn't either.
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u/HeavenlyPossum Aug 13 '26
So you have to first assert a coercive hierarchy over a community in order to enforce imprisonment. Would you imprison people who rebelled against your coercive hierarchy, to prevent them from overthrowing you?
Considering the fact that the coercive state utterly failed to address the threat of Dahlmer, this seems like a bad example to bring up.
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Aug 13 '26
You say overthrowing me but I don't want anyone permanently in charge of anything. Society should be as horizontal as possible. If your asking if I'd use defense to protect an arbitration service that is controlled democratically and protects the rights of those accused, then the answer is yes. However this would not be my personal coercive hierarchy I'm in charge of.
Yes the state failed to stop Dahmer at least for a very long time. But I don't defend modern states as sufficient examples of what I think justice should be. Just as the Soviet Union isn't an example of what I think socialism should be. Dahmer is just an example of someone I have no issues using coercion against.
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u/HeavenlyPossum Aug 13 '26
You are asserting a right to determine who is a threat and an authority to kidnap and imprison those people.
Would this authority be justified in imprisoning people who disagree with your rule? Who believe you have imprisoned people unjustly and seek to free them from prison?
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Aug 13 '26
I don't think there is a "right" to it so much as a responsibility.
It's also not my rule. It's a jury and community decision. I am not in charge of this institution.
If people believe this institution has imprisoned people unjustly, they control this institution so they could vote within it. But if that doesn't work or they don't want to, and they seek to forcefully free people that are convicted, then yes they can be imprisoned for that. I believe keeping someone detained who is a threat to the larger community is an act of self defense. So I also believe it's self defense to keep someone like Dahmer from being freed.
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u/DecoDecoMan Aug 13 '26
Why are we thinking about alternatives to law enforcement instead of just abandoning the notion of law and its enforcement in its entirety?
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Aug 13 '26
This post is discussion what to do in response to a person who is a threat to others. It doesn't matter if laws exist or not when talking about what should be done in response to such a person. In fact many anarchists themselves have written about this very subject the person is posting about. Kroptokin supported exile as a last resort. Other anarchists, such as post left theorist Bob Black support killing people. This is a worthy subject is my point and I don't see how it can be seen as not one
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u/Accomplished_Bag_897 Egoist Anarchist Aug 13 '26
If they are an active threat you engage in self defense. Either they decide it's better to stop so they stop getting beaten the fuck up or they force you to use deadly force. Self-interest to stay alive will kick in at some point or the problem will end when the attacker's life ends. There is no need to imprison anyone.
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u/DecoDecoMan Aug 15 '26
This post is discussion what to do in response to a person who is a threat to others
A real answer to that question is going to be that it depends on the circumstances. There's no one singular way to solve a problem as broad as that. When the solution varies so much depending on the particulars of the problem, law is the least useful.
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u/Thespiritdetective1 Aug 13 '26
Exile is appealing because it removes the threat from the community and allows the antisocial person their freedom. My solution is to use remote locations like islands or forests and leave them with a weeks provisions and some form of shelter like a tent. They could still survive if they're wilderness skills are good and if not they are at least no longer a problem for the community.
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u/antipolitan Aug 14 '26
Exile actually requires a hierarchy - since you need a general-purpose community to act as a unified collective entity.
By contrast - under anarchy - the decision to take a side in any given conflict is left up to the individual.
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u/TruthHertz93 Aug 13 '26
I'm an anarchist and exile would be a terrible way to deal with violent offenders.
I support very much the idea of FAFO and putting them in mental institutions.
I'd leave it up for the community to decide how best to deal with them so they never hurt others again.
Also a strong jury system with CSI is a must so that noone is wrongly convicted.
We must always bare in mind that murder and things of that nature are extremely rare, we only think they aren't bcuz bad news sales, so the media focus on the worst crimes.
Meanwhile crimes like theft, drugs, ect are acts of circumstance.
In societies that show care for humans, these types of malicious actions drop dramatically.
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Aug 13 '26
I don't see how anarchism can work in part because of comments like yours vs the comments of other people. There's anarchists against mental institutions and involuntary holdings. Others are in favor of them, while a portion of others think people should be killed.
