March 16

Rethinking Incarceration: Advocating for Justice that Restores
By Dominique Gilliard

A few weeks ago, I heard Gilliard speak at a local church.  I was surprised to hear of the high numbers of inmates now in our prisons compared to a few decades ago, by the many conduits that put them there, and by the lack of compassion (in general) shown by the church.  I bought a copy of the book and it was an eye-opener.

The author, an ordained pastor, has ministered to inmates, mostly in the San Francisco bay area, and this is partly what led to his research on incarceration.  He cites some troubling developments, including the huge increases in the US prison pollution in recent decades; the US, with 5% of the world's people, has 25% of the world's inmates. [Are we really that much more criminal than the rest of the world?]  He attributes the rise to several factors:
1) the closing of mental health institutions, which has left many people with mental illnesses not in medical facilities where they can be treated, but in prisons because their behavior is not acceptable, making prisons the new asylums,
2) private, for-profit prisons that mandated (by law) a minimum number of prisoners to run a profit (these are now being abandoned),
3) immigration crackdowns, resulting in more than doubling the number of inmates arrested for immigration offenses from 1998-2011,
4) drug crackdowns, one of which took place near Gilliard's college and resulted in the death of an innocent 92-year-old African American woman, and
5) the "school-to-prison pipeline" resulting from the zero-tolerance policies that mandated suspensions, 95% for non-violent offenses like disruptive behavior and violating dress codes.

Gilliard also notes the high proportion of black inmates, a fact since the civil war ended, and Jim Crow laws called for incarcerating any black who was unable to find employment for more than a 2-3 week period.  Women's prison population has also gone way up in recent decades.

Especially concerning to me was the church's response to mass incarceration, with white evangelicals being among the most supportive of the death penalty, among church populations also including catholics, mainline protestants, hispanics, blacks and various permutations (e.g., black protestant).  Gilliard interprets the church's outlook as "penal substitution" or retribution, giving "criminals" what they deserve - yet without extending any of the grace with which evangelicals would also be "lost".  Instead, Gilliard advocates justice that restores and concludes with a chapter suggesting ways the church can work at reconciliation and restoration with those in prisons, e.g., offering seminary courses in prisons or jobs training to prepare for the transition after release.

Prison was never far from the early Christians' experience.  Paul was imprisoned for his faith, John the Baptist was imprisoned; even Jesus was taken in by Roman authorities at the behest of Jewish leaders.  Considering how these early believers were arrested for disturbing the peace or how earlier generations of Christians were moved to change an unjust status quo, e.g., abolitionists, why are Christians so unwilling to challenge discriminatory laws today?  Martin Luther King wrote:

Things are different now.   The contemporary Church is so often a weak, ineffectual voice with an uncertain sound.  It is so often the arch supporter of the status quo.  Far from being disturbed by the presence of the Church, the power structure of the average community is consoled by the Church's silent and often vocal sanction of things as they are. (from Letter from a Birmingham Jail)