Dust in the Ray

THIS BLOG WAS WRITTEN IN FEBRUARY, 2015.

            I read an interesting short story the other day. It centered around a guy thinking his life was being led the “right way.” He was honorable, he was a good citizen, he was lawful. And, as such he could pass judgement on all the wrong he saw. There he was one morning, ready to take on the world when he saw it. There in the kitchen a ray of morning sunlight shone through the window. In the ray he saw thousands of particles of dust, usually invisible to his eye – in a room he knew was spotless, just like his life – and yet there it was in that ray clear for all to see. He realized in that ray his life was exposed. The ray was pure; it was God’s light. And the dust was all his arrogance and pride and judgment – he really was no better than those he’d held in judgment.

            I read that story and smiled. I got the metaphor of the ray. How odd I would “get it” in here during a week when my mind was bombarded by commentary and talking heads telling me who “loved” this country; who was law-abiding, who spoke for God. I thought all about it as I did another week inside, paying “my debt” to society for breaking the law.

            So the former mayor of New York says the President isn’t “like us.” He doesn’t love “America the way we do.” What spurred those comments? The President stated that what is happening in the Middle East is no more representative of Islam that the Klan is of Christianity. And you know, he’s right. No “religion” has morality cornered. History is replete with people doing horrible, awful things in the name of God. How often, in our visceral reaction to the beheading of a journalist or the burning alive of a Jordanian pilot, that we immediately utter how barbaric “those people” are. Yet, we forget that it wasn’t that many years ago when an angry white crowd in St. Louis threw a small black baby into a burning home; it wasn’t that many years ago when the churches in Alabama and Mississippi shielded killers – Klansmen who lynched and tortured simply because of one’s color. Do we remember how the churches in Germany were co-opted by a murderous tyrant? The ray of sunlight exposes the dirt.

            There is a tension at work between faith and devout citizenship. Too often, we think being faithful means supporting. The status quo. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. wrote:

            “The church is not the master or servant of the state, but rather the conscience of the state. It must be the guide and critic of the state, and never its tool.”

            Put another way, civil life doesn’t necessarily equate with spiritual wellbeing. Or, as C.S. Lewis remarked, “Almost all crimes of Christian History have come about when religion is confused with politics.”

            You cannot read the New Testament, those magnificent parables in the four Gospels, and come away with a self-righteous attitude that we are good and they are bad. We care called to live in tension with society. Coziness with the state – any state – and the church may be good for the state but it is bad for the church.

            Throughout his entire adult life Jesus’ ministry was to the outcast, the downtrodden, the sick scum on the fringe. His anger, so seldom vented, was directed to who? The Pharisees – those who lived by legalistic interpretation. Jesus understood that proof of spiritual maturity is not how “pure” you live, but how aware you are of the impurity in your own life. We aren’t “pure;” we are covered in the dust. As Phillip Yancey says, “what trivial matters we obsess over, and what weighty matters of the law – justice, mercy, faithfulness – might we be missing?”

            This isn’t about Rudy Giuliani – though I wonder why when he talks about his “love” for the country he neglects to point out how over and over he sought and received military deferments to avoid service during Vietnam, how his “moral compass” didn’t preclude adultery. “You can know the law by heart without knowing the heart of it.”

            I lived a life of a legalist. I saw the world in black and white, right and wrong. Trouble is, without being right with God – and by right I mean understanding what He really is about – you can’t begin to see the wrong in yourself. “Father forgive them. They knew not what they do.” Here He is, wrongly accused, convicted, tortured, and now death’s throws and He is not calling for retribution; He isn’t even calling for justice. He is calling for mercy.

            I think a good deal about mercy – for those who wrong us; for terrorists and for those of us doing time; mercy; because we realize while we may not be “them,” we aren’t that far removed from them. That was the point being made with the adulterous woman’s accusers: “If you are free of sin, then carry out the sentence.” And the crowd, they saw the dust and dirt and grime of their own lives in the light; and they were humbled and they left.

            “Don’t the Bible say we must love everybody?”