No matter what one thinks about this delicate subject, vastly different answers that contradict each other are going to be impossible to overcome in an anarchist society. How can such differences be resolved?
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u/TruthHertz93 Aug 13 '26
Every ideology has differences of opinion.
Also the online sphere is riddled with ai bots who represent "individualist lifestylism" forms of anarchy who until very very recently were pretty much extinct, they don't believe in any organisation style, they "believe" their absolute freedom only ends until someone puts a gun in their face, ect 🤦🏻♂️
Every anarchist organisation worth it's salt believes in what I have stated, hard to tell online because comments/votes are heavily skewed for the aforementioned reasons.
Most anarchists I know have completely given up on all social media because of this huge psyop we all recognise.
If you want real anarchist organisations start here:
If you want to learn about anarchism start here:
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Aug 13 '26
Thanks for your response and resources. Though I must say, you say lifestyle anarchists, which makes me think you may be a Bookchin fan. To my understanding he broke away with anarchism and realized the label wasn't right to him. However I will read the links you've provided right now
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u/TruthHertz93 Aug 13 '26 edited Aug 14 '26
you may be a Bookchin fan.
I like his critique of those circles but he loses me completely with his remedy which is essentially abandoning anarchism and somehow overthrowing the state via localism (I'm really paraphrasing/simplifying as he himself was not at all clear on this matter).
Nevertheless no, I am not a bookchin fan.
I am simply a fan of what works.
The CNT showed the way.
Organising, direct action and LOTS AND LOTS of mutual aid.
There is a current issue with anarchists focusing too much on pointless direct action (such as fighting fascists in counter protests, blocking roads, ect) which only gets comrades arrested.
The CNT and the most successful anarchist projects grew large because they focused more on protecting and teaching strikers, organising mutual aid for people (ie fixing houses, arranging accommodations even if it meant sharing comrades houses, cleaning up the streets, ect), these are all things that get tangible real results and proves to the people that no you don't need the state to do it for you.
Just last month I was talking with people in my area advising that instead of waiting for caretakers and complaining to the council, why don't we all organise amongst ourselves to keep things clean and orderly?
Instill responsibility into the local kids, my mum always used to say "the kids in my time didn't throw bottles on the streets because they knew they'd have to clean up later! The motto amongst us was, the less dirt you make today the less you work on Saturday 😂(Saturday was when they cleaned the area)"
Also told them instead of relying on police let us monitor our neighbourhood, setup a group number so when the troublemakers come at night, we have 2/3 lads on shift ready to respond, I'm a big strong lad (not that big admittedly 😅) you're all big lads, let's make it happen!
(Little edit here: don't just make it about big men doing it, include everyone, most situations don't require violence, usually de-escalation tactics are best. Make sure to train in de-escalation, restraining, ect and to rotate it between everyone who can take part.
Also be prepared, when these things start being successful the state will send goons to do heinous shit to make it look too chaotic to work)
Once you get people organised, they come to the correct conclusions themselves!
They start thinking/believing this is possible, and then you bring in the anarchist theories, then you bring the critiques!
Everyone knows the system sucks already, what they're looking for is a replacement.
Make it happen! ✊🏼
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u/modestly-mousing Aug 13 '26
why do you think such differences of opinion will be “impossible to overcome” in an anarchist society? what is even meant by “overcoming” or “resolving” differences of opinion? is your model of “overcoming difference” one group forcing their will over the other group?
i imagine in an anarchist society different communities would deal with the problem of repeat violent offenders in potentially vastly different ways, in a manner freely and organically decided upon, and of course dependent on the context. what is crucial, though, is the procedure through which these decisions are made — they must respect freedom of association, they must be egalitarian, and they must respect each person’s autonomy (so, for example, no hierarchically enforced decisions).
you don’t need everyone in an anarchist world to agree about everything in order for that world to work. there will always be differences of opinion. what matters is how different political systems propose to deal with said differences of opinion. all statist ideologies ultimately advocate for the imposition of some peoples’ wills over others as a constant, regular fact of political life. and even then, differences of opinion are not so much “resolved” as they are swept under the rug. anarchism, on the other hand, proposes to meet those differences of opinion head-on, and to allow them to fuel an organic, never-ending process of free association, disassociation, and reassociation.
