Head over heels in my last two decades of ministry, I
simply had no time to give--until I met Jim! Hearing Jim’s concepts convicted
me! I became a volunteer Case Worker with juveniles in this new Victim and
Offender Reconciliation Program, (VORP) and was soon negotiating consensual agreements
between first-time offenders and their victims.
I soon found resolving issues of restitution taxing but satisfying. I was making
a difference preventing more serious legal confrontations, reducing the resulting
socio-economic costs for all concerned, and helping potentially problem
individuals become productive individuals.
This outside-the-box
effort of going beyond the norm quickly became several of my final years of
pastoral ministry invested as a volunteer in court-mandated efforts that were
making a significant difference in people’s lives, and especially young first
time offenders.
When a new State-directed Youth Program
instituted a new Work Release Program and changed our penal code, they created a
new level of for-pay State jobs supervising in-house inmates and assimilating
the administrative essentials of our victim and offender program.
I continued
to pursue my church ministry. I was, however, increasingly troubled by a revamped
Juvenile Justice System that appeared to value profit more than people. The
State Department of Corrections (DOC) continued its court-mandated efforts with
young, first-time offenders, but without the frequent and effective reconciliation
resulting between offenders and victims as happened with Vorp.
No
longer seeking to bring about some kind of resolution via restitution, new
State efforts lacked any opportunity for forgiveness and neither offered nor
achieved any of the essential moral-ethical character-building qualities affirmed
by VORP. Local rehabilitation efforts consequently deviated and redefined
downward.
In
the meantime, national efforts redefined America’s Drug War as “the major
problem” and reinforced “get tough” policing! Punishing bad behavior sounded
good and showed social accountability; it seemed. Yet as I watched crime prevention
become a secondary issue, new questions abounded.
The
new public focus on “making criminals pay for their crimes.”1 sounded
good until I discovered social scientists responding to some of my questions. Hosea
Anderson described “the hopelessness and alienation” felt by young inner-city
black men “largely as a result of endemic joblessness and persistent racism.” He
argued that it fueled “the violence they engage in” and further confirmed “the negative feelings many whites and
some middle-class blacks harbor toward the ghetto poor.”
Anderson
insisted it legitimated the code of the street “in the eyes of many young
blacks.” He concluded “attitudes on both sides will become increasingly
entrenched, and the violence which claims victims black and white, poor and
affluent, will only increase”2 and
further expose “the depth of racial bias in the system.”
Anderson’s
writings only added to my personal experiences of visiting deep inside the
cavernous depths behind electronic gates, in maximum-security facilities like Joliet where
residents did “hard time.” I knew the difficulty of working with prisoners. I
understood some Correctional Professionals were helpful while others remained quite
calloused.
My
visits included converted murderers and multiple offenders. I had “my
experiences” of being “conned” by brutal sex offenders and of befriending former
pastoral-peers. I corresponded with parishioner-related inmates. I understood
that prison served a useful purpose for some. On the other hand, I found it of little
value to others; and, at times I felt the isolation some churches communicated
to prisoners.
I knew
inmates who had become solid “Christians” for whom further punishment held no
redemptive value. I observed God’s transforming grace in prisoner’s lives first
hand. I also felt the deep disappointment of seeing prisoners executed in spite
of compelling evidence to the contrary, their pleas for commutation rejected. Prisoners
like Karla Faye Tucker brought tidal-waves of public opinion from politicians
and citizens alike, much of which seemed more vindictive to me than helpful.
I
listened to politicians promise tougher sentencing guidelines with expanded
prisoner spaces, who also voted to reduce preventive-rehabilitation funds. I watched
fear, ignorance, and pressure overwhelm the public and ignore a loving God that
best reveals the Christian faith.
Jesus
transformed the cross into a purposeful symbol for defining faith. He defended
the vertical relationship that loves God above all else and makes it a priority. He emphasized
the horizontal relationships of loving our neighbors as ourselves as the other
side of this two-sided Gospel coin. Giving as example, Jesus used the Good
Samaritan to express the ideal expression of this horizontal relationship (Luke
10:27). Consequently, I conclude that we must focus on prevention more than
punishment if we correct our badly flawed criminal justice system.
