A couple of months ago, I wrote about a new TV show on Fox called "Proven Innocent." I argued that a show about innocent people in prison was a sign of a culture shift in attitudes about prison and punishment, and I predicted that more such shows would follow. I was right.
Two shows, among others, are Van Jones's show The Redemption Project on CNN. This highly anticipated show delves into the question of whether or not offenders can be redeemed, and what that looks like. The shows tag line is, "Face the past. Heal the future." It also addresses some of the difficult questions of rehabilitation and forgiveness. These discussions are centered around the stories of offenders and their victims.
Another new series, on A&E, highlights the stories of people sentenced to life in prison as juvenile offenders. These offenders are often referred to as "juvenile lifers." After a U.S. Supreme Court decision (Miller v. Alabama, 2012) ruled that mandatorily sentencing a juvenile offender to life in prison was unconstitutional, many of these offender's stories have come to light. This series tackles the complex and often tragic stories of young offenders whose lives were forever altered by their decision to harm someone at such a young age. It also gives voice to the families of their victims who now must re-live the crime that took their loved one's lives when these juvenile offenders are re sentenced.
Crime of any kind, but especially crime that forever alters lives, is complex and fraught with raw emotions. It's easy for people (like me) to talk about forgiveness and reconciliation, as if those things are easy. They are not--I get that. Some harms are so tragic, evoking deep emotions, that they make forgiveness seem impossible. Even when a juvenile offender takes a life, it is difficult to know what exactly constitutes justices. For the surviving family, justice might just look like life in prison.
I never want to diminish the visceral emotions or demands for justice that surviving victims and family may have. They deserve justice for the harms they have suffered. I have not walked in their shoes. What I do want to do is to spark a discussion about what justice is. I want to challenge long-held beliefs in America that justice means long incarceration, sometimes for life. I want to challenge beliefs that retribution alone is justice and the sole remedy for harms. Retribution is a part of justice, but it is not the whole story.
A friend of mine, a juvenile lifer, will soon leave prison after recently being re sentenced from a life sentence to a forty-year minimum sentence. He's served 36 years in prison (he's eligible for disciplinary credits)--and he's 50 years old. He committed his crime when he was just fifteen years old. His story is not mine to tell, but I seriously question how a country as progressive as the United States could sentence a fifteen-year old juvenile to spend the rest of his life in prison. His crime was tragic, yes, but he was also a child. Had he committed his crime less than two months earlier, he would have been released from prison in 1987!
I don't know if my friend "deserves" a life outside of prison, but I do think that the Supreme Court got it right. Whether for juvenile or adult offenders, we need to take a serious look at our definition of justice. I hope that popular culture, including through TV shows, is heading toward a serious cultural shift in the conversation and practices of criminal justice. As difficult as they may be, we need these conversations.
Monday, April 29, 2019
Wednesday, April 24, 2019
A Difficult Gift to Give and to Receive
Saturday night in our Restorative Justice club meeting we discussed forgiveness. This illusive concept incites deeply held feelings from those of us who long so desperately for our victims and victims' families to forgive us. Some are convinced that they do not deserve to ever be forgiven--and humanly speaking, they're right. Others already live in the freedom of knowing they're forgiven, by God at least, and for some by their victims or victims' families.
Forgiveness, when it comes to crimes and other significant harms, is difficult because many people believe that forgiveness means somehow absolving the offender of responsibility for the harm he caused. Others claim that forgiveness is for the one harmed, to free him or her from the prison of anger and bitterness. I agree that forgiveness is hard, sometimes REALLY hard. I also agree that the one offering forgiveness often benefits from the freedom of anger and bitterness. But I see forgiveness primarily as a gift to the offender, and as such an act of grace.