            “O the Bible! To be sure it says a great many things;

            But, then, nobody ever thinks of doing them.”

            That dialog came from Harriet Beecher Stowe’s pre-Civil War master piece; Uncle Tom’s Cabin. One hundred and fifty years later has anything changed?

            Every day in here I deal with broken, lost, sometimes violent men. And I ask myself in moments of silent meditation, “why” – why this? Nothing the state does or can do can clean the hearts of those of us in here. Our nation can drop tons of bombs but hearts will not change. The conclusion of the adulterous woman story is revealing. After the crowd leaves only she remains with Jesus. “Woman, where are all your accusers?” “They have left.” He looks in the face of an obviously remorseful woman, a woman who has seen “the dust” of her life in the ray. “Then neither will I condemn you.”

            Why am I writing about dust? I guess because my faith journey has led me to realize Atticus Finch was right. We have to try and walk around in the other guy’s skin; we have to show empathy, mercy, kindness especially so to those who wouldn’t show it to us. For far too long I lived in the shadows of cleanliness. The light exposed the dust. Those of us who profess faith would do well to remember that when any representative of the state tries to tell us what is right.

 

The Problem is Here

A man I admire recently retired. He came from humble circumstances, a blue-collar family in New Jersey. He was the first in his family to go to college using his basketball skills to gain a scholarship. He turned that opportunity into a vocation. He earned additional degrees, became a basketball coach to team after team of inner-city black kids, and eventually rose to the level of college President. And he never forgot; he never forgot that education could lift even the most impoverished. There was a second lesson he knew from his life of hard knocks: you can’t ever quit. No matter how badly the odds seem against you, you don’t quit. You play on.

            This man’s mission, his passion, became delivering education to those normally not given easy access. As long as he was president, the underclasses, the disadvantaged, the disconnected, would have a chance to go to college. He even included the incarcerated. “They want to punish you. They want you to suffer. All the talk about corrections, about punishment fitting the crime, isn’t what’s behind this. You get your degrees. You leave here and be the men I know you can be. You don’t quit; you show them.”

            I listened as this remarkable man spoke to a hushed classroom full of students, our students “here,” in this place. It was his vision that started and moved this program forward. It always was an uphill battle. No state money; no public support; no assistance from the powers that be in Richmond; even worse treatment from some of the officers who work here. After all, successful offenders don’t reoffend. Less prisoners means less prisons which means less guard jobs.

            We had a young woman involved in the college program this summer. She’s a visiting scholar from a liberal arts college on the west coast and she read about “here” and wanted to see it for herself. And as she sat in the classes and listened to the discussions and read their words she wanted to let the world know that this matters; in here matters; these men and their lives and their futures matter.

            I was interviewed the other day by this young scholar. She remarked how across the board the students “look up” to me.” They respect you and have great affinity for you,” she said. And, I choked up and told her about my failure as a father and how I came here and was asked to join this program to teach, and tutor, and mentor and how the judge and all those who judged me and sent me away to suffer and rue what had become of my life had failed. I turned 55 the week before and I told her I kept hearing David’s words in Psalm 37.

            “I have been young, and now am old;

            Yet, I have not seen the righteous forsaken,

            Nor his descendants begging bread …   

                     ‘

            There was a professor working in here this summer. She is conservative, Republican, a Fox News watcher. And her experiences in here have, as she told the class, caused her to look at what she took as Gospel; there are consequences for a wrong, but should the consequences never cease? Should you pay forever? That’s the problem in “here” and every time someone from out there comes in they see it.

            I was like that professor. I never met a Republican, a conservative, I didn’t like. And I was sure I knew everything about right and wrong; life wasn’t hued, it was black and white.

            “The steps of a good man are ordered by the Lord

            And He delights in his way.

            Though he fall, he shall not be utterly cast down;

            For the Lord upholds him with His hand.”

            The professor wants to return to teach here again because this matters. She’s right. As I told the young scholar interviewing me, I thought I was being sent to prison to suffer and die ashamed. Instead I’ve learned to live.