Faith
supports victim’s rights while demanding that we balance punishment without
surrendering to “hate hysteria”. Economic stewardship and sound gospel each
call for better balance between cultural trash bins called prisons and preventive
programs that uplift people.
A Michigan
Department of Management and Budget spokesman praised a nearby city for being
five-hundred jobs richer because they offered “good paying jobs” at a local
prison facility. He acknowledged a proposal to add 2,500 new beds and
concluded, “That’s good for the state and for the taxpayers” (emphasis
added). Simultaneously, a local reporter described abused prisoners in a
privatized jail that prompted officials in still another state to stop renting beds
from the first state.
Making
programs pay for themselves is neither new nor unreasonable, but it challenges
the theoretical purpose of the justice system!
We must decide whether our primary goal is to punish people and make
money, or to rehabilitate people and build society.
Many
tax payers appear more interested in profit than in people, but how does that fulfill
our social obligation? With State Corrections spending “$130 million a year
employing 2,500 people in one system alone, and adding another $20 million in
payroll when the next new multi-security prison opens,” where will it end?
Whatever
one’s belief, behavior best tells the story. An alert editor consequently warned
local readers, “We’d like to see the public’s money put to more constructive
use, by shaping people’s lives for the better, and providing the same positive
choices for everyone.”
I pray
“God bless that editor!” Author Jerome Miller documented a criminal justice
system that alienates and socially destabilizes our society. Demands for
arrest, jail, conviction, and imprisonment, frequently create more problems
than they solve. Theoretically, everyone believes in personal accountability,
but that suggests the public must become as accountable for the economy of
human lives as for the criminals it catches and condemns.
The 1980’s
“get tough” politics increased federal, state and local expenditures for police
416%, for courts 585%, for prosecution and legal services 1,019%, for legal defense,
1,255%, and for Corrections a whopping 990%. It punished more while preventing
less.4 And contrary to many
of my white peers, 76% of illicit drug users came from the white majority, and
only 14% from the Black Community, with 8% from the Hispanic Community. Most
incarcerated inmates were admittedly from poor and minority communities.
The
public sector railed thoughtlessly against jobless minorities, lazy
drug-abusing criminals, and the abuse of sex for creating babies with the help
of tax dollars. Most agreed the Welfare System needed reforming, but contrary
to fact, public awareness perceived most welfare clients as minority or poor
rather than white. Welfare has now been constructively reformed, but little
else has changed.
The
Criminal Justice System still focuses on criminalizing what it cannot control
by building more prisons. It punishes people more than it rehabilitates. It
clones criminals, and graduates some with magna cum laude skills in crime, as
recidivism shuttles inmates in and out of the revolving doors of prison. This
maintains a system that protects itself but mostly fails to assist inmates in building
new and better lives.
So …
“When do we quit criminalizing what we cannot control?” When do we reform our
ineffective prison system? When will we do as much prevention as we do punishment?
When will we value inmate education as much as inmate-incarceration? When will
we show as much concern for people as we do for profitable punishment?
 |
| Restore the Family Bible |
Our
current focus on punishment recalls that old Frank and Earnest cartoon in which
Frank concludes, “Not only is Ernie going nowhere fast, but he knows a
shortcut.” Our short cut to profitable punishment takes us nowhere—in a hurry.
In addition, it adds to the cost of more incarcerations; and that is not only poor
economics but a worthless gospel!
Balancing
people and prevention with punishment and profit calls for a change of heart. A
change of heart would invigorate the church and help to restore established
family values and a new public trust.
_______________
1
Jerome G. Miller, Search and Destroy. (Cambridge/N.Y.: Cambridge Press, 1996),
p. 81.
2
Miller, p. 97.
3
Karen Motley, Battle Creek, MI. “Enquirer News,” 2-10-98).
4
Miller, p. 2.
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