I was soon negotiating contractual agreements between offenders and their victims, bringing restitution between opposing parties. This proved taxing, but satisfying, frequently producing improved relationships, We often found solutions outside the box and beyond the norm, and before long I had several years invested, spending additional time serving with the Board of Directors. When Michigan changed its state penal code and assimilated our VICTIM AND OFFENDER RECONCILIATION PROGRAM by creating new State for-pay jobs, it added supervision of in-house inmates and instituted a work release program that left VORP and its professional volunteers no option but to dissolve.
I continued my local church ministry and saw a growing Justice System that valued profit more than people. The State Department of Corrections (DOC) began working with young, first-time offenders, but failed to bring reconciliation between offenders and victims as VORP had done. They left no place for restitution and gave no consideration to issues of forgiveness
This new State effort remained void of the character-building moral and ethical qualities VORP had stressed. Area rehabilitation efforts quickly redefined downward while I continued to support President Reagan’s efforts to redefine America’s drug war as “the major problem.”
“Tough on crime” sounded right! Punishing bad behavior reflected accountability. Seeing prevention become secondary, however, raised other issues. I noted well-meaning people duped by a mindset that prioritized “making criminals pay for their crimes.”1
Meanwhile; research was revealing social scientists compounding my questions. Author Hosea Anderson described “the hopelessness and alienation many young inner-city black men … feel, largely as a result of endemic joblessness and persistent racism.” It fueled “the violence they engage in” and resulted in behavior that confirmed for Anderson “the negative feelings many whites and some middle-class blacks harbor toward the ghetto poor.” It legitimated the code of the street “in the eyes of many young blacks”
Anderson insisted, “attitudes on both sides will become increasingly entrenched, and the violence which claims victims black and white, poor and affluent, will only increase,”2 with each exposing “the depth of racial bias in the system.”
My Church Ministry had taken me into the cavernous depths behind electronic gates of maximum-security facilities where residents did “hard time.” I found working with prisoners was not easy, but. I knew Correctional Professionals were sometimes helpful and other times calloused. Prison Ministry had introduced me to converted murderers and
multiple offenders.
As a pastor, I stayed in touch with various prisoners, occasionally reacting to the insulation some churches communicated. I met inmates that were solid “Christians.” Others no longer needed additional punishment. I watched first hand as God’s transforming grace transformed prisoner’s, I felt deep disappointment when prisoners went to their death in spite of compelling evidence to the contrary, their pleas for commutation rejected.
Karla Faye Tucker brought a tidal-wave of public opinion from politicians and citizens alike. Some I found more vindictive than helpful. Politicians offered solutions promising tougher sentencing guidelines and expanded prison space, while cutting funding for preventive rehabilitation. John Q. Public was often overwhelmed and sometimes surrendered to fear, ignorance, and pressure, forgetting that loving God remains the epitome of our faith.
I have never forgotten being “conned” by a brutal sex offender. A lifetime in prison for a former pastoral associate brings bad memories. While Prison serves a useful social function, it is not a “cure all” in every situation. Our Criminal Justice System can be improved.
Author Jerome Miller believed our criminal justice system alienated and socially destabilized our society. He found demands for arrest, jail, conviction, and imprisonment sometimes creating more problems than they solved. Theoretically, we all believe in personal accountability, but that suggests we become as accountable for the economy of human lives as for the criminals we catch and condemns.
Our “get tough” politics of the 1980’s increased federal, state and local expenditures for police 416%, for courts 585%, for prosecution/legal services 1,019%, for legal defense, 1,255%, and for Corrections 990%. It punished more but prevented less.4 Contrary to popular opinion, 76% of illicit drug users came from our white establishment, with only 14% from the Black Community, and 8% from the Hispanic Community. Yet,, most incarcerated inmates were poor and minority.
The public sector railed against jobless minorities, lazy drug-abusing criminals, and the abuse of sex in making babies paid for by tax dollars. We agreed the Welfare System needed reforming, but most welfare clients were white rather than minority or poor. Since then, welfare has since been reformed, but little else changed.
The Criminal Justice System still criminalizing what it cannot control. It builds more prisons and punishes more than it rehabilitates. It clones criminals, and graduates them magna cum laude in crime. Recidivism shuttles inmates in and out of the revolving doors of our prison system that protects itself but fails to help inmates build new and better lives.
So when will we quit criminalizing what we cannot control? When will we reform our ineffective system? When will we work as hard at prevention as punishment? When will we value inmate education as much as inmate-incarceration? When will we put people ahead of punishment-and-profit?
Jesus used the cross as his symbol for identifying faith. We reveal our vertical relationship by loving God supremely. We practice the horizontal relationship by loving our neighbor as ourselves. Jesus proclaimed the Good Samaritan as the ideal of our horizontal relationships (Luke 10:27). He focused on prevention rather than punishment and nothing short of providing rehabilitation will correct the crisis in our criminal justice system
Faith supports victim’s rights, but faith balanced consequences without surrendering to “hate hysteria”. An ounce of prevention is worth more than a pound of cure, biblically and pragmatically. Preventive outreach and proactive programming will recycle lives from our cultural trash bins without becoming political.
Economic stewardship and sound gospel call for better balance between punishment and prevention. Calhoun County Michigan boosted its income by up to a thousand dollars a day by introducing the Sheriff to the profits of housing federal prisoners.3
A spokesperson for Michigan’s Department of Management and Budget praised a neighboring city for being five-hundred jobs richer with “good paying jobs” at a local prison facility. The proposal added 2,500 new beds and he concluded, “That’s good for the state and for the taxpayers” (emphasis added). Simultaneously, a newsman described abused prisoners in a privatized jail in another state, causing officials in that state to stop renting beds from the first state. Making punishment profitable may not be new or unreasonable, but it challenges and warps the purpose of our justice system!
Is our goal punishing people and making money, or rehabilitating people and improving society? We tax payers seem more interested in profit than people, but does punishment and prison fulfill our social obligation? With Michigan State Corrections spending “$130 million a year, employing 2,500 people in one system alone, while adding another $20 million in payroll when the next new multi-security prison opens,” I wonder where does it end?
Whatever we believe, our behavior tells the story. Thus, an alert editor suggested: “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 say “God bless that editor!”
Our focus on punishment recalls that Frank and Earnest cartoon where Frank announces, “Not only is Ernie going nowhere fast, but he knows a shortcut.” Punishment in prison provides our shortcut to profitability, but it takes us
owhere fast. It costs more in general and leaves us with poor justice,
poor economics, and a poor gospel!
This is walkingwithwarner.blogspot.com
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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.21 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).
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