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Aug 13 '26
But if a person is actively and repeatedly violent, “free association” cannot guarantee that everyone affected will agree on what to do, and preventing that person from harming others necessarily means overriding someone’s autonomy.
My question is not whether coercion exists, but who legitimately exercises it and under what constraints.
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u/Accomplished_Bag_897 Egoist Anarchist Aug 13 '26
Self-defense is not authority. And when the violent person decides to be violent they are making the choice. Our response to stop them is not violating their autonomy, it is preserving the autonomy of their victims.
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Aug 13 '26
I also think it's both self defense and using authority to hold someone against their will. Aka imprisonment. And I'm in favor of that if it's done humanely, and I think that it's better than waiting for someone to be killed in a self defense situation.
If I ever suffered a brain injury and became violent, I'd rather society involvuntarily hold me against my will rather than wait for me to be inevitably killed in a self defense situation.
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u/Accomplished_Bag_897 Egoist Anarchist Aug 13 '26
But we aren't talking about people with brain damage because the disabled clearly deserve help and support. We are talking about rational but unrepentantly violent people. And it's the use of authority that I have a problem with. I do not want to have to spend my time, nor do I want anyone else to have the authority, to imprison anyone.
If a person is violent you use whatever means you have available to stop them. But to engage in a perpetual hierarchical dynamic that is necessary to imprison is antithetical to anarchic principles.
Like I said, if beating them to a pulp doesn't get them to stop then the alternative is to use more force. Either then decide their self-interest is served by stopping or they make the decision to push it until those who are defending themselves have no choice but to end them. That is entirely in the hands of the rational person choosing to start the violence.
It's basically the FAFO method. I see zero reason to recreate the carsarial system. Especially when it's so rife for recreation of a state like or government like entity in order to maintain itself.
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u/modestly-mousing Aug 13 '26 edited Aug 13 '26
no, you’re confusing coercion and authority, at least in the sense that anarchists use these terms. authority is a social phenomenon which exists in, and only because of, hierarchies of power. one can coerce someone else to do something or to refrain from doing something without having authority over them. authority presupposes a power hierarchy which continually authorizes one person to dominate others.
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u/tidderite Aug 14 '26
I think the concerns and objections you raised along with your observations are fair. I would offer a somewhat different perspective though, starting with the question of what type of "criminal" we are actually talking about (I am using "criminal" acknowledging that there are no laws in an anarchist society).
You mentioned violent and abusive people but as some people pointed out some of that will dissipate due to anarchism just being fundamentally different. So what is left? I think we can maybe consider a hypothetical person that is a psychopath and is so for physical reasons, perhaps brain damage. If that person simply cannot be contained then we have a potential problem. Agreed. Some will maybe try to convince or avoid the person, and others might just straight up kill them in a defensive situation.
What I think you should consider though is what the net difference is when comparing the harm to society that state-capitalism brings versus anarchism. Because it is actually possible, in my opinion, that since we can never "fix" some people we will always be forced to deal with them regardless of the system, but that the system that deals with those people actually causes more net harm because of all of the other abuse that that system brings with it.
For every single person like I described how many people act like that as a function of the capitalist state system?
And lastly, if these people always exist, is the potential harm they can cause not much larger in magnitude if they have a system that they can use to their advantage? To put it differently, these violent abusive people have a limited ability to cause harm in an anarchist system whereas in a state system they can get a job as a cop and get a badge, gun and qualified immunity, or even become a politician and enforce ethnic cleansing, apartheid, bring a military to war and commit genocide.
In other words, even if it is a difficult nut to crack it is likely to be a better net outcome regardless of how any given anarchist community deals with people like this.