            Here are a few facts from around the country to consider. It costs a student $37,000 for tuition at Princeton; it costs New Jersey $44,000 to keep a person in a state prison for one year. Think Virginia’s any different? Instate tuition averages $14,000. It costs the commonwealth $26,000 per year for an inmate in one of its prisons.

            California has to most people in prison and in college. If the state emptied every prison and sent every released person to college it would save $7 billion a year.

            The United States has far and away the highest incarceration rate in the world. If the incarceration rates of individual states are compared with other nations you would see that 36 states and the District of Columbia have incarceration rates higher than that of Cuba, the next highest nation. Yes, Virginia is in that group of 36.

            Law Professor Michelle Alexander, author of the controversial treatise, “Mass Incarceration: The New Jim Crow” recently penned an op-ed piece for Sojourner.  In it she quotes the research of Harvard Professor Kaia Stern (Dr. Stern specializes in prison education and is also an ordained minister. She also visited this facility a few years ago in preparation for a new text she was writing: “Voices from American Prisons: Faith, Education, and Healing.”) Alexander wrote:

“The system of mass incarceration is rotten to its core. As Dr. Kaia Stern eloquently explains in her book … the quintupling of our prison population in a few short decades and the relegation of tens of millions of people to permanent second-class status is a reflection of the fact that we in the United States are captive to a “spirit of punishment.” She writes, “there is no more pressing human rights, issue, no more urgent spiritual crossroads or threat to democracy than the current penal crisis.”

            Both Stern and Alexander speak the truth. America cannot nor will not ever be, that “shining city” on the hill Ronald Reagan so eloquently spoke of (borrowing from John’s Revelation) until the soul of this country burns for righteousness and mercy – two tenets at the foundation of our Judeo Christian parentage which are ignored “here.”

            I have never met a young student who has told me “I am innocent.” No, they tell me they did the crime; they accept punishment. But consequences for one’s actions must have a termination date. And a remorseful, rehabilitated man – or woman – must be allowed to live free and be welcomes back to society.

            “Here” is a leper colony. “Here” are criminals and dredges of society; losers; drug addicts; thieves, murderers. And I can’t help but remember the Gospel writers over and over as they told the stories of Jesus. It was these untouchables who the Lord cared for, and ate with, and forgave. You may not want to know what goes on in “here,” but I can assure you Jesus is here. He is with the disadvantaged, the discouraged, the disenfranchised.

            Political courage. We lack leaders with political courage who will tell you that what I write is true: prisons are failing; punishment does not fit the crime. April 4, 1968, the Reverend Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. was murdered in Memphis, Tennessee. Inner cities around the nation erupted as news of the assassination spread.

            Senator Robert Kennedy, Democratic candidate for President, was in downtown Indianapolis. Against the advice and wishes of his staff and Indianapolis police (who couldn’t “guarantee” his safety), Kennedy left the hotel and went to the worst housing project in the city. He stood on a car and spoke about pain in the loss of a great leader; he listened as black citizens expressed their dismay and anger, and then he quoted the Greek philosopher Aeschylus: “Excruciating pain leads to greater wisdom.” Indianapolis – unlike almost every other urban center in America that night – remained calm. Political courage.

            The problem is “here.” Prison doesn’t rehabilitate anyone. Prison doesn’t make you more likely to follow the law. And while some violent sociopaths must remain forever separated from society, for the vast majority sentenced, their time behind bars and their treatment after release destroys more lives than are changed. In spite of that, young men in the college program here believe if they just get their degree they can overcome. Even with the odds stacked against them from a society which talks of “second chances” almost with a sarcastic sneer, they believe.

            They believe because of men like Dr. John who tells them not to quit. They believe because professors like Joan, Amy, Joy, Allie, and Anne come out here and treat them like scholars, not felons. They believe because it is in the human DNA to overcome, overcome where they came from, what they did and what is in “here.”

