Otherwise productive conversations on online harassment hit a brick wall when it comes to enforcement. Community enforcement does not always work because community standards are often the reason harassers feel comfortable harassing in the first place. Appeals to external or somehow impartial moderators or enforcers might work really well, but then what do we do with the offender; especially the really bad ones that might follow through on their threats and need to be isolated or restrained in some way? This is a perennial problem of societal organization and we are just now starting to come to terms with how this old problem manifests through digital technologies. Exacerbating this issue is the state of our current law enforcement and judicial process and the renewed attention to its very basic flaws thanks to the Black Lives Matter movement and allied progressive and radical communities. It is difficult if not impossible for anyone that considers themselves left of progressive to unthinkingly prescribe police enforcement and jail time for someone that breaks the law, no matter how much we agree with that law. How then, do we deal with today’s news that a Kentucky county clerk is now in federal prison for refusing to issue marriage licenses to gay couples?

Mike Huckabee (of course) is already crowing that Christianity itself has been criminalized, and to some degree he is correct. Parts of how he (and millions of people) define Christianity are now in conflict with federal law. I think this is a good thing, but I also do not wish American jails on anyone. My own political stance on the abolition of police as they are presently organized and the judicial systems’ complacency in the systematic oppression of people extends to everyone. There are definitely people who wish harm on others (not as many as fear-mongering fascist want you to believe, but there are enough) and they need to be dealt with in some way: whether they are making credible threats of violence over social media, or using their bureaucratic roles to withhold essential government services. But if we as leftists are to take our own basic and fundamental critiques of the police and their prisons seriously, what do we do with these people in the here and now?

We can characterize this problem in a lot of different ways and each characterization can lead us to radically different conclusions. We can decide to make do with our massively imperfect bureaucratic tools and hope that enough laws get passed that just the right people are put in prison (anything short of a radical change in society necessitates that some people are imprisoned), or communities can invent new institutions without waiting for government to catch up. This is essentially the decision white supremacists made in the American south during segregation: they formed lynch mobs. The same may be said of today’s “Oath Keepers” and vigilante boarder patrollers. The far right has never had a problem with setting up their own institutions for enacting their warped sense of “justice.”  Obviously (at least to my mind) neither upholding a system that necessitates prisons, nor organizing vigilante justice is a particularly good answer for leftists seeking answers to the question of what do communities do with people who transgress.

All of which is to say I do not think anyone benefits from the imprisonment of Kim Davis. I think lots of people in Kentucky would benefit from Kim Davis being fired from a position where her hateful and bigoted worldview is contained as much as possible, but I do not wish prison on (almost) anyone.

One of the many effects of digital dualism is that very old problems appear as new and strange when mediated through digital interfaces. This can actually be beneficial at times because it can free up the mind to think radically about established social institutions. Sometimes this has bad effects, as when employers looking at your Facebook profile is seen as “controversial” and not on par with asking employees to bring in old college photo albums for an annual performance review. But I also hold out hope that renewed creative thinking about dealing with online harassment could yield new methods of community governance in general.

To be super clear: I do not want Facebook consulting on how to reform the federal Justice Department. Rather, I hold out hope that the kind of organizational design thinking that goes into harassment mitigation and prevention in social networks might also spill over into more radical prison abolition movements. Perhaps the two could learn from one-another and we can solve several problems at once.