Two theologians, Nigel Biggar and Miroslav Volf, wrote about the complex issue of forgiveness. Both saw forgiveness in two parts, and I couldn't agree more. Volf called the first part of forgiveness a gift extended, and the second part he called a gift received. Biggar called the first part compassion and the second part absolution. I like the gift metaphor more, but both theologians recognize that the first step of forgiveness involves compassion for the offender. It requires recognizing his brokenness and wishing him no harm. The second part, for both theologians, requires repentance from the offender.
Biggar argues that absolving the offender requires the offender to confess and repent of his wrong. It also may involve restitution or even retribution at times. But the end goal, for both theologians, is that forgiveness leads to reconciliation. Reconciliation is perhaps the hardest part of forgiveness, because it requires vulnerability. It requires being willing to trust again, even if just a tiny bit at a time. Reconciliation also may require "forgetting" a harm, or at least remembering it in redemptive ways in the present.
Forgiveness, whether the first part of compassion/gift or the second part of absolution/acceptance, is difficult. It is a process of transformation, both for the forgiver and the forgiven. As many of the men in my Restorative Justice club noted, even accepting forgiveness is hard. For some, it was hard because they were not yet ready to accept full responsibility in the past. For others, it is hard because they feel their crime is unforgivable. I heard no one express a flippant desire to accept forgiveness and forget their own harms. The forgiver may "forget" or remember redemptively, but the harmer rarely does.
If forgiveness is a gift, and I believe it is, then it isn't something deserved or earned. It is something offered in grace and compassion to someone who does not deserve it. And when it is received in humility by the one who does not deserve it, the ground is fertile for reconciliation. Tragically, some harms cannot be undone. But it is also tragic for relationships to remain broken and for bitterness to stay deeply rooted.
I don't know if I'll ever be offered forgiveness by those I've harmed, but I hope so. And because of that hope, although I don't deserve forgiveness, I try to live a life worthy of it. Forgiveness is a gift I will never take lightly.
Forgiveness, when it comes to crimes and other significant harms, is difficult because many people believe that forgiveness means somehow absolving the offender of responsibility for the harm he caused. Others claim that forgiveness is for the one harmed, to free him or her from the prison of anger and bitterness. I agree that forgiveness is hard, sometimes REALLY hard. I also agree that the one offering forgiveness often benefits from the freedom of anger and bitterness. But I see forgiveness primarily as a gift to the offender, and as such an act of grace.
Two theologians, Nigel Biggar and Miroslav Volf, wrote about the complex issue of forgiveness. Both saw forgiveness in two parts, and I couldn't agree more. Volf called the first part of forgiveness a gift extended, and the second part he called a gift received. Biggar called the first part compassion and the second part absolution. I like the gift metaphor more, but both theologians recognize that the first step of forgiveness involves compassion for the offender. It requires recognizing his brokenness and wishing him no harm. The second part, for both theologians, requires repentance from the offender.
Biggar argues that absolving the offender requires the offender to confess and repent of his wrong. It also may involve restitution or even retribution at times. But the end goal, for both theologians, is that forgiveness leads to reconciliation. Reconciliation is perhaps the hardest part of forgiveness, because it requires vulnerability. It requires being willing to trust again, even if just a tiny bit at a time. Reconciliation also may require "forgetting" a harm, or at least remembering it in redemptive ways in the present.
Forgiveness, whether the first part of compassion/gift or the second part of absolution/acceptance, is difficult. It is a process of transformation, both for the forgiver and the forgiven. As many of the men in my Restorative Justice club noted, even accepting forgiveness is hard. For some, it was hard because they were not yet ready to accept full responsibility in the past. For others, it is hard because they feel their crime is unforgivable. I heard no one express a flippant desire to accept forgiveness and forget their own harms. The forgiver may "forget" or remember redemptively, but the harmer rarely does.
If forgiveness is a gift, and I believe it is, then it isn't something deserved or earned. It is something offered in grace and compassion to someone who does not deserve it. And when it is received in humility by the one who does not deserve it, the ground is fertile for reconciliation. Tragically, some harms cannot be undone. But it is also tragic for relationships to remain broken and for bitterness to stay deeply rooted.