            The great African-American writer James Baldwin wrote a letter to his nephew that became a major portion of his great 1942 book, The Fire Next Time. It was a book of cathartic anger at a white society that continued to place blacks in second-class status. Often, I return to his remarkable words as a holder of the “Scarlet F” (felon). For six years I have held a front row seat to “here.” Instead of destroying me, this place and my God’s intervention have opened my eyes. I read Baldwin’s words and I know in spite of “here” these men will overcome.

            “For this is your home, my friend, do not be driven from it; great men have done great things here, and will again, and we can make America what it must become. It will be hard, but you come from sturdy, peasant stock, men who picked cotton and dammed rivers and built railroads, and in the teeth of the most terrifying odds, achieved an unassailable and monumental dignity. You come from a long line of great poets since Homer. One of them said, The very time I thought I was lost My dungeon shook and my chains fell off ...”

It’s October. I’ve been thinking …

It’s late October which means baseball is in its crucial weeks. The season always begins in early spring. Even before the final bits of snow have all melted north of the Mason-Dixon Line, pitchers and catchers are already throwing in Florida and Arizona. And spring brings hope, hope for fans in every major league city. “This is our year,” they’ll tell you.
            But spring works its way into summer; and in baseball summer is long. All those spring dreams begin to fade as nine game west coast road trips end two and seven. Your ace needs Tommy John surgery. The free agent savior with a lifetime three hundred average is barely above two-thirty. Dreams begin to die as you see the fade in the standings.

            A few cities meet, maybe even beat, expectations and are in the pennant races. Summer fades into fall and only four are left; then two; finally, one. I get baseball. It is representative of life. You start out young, with dreams, and its spring. But youth fades; life gets tough. If you’re lucky you survive and you make it to fall. You survive and you know the season – your life – was tough, and parts of it didn’t make sense, and you know there’s no explanation why you made it and twenty others didn’t. And you decide no matter what, win or lose, October matters. You will leave it on the field. You will, as Dylan Thomas said, “not go gently into that good night,”

            I’ve been thinking about baseball. October does that to me. I came across a quote by Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. He said, “History has proved over and over again that unmerited suffering is redemptive.” I knew he wasn’t talking about baseball, but somehow I think Dr. King understood the game because he sure understood life.

            Before someone points out that the good doctor referred to “unmerited” suffering – as if there’s a book you can open that points out how much suffering is merited for a particular wrong – I get that. But, I think he was saying life – a lot of times – is about suffering which, quite frankly isn’t fair in our limited way of understanding fairness. You start with the premise that to be human is to screw up (some worse than others), and you look at what people endure in the summers of their lives and you kind of wonder, is God really directing all this?

Every morning I stretch and pray and recite a dozen or so Bible verses I have memorized.

One – Romans 8:28 – goes:

“God causes all things to work together for good, for those who love God according to His purposes.”
          
  Almost every day I think about those words and I must confess there are days I believe them a whole lot more than others.

            I’ve been thinking about Bill Buckner. Buckner was the Red Sox first baseman in 1986. He had a lifetime 300 batting average and was a solid fielder. Buckner was a major reason Boston found themselves in the 1986 series against my beloved New York Mets. The Mets. From the moment I saw their grass infield at Shea Stadium in 1968, I loved that team. It was easy early on. Ten years old and ball players like Tom Seaver and Tommy Agee, Cleon Jones, and twenty-two others proved to me miracles happen with their 1969 World Series win. God I knew was a Mets fan. God was fair.

            It didn’t last. Baseball’s business side led the Mets to trade the greatest right hander in the last fifty years – Tom “Terrific.” They barely won even half their games. But I stayed and I watched, and every spring I believed this would be the year. It never was until … until 1986.

            The Mets were the bad boys of baseball. They were brash and they backed their egos up with a 108 win season. Then it got tough. October was tough with a seven game series against the Houston Astros. I watched and agonized through every pitch, every inning, every game. And then there were two.

            The Mets lost games one and two, both at home, to the Red Sox. And Bill Buckner, with knees barely able to hold him up, played, He hit, and he fielded, and Boston went to Fenway halfway to the championship that so long eluded them.