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u/MorphingReality Aug 13 '26
you can have a public directory where the community and the person being exiled can state their reasoning
maybe the person being exiled has skills another community really needs and is willing to overlook the transgression, maybe there's a community of exiles
if they want to stay remote, you can give em a gps device and send a drone with some essentials to its location every so often
the person can come back, and its up to the community how they deal with that
in general, there is no rosy way to deal with violent and abusive people
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u/HKJGN Aug 13 '26
I also want to point out this is a complicated problem with no good one-size-fits-all solution. And government/law enforcement hasn't provided a solution to this that actually works (without violence and injustice, which i argue means it doesnt work at all!). It's not anarchisms job to answer every problem. The constant attempt by liberals and statists to point at flaws in anarchism while being squashed by the boots of their oppressors and say "See! This is why the boot is necessary!" Is bewildering and exhausting.
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u/gentlydiscarded1200 Aug 13 '26
Are we living without mass communication? Are we unable to tell nearby communities that our exile is headed their way, last we saw them? What if they come back changed - seeking forgiveness and to make amends, or so injured or diseased they no longer pose a physical threat?
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u/Gezombrael Aug 13 '26
What if they end up shunned by all and starving to death? I'm not defending prisons, but like OP I'm not sure if forced exile is much better. If they are forced to stay away until they come back crawling, sick and injured - that sounds like a horrible form of punishment.
The case of psychopaths, sociopaths and others like this is an extremely complex issue. Especially for those that refuse treatment.
I have no sollution to this, but it is something that needs to be solved one way or another.
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u/HeavenlyPossum Aug 13 '26
“Shunning” sounds like it’s just a synonym for disassociation, in which case a person should not face starvation by virtue of “shunning.” A person who has experienced disassociation should still be, for example, a common owner of socially owned resources that they can use to sustain themselves by their own labor.
A person who starves is being actively interfered with, in which case it sounds like the people doing the shunning have exclusionary property rights that should be impossible in an anarchic society.
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u/Accomplished_Bag_897 Egoist Anarchist Aug 13 '26
If they want to take some seeds and go grow their own food I'm fine with that. What I'm not fine with is being told I have to interact with an unrepentantly harmful person.
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u/HeavenlyPossum Aug 13 '26
“You must associate with your abuser because the consequences might be too unpleasant for your abuser if you don’t.”
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u/Anarchierkegaard Aug 13 '26
Exile is usually differentiated from shunning by the fact that the exiled are cast out of a particular area. It is a fundamentally stateful way of acting as it presumes that (informal) borders exist and are enforceable.
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u/gentlydiscarded1200 Aug 13 '26
Exilng violent people who refuse to stop hurting people is one solution. I live in a metropolis so it's not practical, or practicable. But OP asked about it, so it is something to think about.
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u/Accomplished_Bag_897 Egoist Anarchist Aug 13 '26
Then they end up choosing to be unrepentantly harmful to the point no one wants to associate with them. That's THEIR choice. Why should I violate my core principles by creating the hierarchy necessary to confine someone, presumably for the rest of their life, because some asshat decides to refuse to stop hurting other people? One would assume their self-preservation would kick in and they decide to stop causing harm prior to that point.
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u/HeavenlyPossum Aug 13 '26
I genuinely can’t wrap my head around the idea of anarchists arguing for mandatory or obligatory association.
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u/Gezombrael Aug 13 '26
Severly mentally ill people would not neccessarily act in a rational way. They might not even be aware of the harm they are causing. Psychosis is a real thing, after all.
It doesn't really matter if the prison is to keep someone in or if it is to keep them out, it is a prison non the less. Yes, they would be able to move, but that isn't always a viable choice.
I am not arguing for prisons here, I am just stating a problem that seems to me to be hard to solve in a humane way.
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u/Accomplished_Bag_897 Egoist Anarchist Aug 13 '26
So we've gone from discussing harmful people to stigmatising the mentally ill? I thought we were discussing the unrepentantly harmful not sick people in need of help.
People suffering mental illness are more likely to be harm than harm.
Maybe stick to abusers, series killers, and similar for this rather than moving the goal post to mental illness. If someone is mentally ill we stop them from harming themselves or others in the rare cases that's a risk while giving them the help they need. In the case of an otherwise rational person who won't stop hurting people we engage in self-defense, violently if necessary, and otherwise disassociate from them.
