Let's brainstorm up a system to deal with acts of coercion without using coercion ourselves. And by "coercion," here, I mean forcing anyone to pay for force (police, punishment, and incarceration) to be used on people.

This system does not preclude communities voluntarily creating/organizing "community police," courts, and "Homes for Violators and 2nd Strikers".

I'll start this brainstorm off with an inspirational photo. Lookie the happy people and pretty colors! I tend to think most people prefer getting along. Do you like the Beatles? What do you think of a song of theirs called, "Come Together?"

How are you now? Ready? How about we begin by basing our system off the principles of Voluntaryist non-coercion and Nonviolent Communication (NVC) by Marshall Rosenberg, PhD?

Let's take the most extreme case: Bob killed a person, not out of self defense

(1) Community Volunteers meet with Bob OR apprehend? Can we (do we want to) justify using force to apprehend and temporarily restrain Bob because Bob violated the rights of another? If we do not, then Bob may flee and/or hurt others. Ideas? Would we call it "Temporary Loss of Rights?"

(2) Trial
How similar/different from our trial system? Need to flesh this out with goal of creating a system to determine:

• Did he do it? A chance for Bob to defend himself and/or convince a group of his peers it was self defense or some other excuse. Let's say Bob's action is deemed to be a violation of a person's right to not be coerced by others and he had no "excuse".
• Assess Bob's income potential and agree upon out a sum of money that Bob will be required to pay every month to the family of the victim for the rest of Bob's life?

(3) Community Volunteers identify Bob's unmet needs to be power, expression, and connection.
Bob's strategy for meeting those needs was to kill a person.

(4) Community Volunteers spend time with Bob and figure out new strategies that will meet Bob's needs for power, expression, and connection.

(5) Community Volunteers assist/advise Bob in finding a job if he does not have one.

(6) Community Volunteers may offer guidance or counseling to Bob.

Is that supposed to represent the shrink's couch or is it just another pretty cat photo? Do you like cats? I like most cats.

Questions

(1) How do we keep Bob from doing it again or even know if he did? And how do we insure he makes his payments to the family?

One method would be Community Volunteer-created web sites that have profiles of people who use unacceptable strategies, keep track of their payments and whereabouts. These web sites would work similar to Wikipedia, constantly updated by Volunteers.

First, we acknowledge that just like knowing we can not keep a "reformed criminal who spent 20 years in prison and has paid for his crime" from killing again, we can't guarantee Bob will not kill again. Our current system can not make guarantees and neither will a fully non-coercive system.

(2) But what if Bob does it again?

Do we then stray from our non-coercive strategy because Bob has shown himself to not be responsible? Has he given up his rights by taking those of another?

What alternatives exist where we avoid incarceration or other coercive "punishment"? Perhaps Community Volunteer created "Homes for 2nd Strikers" where there is less privacy as well as other freedoms?

Or what if they are sent away into exile?

Note: If we do decide "2nd Strike" means incarceration or death, we have at least moved quite far in the direction of treating unproductive strategies as "poor choices".

One idea I have is that the money-paid-to-family-of-victim-forever will be cumulative so if your monthly payment is set at 33% of your income and you repeat the offense, you are paying out 66% of your income, and real quick it becomes impossible to even sustain your own life if you choose to repeat the offense.

(3) With no threat of "real punishment" what will motivate people to "be good?"

First, some beliefs I have:

• It's normal human nature to want more money, security, power, happiness, pizza, beer, and not completely deranged or insane to want to have sex with dolphins on occassion.
• Most people do not want to hurt other people. Most people have empathy for others.
• Most people understand it is typically in their own best interest to not hurt other people.

Oops! I meant the beautiful, inspiring, and awe-filled experience of WATCHING dolphins have sex.

Second, as you saw above, there can be consequences for using destructive strategies, including :

• If you murder someone, you pay their family for the rest of your life;
• if you murder someone, everyone will know about it and your face will be known as someone who did it; and
• if you do it again, you will get... ? See (2) above.

Benefits of this system

(1) Completely voluntary and thus self-sustaining. No cost to taxpayers. Prisons cost a HUGE amount, by the way. I've seen Orange is the New Black. And bonus, we can stop feeding the Prison Industrial Complexers who lobby for more law are laughing their way to the bank.

(2) The "Violator" is allowed to continue their enrichment of the economy.

(3) The Family of the "Victim" gains monetary compensation, which has much more practical value than "knowing he is in jail."

(4) Removing the stigma associated with certain destructive strategies and vastly increasing the chance of rehabilitation.

(5) If you spent 10 years in prison not getting laid except for being forced by your cell-mate, how peaceful would you feel when you got out?