I don't know if I'll ever be offered forgiveness by those I've harmed, but I hope so. And because of that hope, although I don't deserve forgiveness, I try to live a life worthy of it. Forgiveness is a gift I will never take lightly.
Tuesday, April 16, 2019
Average Prison Sentences are 25% Longer than Two Decades Ago
| According to the Michigan Department of Corrections, the average sentence length for Michigan prisoners is 10.3 years. Two decades ago, the average sentence length was 7.1 years--that's a 45% increase in average sentence length in just two decades! To be fair, some of that increase is due to fewer people coming to prison for "minor" crimes because they were diverted to alternatives. Nevertheless, Michigan remains one of the states with the longest average sentence length. Some of the causes for these lengthy sentences are mandatory minimum sentences and Michigan's lack of good time or disciplinary credits to reduce a prisoner's sentence if he/she shows good behavior. While Michigan's sentencing guidelines were supposed to prevent sentence disparities, in practice they have also led to longer sentences. Court decisions several years ago have made Michigan's sentencing guidelines "advisory," but it is not yet clear if that means judges are sentencing people to shorter sentences or not. The statistics seem to indicate it does not. The criminal justice system is a mess, and it needs significant reform. Some reform is happening, and some legislators are courageous enough to push reforms, but I'm afraid that many legislators will find other crises more pressing. Michigan needs $2.5 billion to fix its crumbling roads, but it is unlikely that any of that will come from the $2+ billion annual prison budget. Short of significantly reducing the prison population, closing more prisons, and reducing staffing and salaries, the MDOC budget is about as tight as it can be. The truth is that decades of research has shown that longer prison sentences do not lead to reformed people or safer communities. Michigan's nearly 70% recidivism rate after three years is a siren call to its citizens that the current system simply does not work. What other system would citizens pay more than $2 billion a year to consistently fail at such a high rate?I'm not naive to think that crime should not be punished. It should be. But lengthening sentences has not worked. It only leads to progressively broken offenders, fatherless (and, increasingly, motherless) families, and overstretched budgets, and it does nothing to heal or address the harms victims have suffered.Criminal justice and prison reform is not popular because citizenry believe they are being kept safe by harsh prison sentences. That lie has served its time, and it is time that people see they've been duped. Long prison sentences do not protect communities--they only leave communities more broken...and penniless. Statistics taken from Safe & Just Michigan, a criminal justice and prison reform advocacy organization. |
Monday, April 8, 2019
Addressing Financial Ignorance with...Ignorance?
Many prisoners broadly share common traits. These include: little education, emotional or mental health issues, addiction or chemical dependency, dysfunctional family histories, aggressive or abusive behaviors, anger issues, and perhaps lesser known--financial ignorance or irresponsibility. Many of these traits contributed to criminal behavior for a good number of incarcerated men (and women?). This is perhaps why the Department of Corrections has tried to address some of these issues. They push prisoners to get their GEDs, provide limited psychological services, and require addiction therapy/classes and assaultive behavior therapy/classes.
Nevertheless, in my decade in prison, I have yet to see a single class offered on financial responsibility. In fact, I have seen the DOC actively work to hinder prisoners from learning personal financial skills. At one prison where I was housed, several prisoners with accounting and other financial backgrounds and degrees put together a personal finance, peer-facilitated class to help their peers learn financial responsibility. These skills included:
* Learning how to write a check and balance a checkbook
* Creating and living within a budget
* Building credit and using it wisely
* Discerning the benefits of home ownership or renting
* Understanding mortgages and savings accounts
* Becoming a responsible taxpayer, and
* Knowing the differences between assets and liabilities
This proposed class was rejected, without reason, by the warden; however, other non-financial, peer-led classes were approved, like Study Skills, Basic Math, and English Grammar and Punctuation.
Prisoners usually have little or no experience with the above financial skills. Many have never had a "legitimate" job, nor owned a bank account, let alone a house. In fact, many prisoners do not manage the little money they have in prison well. Many use unwise and wasteful spending practices, like using the store man and gambling.
