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Welcome to Arts and Ideas in the Air, talk about Tuesday, where I talk about
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something related to the Sudbury model. Today, it's a little late for me, I didn't
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get to do it during the day, so I am going to be kind of brief, and I thought
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I'd just talk about, well, I listened to a podcast recently, it was kind of old, I
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don't actually know when it was from, but it was somebody who was talking about
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these programs dealing in the criminal justice system with the idea of being
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kind of more swift and certain, rather than punitive, so it's kind of a
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in-between, between, well, being the harsh draconian thing that, you know, we often
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have around here, which is pretty bad, but not entirely being, you know, do whatever
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you want, right? So something in between, and the main thing is just sort of idea
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is, you know, you know, some kind of dependability thing, and so talked about,
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you know, an intervention in, I think it was Hawaii, where they tried this with
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people who had been repeatedly in prison, and they were addicted to some drug, and
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so they had, you know, a system in place for parole for the thing, where the
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people in the experimental group, they would have to call in randomly, I mean
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call in every day, and see if they randomly got chosen to have be tested
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for drugs or whatever, and if so, then they did that, and if they were found to
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be, you know, using drugs, then they'd go to prison basically immediately for, like,
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I think initially it was two weeks, and then, like, they dropped it down to just
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two days, and that, you know, kind of very swift, sure reaction was enough to
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basically make it so that after a year, 80% of the experimental group, and we're
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talking like hundreds of people in the group, were basically not committing
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crimes, they were off the drugs, their life was getting better, etc. So I thought
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that was interesting, of course it's just one point, piece of data, I'm sure there's
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lots of flaws and whatever, but it made me think about our JC system, and how, you
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know, it's always been a great puzzle to me that, you know, that the consequences
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are not really very much at all, right, it's, I mean, most of the time it's just
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warnings, which is like basically nothing other than the consequence of having to
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show up, you know, and if someone repeatedly does stuff, then it gets more
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and more severe, and, you know, eventually suspension and expulsion, it's really bad,
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but, you know, that's really, really rare, and it's like, why is it so effective? And
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there are times when it's very ineffective, right, like profanity. It's
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been fine this year, but in previous years, cursing in the computer lab has
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been a real problem, and, you know, I think, well, when I kind of think about it, one
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of the big differences between the profanity and other rules is that most
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of our other rules, when someone breaks it, you know, the community will write
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people up. There's like, you know, 80 pairs of eyes watching, and if the rule is
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something that the community actually, you know, cares about and supports and is
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around, then one knows that the, you know, write-up will happen, it'll be swift,
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it'll be, you know, within the day, and, you know, fairly certain that, you know,
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that happened, and, you know, again, the consequences are very generally minimal.
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In contrast with the computer lab, with the cursing, the people in the computer
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lab, you know, they don't want the rule. It's the people who are outside of it
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who would like to feel like they could be in it, but they're not willing to
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actually go in and monitor and enforce this because that's kind of creepy. They
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don't feel comfortable in there, so they don't go in. Again, this is previous
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years. This year it's been totally different. And so, you know, the
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certainty of breaking that rule is, you know, just not there. It's just like
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basically when someone happens to be coming by and the door is open, or, you
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know, they just hear it, or, you know, someone really screams it out loud or
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something like that. And, you know, the consequences can be quite problematic.
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I've seen it like years where it's like, you know, someone will, you know, first
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get a warning, and then maybe ban from the computer lab for the rest of the day,
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and maybe for a few days, and maybe for a week, maybe even for a month,
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and it just doesn't seem to stop anything. It's been a big head-scratcher
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because we have so much success on other things, and maybe it's just because it
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was really not reliably enforced, you know, and that could just be the thing.
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So, yeah, that's kind of my hypothesis that I'm going to think about. It might
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help explain in my mind, you know, that it's something that's swift and certain
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to happen. It really gets respected really quickly. It is the random
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application of rules, which is where it really becomes extremely problematic, not
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only corrupting, as we've often seen in larger society, but just simply
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ineffective as well, as we have also seen in the larger society. You know,
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many of our laws of various natures, if they were enforced uniformly and with
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certainty, would probably not be laws for very much, for very long. And other
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laws would be, I could or will imagine, that, you know, that really was the case.
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I mean, imagine back in the day, the downloading of, you know, ripped songs and
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contravention to the law. That was, you know, basically people would just do it
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left and right. And, you know, that's because there's basically no enforcement.
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But if every time you downloaded an illegal song, you got a quick and swift
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kind of judgment and action taken on you, and it wouldn't have to be much,
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maybe just like a five dollar fine. Of course, that would make pirating the
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songs not very profitable, but even putting that to a side, you know, it
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would just be like, okay, I'm not going to do that. Heck, maybe even just like
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getting threatening letters like five times in a row or something with, well, I
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don't know, then it's kind of like you're being bluffed, I guess. I mean, this is
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probably something to be said for the ability that if you just keep doing it,
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there's a ratcheting up of consequences. But again, it doesn't necessarily have to
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be a very fast ratcheting up. It's just, you know, there are consequences. I think
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in a thesis I read the last year, someone was recounting having been written up
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for like food mess for like maybe 30 times before finally getting it when
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they were like, you know, six or something. And yeah, it's that, you know,
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that repeatedness, that certainty, the explanations, the consequences, you know,
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kind of all rolls up. But yeah, I think it is. There's also been times in our
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history where JC would get clogged up. Cases would not be heard for like weeks
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because it was just more problematic cases and it felt like the whole system
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was falling apart and, you know, and things weren't getting resolved. Yeah, I
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don't know. I guess I did not hold up to my promise of a quick podcast on this
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because it's clearly not short. But anyway, I hope this was something
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enlightening to somebody. Thanks for listening and I'll see you when I see
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you.