We Live In a Prison Society
by Will
Willl Grigg?s Liberty Minute
November 25, 2011
The Occupy protests have offered many examples of the following scenario:
Peaceful demonstrators confront riot police; individual riot policeman commits physical aggression against protester, then immediately escalates the conflict by using potentially lethal force; rather than coming to the aid of the victim, other police officers form a protective barricade around the assailant.
This approach includes penning or otherwise trapping unresisting protesters, dousing them with a dangerous chemical agent misleadingly called ?pepper spray,? and then commencing an assault.
These tactics are inspired by a doctrine described by Sociologist Patrick Gillham of the University of Idaho as ?strategic incapacitation.? Embraced by police agencies more than a decade ago, this method of crowd control is derived from what Gillham calls ?a new penology philosophy? ? that is, a punitive approach more appropriate to a prison riot than a political demonstration.
?Strategic incapacitation? is the practice of summary punishment in the name of preventing disorder, rather than dealing with threats to person or property.
The philosophical errors and occasional outrages displayed by the ?Occupy? movement notwithstanding, the methods displayed by the black-clad, armored riot police are more troubling ? if only because they clearly demonstrate that our rulers consider this to be a prison society.
Let us take back the liberty wherewith Christ has made us free.