The store man is another prisoner who purchases store items and "loans" them to other prisoners at a 50% markup. If you borrow two soups from the store man, you must pay back three on store day, two weeks or less away. I know of many prisoners who routinely owe $30 (sometimes much more) to the store man every store day, at least a third of it as interest. This is gross financial irresponsibility, but it happens all the time.
Even in a prison facility where men are trained with vocational skills so they have the abilities they need to get and keep a job upon release from prison, teaching them how to manage that money is not valued by the Department. Another financial responsibility class, very similar to the one above, was recently denied by the warden at this facility, who is probably the most reformist and prisoner-friendly warden in the state of Michigan. This class would cost the MDOC nothing, and it would teach prisoners the skills they need to avoid financial crises.
So, the MDOC is training prisoners with skills that will help them to start out in jobs earning $15 or more an hour, but they oppose the same men learning skills for managing that money when it comes in. It's a disaster waiting to happen. It just makes no sense. One must ask why the Michigan Department of Corrections is so opposed to its wards learning financial responsibility?
Nevertheless, in my decade in prison, I have yet to see a single class offered on financial responsibility. In fact, I have seen the DOC actively work to hinder prisoners from learning personal financial skills. At one prison where I was housed, several prisoners with accounting and other financial backgrounds and degrees put together a personal finance, peer-facilitated class to help their peers learn financial responsibility. These skills included:
* Learning how to write a check and balance a checkbook
* Creating and living within a budget
* Building credit and using it wisely
* Discerning the benefits of home ownership or renting
* Understanding mortgages and savings accounts
* Becoming a responsible taxpayer, and
* Knowing the differences between assets and liabilities
This proposed class was rejected, without reason, by the warden; however, other non-financial, peer-led classes were approved, like Study Skills, Basic Math, and English Grammar and Punctuation.
Prisoners usually have little or no experience with the above financial skills. Many have never had a "legitimate" job, nor owned a bank account, let alone a house. In fact, many prisoners do not manage the little money they have in prison well. Many use unwise and wasteful spending practices, like using the store man and gambling.
The store man is another prisoner who purchases store items and "loans" them to other prisoners at a 50% markup. If you borrow two soups from the store man, you must pay back three on store day, two weeks or less away. I know of many prisoners who routinely owe $30 (sometimes much more) to the store man every store day, at least a third of it as interest. This is gross financial irresponsibility, but it happens all the time.
Even in a prison facility where men are trained with vocational skills so they have the abilities they need to get and keep a job upon release from prison, teaching them how to manage that money is not valued by the Department. Another financial responsibility class, very similar to the one above, was recently denied by the warden at this facility, who is probably the most reformist and prisoner-friendly warden in the state of Michigan. This class would cost the MDOC nothing, and it would teach prisoners the skills they need to avoid financial crises.
So, the MDOC is training prisoners with skills that will help them to start out in jobs earning $15 or more an hour, but they oppose the same men learning skills for managing that money when it comes in. It's a disaster waiting to happen. It just makes no sense. One must ask why the Michigan Department of Corrections is so opposed to its wards learning financial responsibility?
Thursday, April 4, 2019
Who Bears the Burden of Incarceration?
A mother of another prisoner recently expressed to me her frustration with her son's dumb behavior in prison. She remarked that she has read much about "being there" for your incarcerated loved ones, but she has read little about the affect it has on those on the outside who support them. The sad reality is that those who are left behind bear a lot of the burden when their loved one is incarcerated. This mother's woe prompted me to ask my own mother about the burdens she's had to bear because of my incarceration. It was difficult but important for me to hear about these burdens. Some burdens are obvious, but others are borne in silence.