            Baseball is like life. You can give up or you can fight. An elderly Presbyterian minister friend put it this way: “We are commissioned to keep the faith, to fight the good fight …” After three games in Boston, the Mets were still alive taking two of three. And they returned to New York for game six.

            Game six. Every baseball fan knows game six. The Mets, down two runs in the bottom of the tenth inning, down to their last strike with no one on base, and their own scoreboard posting congratulations to “The World Champion Boston Red Sox;” and a hall of fame catcher – Gary Carter – skewered by his own teammates because he was too “nice,” telling the umpire “I’m not making the last fucking out,” because it’s better to go down fighting; and the hits start coming until … until … “The ball gets by Bill Buckner.”

            Miracles. Elation. A twenty-seven year old lawyer standing in his living room telling his twenty-four year old wife “baseball is never over until last out!” And there is Bill Buckner. “Unmerited suffering.”

            Buckner had to leave Boston. The boos and the death threats became too much. Boston’s failure to end their World Series drought in 1986 was exemplified by that little red seamed white ball sliding under Bill Buckner’s open mitt as his knees buckled. Buckner, one of the reasons Boston even made it to the series, was alone, exiled, vilified. He didn’t deserve it, but it was as it was.

            Buckner never vented at his enemies. He never fought back. He wore the abuse and the exile and went on. On was a ranch out west, far away from Boston and baseball and failure. Like I said, I’ve been thinking a lot about Bill Buckner. Baseball is a game for boys. It’s a game you have to love to really get. And Buckner had to give all that up; he had to walk away from what he loved, without a fight; he had to give up the dream.

            I remember every detail when I got the letter. I can recite it from memory: “There is no us. I don’t love you and haven’t for a long time.” The divorce was expected. I’d felt it for years. And, I’d fucked up – more than once. Funny what we convince ourselves is ok to do when we’re afraid. And fear and desperation go hand and hand, and disaster will follow.

            The papers arrived. I read them and my heart broke, I wrote her a letter and mailed her my ring. My friend came to see me. He said my letter made her cry. And then I did nothing. I signed everything away, didn’t try and delay the divorce, and died little by little inside. I couldn’t shake that picture in my mind’s eye when I was young, so young, and had my life ahead of me. And she turned and I saw her eyes and fell in love.

            “… unmerited suffering is redemptive.” I wonder if Dr. King ever uttered those words to a convicted felon while he was still behind bars? Did he ever say them to an aging ballplayer that let a ball slip under his glove? I sit here and watch the new boys of October making a living playing a game, a marvelous, wondrous game and I wonder does Bill Buckner ever say “if only.”

            “If only.” Such small words, yet the weight of our lives hang on them so many times. Can you forgive yourself, can you move on, can you put “if only” to rest? A famous preacher was once asked about the pain he experienced following the end of his marriage. “I am filled with sadness every day,” he said. “But,” he added, “I have no regret. You don’t learn or grow from regret.”

            The Red Sox found themselves down three games to none in the American League Championship Series. They had lost games one and two in New York to their arch-enemies, the hated New York Yankees. It was 2004, and Red Sox fans still felt the pain of all those years of collapse and failure. It was the curse of the Babe, Tony Conigliaro, 1967, 1975; it was Bucky “Fuckin’” Dent and the Yankees, and it was Bill Buckner.

            And Boston resigned itself to another year of hopes dashed, of dreams broken, of baseball’s renewal in the spring being left in pieces in the fall. Something was different this year. The players didn’t look back, and baseball – a blessed game I told my sons God created on the seventh day to remind us that it’s never over until the last out is recorded – was redeemed and renewed in Boston. The Red Sox took four straight from the Yankees and marched into the World Series against the St. Louis Cardinals.

            It happened in St. Louis on an October night that Boston buried all the hurt and pain and disappointment from so many seasons. They won. And a city rejoiced … the past was let go.

            The next spring, there on the mound throwing out the ceremonial first pitch with the Red Sox World Championship banner snapping in the crisp April air stood Bill Buckner. With the crowd standing and clapping he threw the pitch and a new season began. I think Dr. King was smiling and nodding his head and whispering “redemption.” And, I think about that moment as I watch this year’s World Series.