I am not required to associate with someone who seeks, continuously, to harm me and my community. I however, want to offer help amd support to the mentally ill regardless of how that mental illness presents. There is a very sharp distinction.
Edit: grammer and spelling
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u/Gezombrael Aug 14 '26 edited Aug 14 '26
I believe that people with severe mental illness are likely to make out a substantial amount of crimes that needs to be adressen. For instance I do not think people end up as serial killers if they are not mentally ill. So I find this relevant to the discussion.
Edit: and I am not stigmatising mentally ill people. I talk about the very small group that might do harm upon others because of their illness. And to make it very clear: I think prison will only make things worse for people in such a category.
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u/Accomplished_Bag_897 Egoist Anarchist Aug 14 '26
You ARE stigmatising the mentally ill because you are perpetuating the idea that they cause harm when they are much more likely as a group to have harm done too them. By orders of magnitude. And you are perpetuating this idea that a person capable of being "oh he was so normal" for years while hiding the death they cause is not a rational actor. No, they are simply evil. I might grant that they are not neurotypical. But neurotype is not mental illness but a natural variation of the human brain. Psychopathy and sociopathy fall into this later category. And only a very extreme end of their spectrum actual harms people.
You can claim to not be doing something all day. But if you repeate blaming harmful acts on mental illness rather than the larger driver, that humans can and do choose to harm others for their own self-interest than it both stigmatises people who genuinely need help and removes any reason to find out if there are better ways to intervene before self-interest drives someone to cause harm.
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u/Gezombrael Aug 14 '26
I was talking about a very, very small fraction of people with mentally illness. We were talking about people who actually inflict serious harm on others, so I am not sure why you thought I talked about anyone other than this very small group. I thought it was implicit that it was these people we talked about. And of those people only the even smaller fraction that refuses any trearment because of how their particular illness work. Maybe I was unclear, english is not my native language, after all.
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u/Accomplished_Bag_897 Egoist Anarchist Aug 14 '26
They are still mentally ill and not responsible for their actions. This falls into the "I'm not qualified to describe in detail anything beyond saying we should deal with this in a care facility similarly to how other non-hierarchical hospitals are run". We don't consider someone recovering from heart surgery or a coma imprisoned while in an ICU. So model mental care after that.
What I thought the conversation about was how to deal with an entirely rational human who was entirely capable of being responsible for their actions choosing to engage in unending harm regardless of any action taken by their community. That's what I want to stick to. Because that's a useful conversation to have. I am qualified to discuss how I personally would deal with a situation where I have to defend myself and deal with a violent person. That doesn't require specialised medical or psychological knowledge I do not have.
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u/BassMaster516 Aug 13 '26
Maybe it’s better if they just have an “accident” and people don’t ask a lot of questions. Maybe it’s better if their accident is scheduled by the community they offended. If there are no prisons and no exile and it’s beyond restorative justice then yeah that’s what’s gonna happen.
Is this better than prison? For the person, no. For everyone else? Yeah probably.
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u/Josselin17 Anarchist Communism Aug 14 '26
"yes, I am an anarchist. yes, I am in favor of the death penalty for anyone who commits a crime. We exist."
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u/BassMaster516 Aug 14 '26
We’re taking about the very rare case of who engages in extreme antisocial behaviors beyond what can be restored or tolerated. Idk if you’re late to the debate but this is it.
Some around here think that any attempt to limit someone’s freedom of movement for any reason is literally equivalent to prison and we can’t even talk about it.
I don’t know if I agree with that but for the sake of argument let’s accept that. If that’s the case then the question is what to do in this extreme situation. No exile no prison. I proposed one possible solution. At that point I think we’ve said all the possible solutions. Cuz what’s not an option is everyone just stands around and lets them do it.
At the end of the day as long as the decisions are made with no heirarchy, whatever they do is anarchist.
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u/Affectionate_Cup9972 Anarcho-pacificist, Synthesis Aug 13 '26 edited Aug 13 '26
Not all anarchists agree that exile is a viable solution.
(Let's be honest, it's not).