Every person's experience is unique when they have a loved one in prison, but most share some commonalities. These include:
1. Financial Stress--Whether it is paying for bail, court costs, defense or appeal attorneys, utilities or car and house payments, phone calls, visitation trips, or helping wives (or husbands) and children, sending Securepaks, and putting money on a prisoner's "books," it can be very costly for a loved one to go to jail or prison.
2. Absence--When loved ones go to jail or prison, their absence is deeply felt. They miss their children's games, recitals, significant school events, first steps, first words, birthday celebrations and holidays, vacations, good night kisses, and so much more. Their absence may also mean having to find someone else to watch the kids, fix a leak, mow the lawn, run an errand, and many other things. Aging parents also have to find other people to rely on for help.
3. Shame--Having to explain to people who don't know where your loved one is (jail/prison) can be very shameful. While loved ones are not responsible for the prisoner's crime, they often face the immediate shame of that crime. Children face merciless ridicule in school, wives/husbands face ostracizing by judgmental "friends" and community members, and parents face the stigma of a "deviant" son or daughter. This shame doesn't just end when the loved one returns home either.
4. Greater Risk--Children of incarcerated parents especially face greater risks than children without incarcerated parents. These include being the victim of bullying or a crime (including sexual assault or abuse), struggling in or failing school, increased mental health and behavior problems, and committing crimes themselves. Spouses, especially wives, are also at a greater risk of mental health problems, divorce, predation, job loss, financial instability, discrimination, and violence.
Prison and sentencing reforms are important issues, but we must not forget the burdens experienced by loved ones of incarcerated people. Those of us who committed crimes have obligations to make right our wrongs, and that includes to those "secondary" victims who suffer too--our loved ones. I am sorry to each of you who have had to bear the burdens of my incarceration, and to those of you who have had to share the burden of your loved one's incarceration. You should not have to suffer because of our bad choices.
I'd like to hear from you. In what ways have you suffered the most by the incarceration of someone you love? Please send me an email or letter, or leave a comment on this post. You, too, have a voice that must be heard.
Every person's experience is unique when they have a loved one in prison, but most share some commonalities. These include:
1. Financial Stress--Whether it is paying for bail, court costs, defense or appeal attorneys, utilities or car and house payments, phone calls, visitation trips, or helping wives (or husbands) and children, sending Securepaks, and putting money on a prisoner's "books," it can be very costly for a loved one to go to jail or prison.
2. Absence--When loved ones go to jail or prison, their absence is deeply felt. They miss their children's games, recitals, significant school events, first steps, first words, birthday celebrations and holidays, vacations, good night kisses, and so much more. Their absence may also mean having to find someone else to watch the kids, fix a leak, mow the lawn, run an errand, and many other things. Aging parents also have to find other people to rely on for help.
3. Shame--Having to explain to people who don't know where your loved one is (jail/prison) can be very shameful. While loved ones are not responsible for the prisoner's crime, they often face the immediate shame of that crime. Children face merciless ridicule in school, wives/husbands face ostracizing by judgmental "friends" and community members, and parents face the stigma of a "deviant" son or daughter. This shame doesn't just end when the loved one returns home either.
4. Greater Risk--Children of incarcerated parents especially face greater risks than children without incarcerated parents. These include being the victim of bullying or a crime (including sexual assault or abuse), struggling in or failing school, increased mental health and behavior problems, and committing crimes themselves. Spouses, especially wives, are also at a greater risk of mental health problems, divorce, predation, job loss, financial instability, discrimination, and violence.
Prison and sentencing reforms are important issues, but we must not forget the burdens experienced by loved ones of incarcerated people. Those of us who committed crimes have obligations to make right our wrongs, and that includes to those "secondary" victims who suffer too--our loved ones. I am sorry to each of you who have had to bear the burdens of my incarceration, and to those of you who have had to share the burden of your loved one's incarceration. You should not have to suffer because of our bad choices.
I'd like to hear from you. In what ways have you suffered the most by the incarceration of someone you love? Please send me an email or letter, or leave a comment on this post. You, too, have a voice that must be heard.
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