 

The Big Picture

It’s easy in here to think the whole world is contained inside these fences. Then, there are weeks where the news from the outside overwhelms the normal rhythm – if what goes on in here can ever be described as “normal” or rhythmic - of things. This past week was one of those times.  You realize how little guys in here actually know about life and history and – unfortunately – moral frameworks to operate through. Life in here tends to be a series of reactions, most not carefully thought out – to news and events beyond our control. But, it’s those visceral reactions that give me pause. How can a man expect to leave here and do well if he holds the same ideas that landed him in here?

            

A few weeks ago, much was made of the 150^th anniversary of the greatest battle to take place on North American soil. For three days in the heat of July 1863, the army of the United States faced off against their counterpart in the confederacy. It was a horrendous, bloody three days with deaths and wounded numbering in the tens of thousands. And, it was the pivotal battle of the Civil War. The future survival of this country was decided on the bloody grounds surrounding the small Pennsylvania town of Gettysburg.

            

Most Americans know about the battle of Gettysburg. But, there is a little known post-script to the conclusion of the battle. It was a topic touched on briefly by Director Martin Scorsese in his epic “Gangs of New York.” On July 4, 1863, weary and bloodied Union troops were pulled from Gettysburg and sent by train to quell massive anti-draft riots that had turned New York City into a fiery hell. “Four score and seven years” (87 years, that is) after this country’s founding as a democracy crowds were rioting through New York City. Hundreds were killed and injured. Free black men were lynched at will or burned alive. Homes and businesses were looted and destroyed. It was, simply put, utter chaos.

            

President Lincoln rushed thousands of battle-worn troops to New York. Martial law was declared and troops fired at will on crowds. Arrests and detention without benefit of due process or use of the constitutionally guaranteed right of Habeas Corpus (suspended by Lincoln in a clear execution of dictatorial power) occurred. All of this was done in the name of liberty, in an effort by a president and a government to preserve a still fragile and new democracy in the midst of war.

           

I write this as more images of burning and chaos and soldiers in the street in Cairo, Egypt, or Damascus, Syria, or a dozen other Arab nations bombarded our airwaves. Because of the significant number of Muslim inmates in here, discussions – loud at times – usually degenerate into “what’s wrong with those Arabs?” or people will try and tell you the violence is just a by-product of a religion (Islam) that shows little regard for  democracy or peace. And, we tend to scoff at the notion of an “Arab Spring” where freedom and liberty take over. The Middle East, struggling to join the 21^st century with a ballooning population under the age of thirty, is in the throes of upheaval. But before we’re quick to draw conclusions from what we see, let’s remember our own past. The reason people like Bishop Desmond Tutu and Nelson Mandela are so highly regarded by us is because they act contrary to what most of us would do. It’s an unfortunate fact but a fact none the less, that most of us would be with the rioters, and seeking revenge.

           

I told some of the young Muslim guys in here there is nothing anti-democratic about the Arab world. Just like this country in 1863, democracy is a fragile thing. Ultimately, good will triumph.

            

Then there was the Federal jury in Boston who convicted noted mobster Whitey Bulger of numerous crimes including murder. There’s no denying Bulger is a cold-blooded killer. He ran most of the organized crime in South Boston and was ruthless. His story, fictionalized somewhat in the academy-award winning movie “Departed” glossed over and glamorized some of the worst that was Whitey Bulger.

            

The most notable disclosures at his trial didn’t relate to his crimes. No, the most notable disclosures concerned the government’s willingness to get in bed with brutal criminals in their quest to catch other criminals. The government it seems is not above breaking the law in the pursuit of enforcing the law. If that idea doesn’t concern you, I’m not sure what does.

            

In the past few months we have learned the government can – and does – collect virtually every electronic form of communication we utilize. In one breath, we are lied to and told, “No, we don’t collect all that data,” and a day later that same senior administration official admits he lied but it was merely to keep the “terrorists guessing.” And that’s all it takes now. “We’re pursuing terror threats” or trying to break an organized crime syndicate. The ends – the government tells us – justify the means.

