June 25, 2012 issue
Too many in prison
By Jesse Epp-FransenPage:
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The United States has 8 percent of the world’s population but 25 percent of the world’s prison population. About 2.2 million people are in prison in the U.S., a 500 percent increase over 30 years. The war on drugs is a big reason why.
Epp-Fransen
More than half of the U.S. prison population in 2010 was convicted of drug-related crimes. For 30 years prison has been a primary tool to address drug use. This has not been successful.
Drug policy has begun to shift away from incarceration and toward treatment. Texas and other states have pioneered drug courts that focus on rehabilitation rather than punishment. The Office of U.S. National Drug Policy has recently committed to focusing on treatment as a way of decreasing both incarceration and drug use.
While the government begins to shift toward a more restorative model of justice, the church has been addressing the larger societal issues associated with incarceration.
The book What Will Happen to Me? provides stories and pictures of children who are affected by the criminal justice system by experiencing the incarceration of a parent. The book was released in 2011 by Howard Zehr, a professor at Eastern Mennonite University, and Lorraine Stutzman Amstutz, restorative justice coordinator for Mennonite Central Committee U.S.
These children, and the grandparents who often care for them, suffer because of a system that is broken and choices they did not make.
It is easy to get lost in the statistics about drug use and violent crime. But it is important to remember the consequences — not only for those who are locked up but also for those around them — of our choice as a nation to use prison so often.
Incarceration damages an entire community. Parents or siblings are missing during a time when they need to be caring for those around them — their children, ailing parents or ill siblings. Later, upon release, they frequently need support themselves. It is often difficult to reintegrate into a community after spending time in prison. These challenges contribute to the high rate of return to prison.
Much of MCC’s advocacy work on criminal justice focuses on promoting policies that will make re-entry smoother and therefore benefit the entire community.
Amstutz works often at the other side of the criminal justice system, training restorative justice mediators to provide an alternative to incarceration. Restorative justice assumes crime represents the brokenness of a community. It seeks a way to make that community whole.
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Comments
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As long as people break the law, they should be forced to pay the price. Why should society pay to rehabilitate them? They should be forced to spend time in prison and excommunicated from the church.
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Christopher, I'd like to ask on which planet you reside, but I'll just say that attitudes like yours break my heart. Here's a suggestion. Get to know someone who's been locked up in a penitentiary, guilty or not. Get to know them well and then come back and tell us what you learned. I admit. I had to learn that same lesson the hard way, through a friend of my husband's who was locked up for several years. Just make a friend. I promise it will change your life and your attitude.
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Christopher, I agree with your comments. I have been grading Bible lessons from prison inmates since August 2006 and can tell you and Mennonita that many have been birthed into the family of God through these Bible studies and the shed blood of Jesus. They understand why they are there and because they are now new creatures in Christ, old habits have been replaced by new ones. It could be said the best thing that happened to the repentant thief on the cross is that because of Jesus on the adjoining cross, he also was birthed into the family of God. The same could be said that when these prisoners reach the end of their rope, they find Jesus ready to catch them. They have also become a shining light for Jesus to other inmates.
Sometime ago, I learned of a place in one of the New England states that had a joint program with local county law enforcement. Youths in trouble with the law were invited to collectively take a supervised bus to a prison. They would listen to prisoners who would tell them in detail the sad reality of prison life. This program greatly helped these youths to avoid future confrontations with the law and turn their life in a productive direction. Sadly the program was discontinued because of a very minor incident.
To Jesse, I don’t see what you are personally doing to relate to inmates in prison. Caning, Singapore style, is a suggested alternate to sending drug and alcohol offenders to a costly prison. I can assure you that prison population would drop significantly. I would support the release of all drug and alcohol abuse offenders if they would submit to caning punishment, Singapore style.
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There are too many in prisons for breaking laws that do nothing to promote the safety of society. What is the point of that? Are we really better off, as a society, when the guys selling lose joints are locked up? Let's save prison for the individuals we really need to be protected from. When laws are no longer effective nor effectively enforceable what purpose do they serve?
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