            

What does that mean? In Bulger’s case, that meant FBI agents tipped him off about other crime family activity. They shielded and protected Bulger from prosecutions for murder, extortion, and a host of other crimes. They were a party to much of Bulger’s wrong doing.

            

But it’s not just big criminals like Bulger. Daily, police use lies and deceit to “break a crime.” In my own case, the detective in charge couldn’t accept my conviction. There had to be others involved, he thought. There had to be an offshore account (this even as I provided full financial disclosure). So what did he do? He told my wife I “admitted if I made bond I was going to drive home, kill her and our kids, and dig up the money.” He used this lie about a guy who had never even spanked his children.

            

Why’d he lie? “I figured she’d show me where the money was. I guess I was wrong.” The problem with tolerating this sort of police behavior is that the power of government to deprive you of your liberty or property is a power that can be easily corrupted by unscrupulous, power-driven people.

            

The Bulger case should be a clear call to this nation to require government itself to live within the law. The ends do not justify the means. Government law enforcement cannot be allowed to get cozy with criminals – or lie, cheat, and steal – to get a conviction.

            

This past week almost every TV in the building was tuned in as Attorney General Eric Holder announced the Department of Justice was going to push “significant prison reform measures,” immediately. As the A.G. ran through the litany of facts about the United States current mass incarceration problem:

-        25% of the world’s prisoners are locked up in the US though this nation has only 5% of the world’s population

-        $80 billion spent annually on prisons

-        Staggering recidivism rates even as violent crime rates plummet

I couldn’t help but smile when my bunk neighbor leaned over my way and said, “Hey, Holder reads your blog.”

            

The A.G. has just admitted what anyone who really examines the system already knew: prison wastes money, resources, and lives. That politicians on both sides of the aisle now agree with that premise should be enough to tell you it isn’t even a controversial position.

            

Too many people are sentenced to prison for far too long. For many of those inmates, their time in prison determines their future success and that of their children. No one with an ounce of sense will suggest that there shouldn’t be consequences for breaking the law. But, the consequences must be in proportion to the wrong committed and must always have as a goal the successful return of the lawbreaker to society.

            

The A.G. correctly pointed out that America’s reliance on prison fails that simple test. It’s now time for Virginia to follow the A.G.’s lead. Let’s get creative with sentencing. Reward inmates who truly seek to atone for their wrongs and be rehabilitated. Prison – when necessary – should be with brief stints unless the crime is so violent or the defendant so sociopathic that returning him – or her – to society is impossible.

            

The same day the U.S. Attorney General announced the Federal government’s prison reform push, a Federal judge in New York ruled the city’s “stop and frisk” program unconstitutional. The controversial program allowed police to stop and pat down anyone they wanted. Do you know who was stopped? Tens of thousands of black men, most with not even the slightest hint of any wrong doing or any suspicious activity.

            

I know how I feel being patted down every time I enter or exit a building and I’m in prison. To be subjected to that invasion of my personal space in the “free” world based almost exclusively on the color of my skin is abhorrent. American law, we tell our children in school, is color-blind. But, there are reasons expressions such as “driving while black,” resonate in the African-American community. For all its noble purposes, stop and frisk is simply an invitation to police harassment. The Federal Court correctly noted its unconstitutionality. It belongs on the dust heap of other failed police practices.

            

And finally, I reminded a group of students this week that we are approaching the 50^th anniversary of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.’s “I have a dream” speech. With the exception of Lincoln’s Gettysburg Address, no other speech in American history so beautifully and lyrically portrays the ideals of this country.

            The most significant piece of his speech, the part where Dr. King rhythmically recited over and over “I have a dream,” and then spoke about children – black and white – holding hands, was not even in the original text. Dr. King, the Baptist preacher that he was, felt the pull of the Holy Spirit and went off script.

           

As I reread his wonderful words, I wondered what Dr. King, had he lived, would say about America today. At the time of his murder he had gone beyond a call for racial justice. He had denounced America’s war in Indochina. He was pushing the rights of the poor. He was preaching to the outcasts. And white America was made uncomfortable. We don’t like sitting in our fancy homes and churches and being told those material items aren’t God’s blessings. And Black people? They thought he was a sellout. Young Blacks demanded rebellion. Dr. King preached reconciliation.

           

I feel confident if Dr. King was with us today he would denounce drone strikes, NSA surveillance, and America’s obsession with material wealth. And, I think he would remind Christians everywhere of Jesus’ parable in Matthew 25:

            

“I was hungry and you gave me nothing to eat; I was thirsty and you gave me nothing to drink; I was a stranger and you did not invite me in; naked, and you did not clothe me; sick, or in prison, and you did not visit me … truly I say to you, to the extent that you did not do it to one of the least of these, you did not do it to Me.”

           

Sometimes prison can be completely isolating. You forget there’s a world out there with people going through so much. Weeks like this come along and you’re reminded – for most of us anyway – this is but a stop along the way. And doing right, treating people right, seeing the big picture matters.

Two Thoughts

Friday afternoon the U.S. Supreme Court, without opinion, rejected California’s final attempt to ignore implementation of a massive inmate release by year-end (9600 inmates) because of the state’s unsafe and unsanitary prison conditions. In 2011, the Court found the California prison system in violation of the constitutional prohibition of cruel and unusual punishment and ordered the release of over 30,000 inmates to reduce the state’s massive overcrowding to 115% of capacity.

            

For the past 2 years, California’s Governor and DOC director have refused to comply with the orders of the highest court in the nation and begin to operate constitutionally sound prisons.

           

How ironic that the department tasked with enforcing sentences against those who break the law does so in violation of the law. Who – I wonder – goes to prison for that?

            

And second, PVC Bradley Manning was court-marshaled this week for delivering millions of pages of documents concerning this nation’s war in Iraq to Wikileaks. He did so because he felt the nation was engaged in an immoral military action.

            

At the close of the Second World War the victorious allies prosecuted thousands of enemy officers for war crimes, crimes they defended on the grounds that they were following orders. The Nuremburg Court found that no soldier could lawfully ignore his conscience and simply “follow orders.” Or, as Martin Luther King, Jr. said in his “letter from Birmingham Jail,” when man’s law conflicts with God’s law, you must nonviolently oppose it and accept the consequences.

            

You may not like what PVC Manning did, but at least you should respect him.

In the News - July 2013

As I write this blog, over 12,000 inmates in the California prison system are on a hunger strike. They strike for more humane treatment and decent living conditions, better food, eased overcrowding, improved medical care.

            Two years ago, the United States Supreme Court ruled that California’s prison system violated the constitution’s prohibition against cruel and unusual punishment. At the time, California’s prisons were at 157% of capacity. On average, two inmates were dying each week. It was a corrections system devoid of correction making a mockery of the state’s justice system.

            The court ordered California to reduce the prison population by approximately 30,000 inmates within eighteen months. Since then, California has thumbed their noses at the court, transferring thousands of state inmates to local jail control rather than releasing them. California DOC has crippled local law enforcement who are now burdened with caring for too many incarcerated state inmates.

            The state of California daily violates the constitutional rights of its incarcerated. What, I ask, does that say about our respect for the “rule of law?” And, what does it say about the men behind bars who continue to press their case for lawful incarceration conditions?

            Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. said you should judge a man when things are at their worst. Dr. King would be proud of the hunger strikers.

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            At Guantanamo Bay, a number of Muslim prisoners, also on a hunger strike, are being force fed on instruction of the Obama Justice Department. More disturbing, these force feedings are occurring during the Ramadan fast period.

            A Federal Judge has skewered the force feeding policy. It is important to remember none of the men currently being held at Guantanamo have been convicted of any crime. The United States Government has lost two major Supreme Court actions involving detention of “enemy combatants.”

            Benjamin Franklin reminded his founding father brethren that “surrendering your liberty in the name of security leaves you with neither.” I wonder what old Ben would say about the power of the federal government to hold a foreign national for more than ten years without charge and trial?