America’s Shame – Are We the Worst People in
the World?
In Matthew 25, Jesus of Nazareth called on his
followers to visit prisoners. In these
simple verses, Jesus expresses his will that Christians be concerned for those
imprisoned. Today, in the United States
of America, we have more people imprisoned per capita than in any other
developed nation. Many statistics
reflect the shameful fact that we in the United States have the highest incarceration rate in the world.[1] We are imprisoning people at a rate that is
22% higher than Russia – 46% higher than Kazakhstan – 73% higher than Mexico –
80% higher than England and Wales – 82% higher than Australia – 84% higher than
Canada, China, and Vietnam. Put another way, we maintain an incarceration
rate 6 times higher than our neighbor to the north, Canada, and almost 4 times
higher than our neighbor to the south, Mexico.
Given these deeply troubling statistics, we believe that Jesus’ call takes
on greater urgency. It calls us to
challenge the criminal justice system that creates the world’s highest rate of
incarceration. It calls us to visit the
prisoners, and to show compassion and mercy as we work to prevent more people
from being caught up in what we believe is an inhuman apparatus.
We believe that the world’s highest rate of
incarceration is not the result of a nation made up of citizens more evil or
prone to wrongful behavior than any other nation. Quite the opposite – we believe that
Americans overall are less inclined toward doing wrong than people of many
other nations. So what does our world’s
highest incarceration rate mean? We
believe that the answer is three-fold: First,
and worst, we have created profit incentives for arresting, prosecuting, and
imprisoning more of our fellow citizens.
Second, we have criminalized personal behaviors that, to the extent these
behaviors are a fit subject for any
public response, should be addressed as public health issues, not criminal
justice issues. Third, our failures on
the first two factors have engendered over-politicized and over-zealous people
filling jobs in law enforcement, prosecutorial, and judicial positions. These people have developed a blind spot
regarding the harm they are doing to society.
Benjamin Franklin is one of our most revered Founding
Fathers. He helped to create many of our
founding documents (e.g., Declaration of Independence). Franklin once stated that it is better for 100
guilty men to go free than for 1 innocent man to be wrongfully punished. Our present criminal justice system has turned
this upside down. Our police,
prosecutors, and judges relentlessly pursue the policy that it is better for
100 innocent people to be imprisoned than for 1 guilty person to go free. This corrupt and corrosive way of thinking
permeates 21st century America.
It fills our prisons with people torn from their families and
communities. Countless lives are
destroyed. It is shamelessly fed by 24/7
‘news’ programs on television, radio, and the internet. These media pander to voyeurs as the celebrity
cops perform in ‘perp-walks’ designed to humiliate and shame people – people whom our laws say must be presumed innocent!
The challenge is formidable. Hundreds of billions of dollars are at stake
for those who profit from arresting, prosecuting, and imprisoning their
neighbors. There exists in the United
States a well-funded and deeply entrenched ‘prison industrial complex’ that
grows rich by the imprisonment of our fellow citizens. Those who profit from building prisons,
guarding prisoners, providing services to prisons, and using prisoner labor
have forged close ties with politicians at every level.[2] There exists a systematic effort to frighten
Americans with the specter of high crime rates and lawless violence in a
largely successful effort to align public opinion with the profit goals of the
prison industrial complex. Police
department budgets, promotions, and expansions are all dependent on turning
more citizens into criminals. The same
holds for prosecutorial departments and the judiciary. They all profit in one way or another by
criminalizing more private behavior and incarcerating more of our fellow
citizens. We as individual cannot do
everything necessary to end this massive injustice – but we can do something.
We ask you to focus efforts to provide
assistance and support to the millions of people who are being persecuted by
the criminal justice system. We suggest
three objectives:
·
Education about the corrosive and corrupting
role of the profit motive in our criminal justice system.
·
Challenging convictions when there is reason to
believe that those convicted did not receive fair treatment at the hands of law
enforcement officers and the criminal justice system.
·
Challenging public policy to address
allegations of many criminal offenses within the context of the public health
system rather than the criminal justice system.
We challenge every Christian educational and
charitable organization to take on the moral outrage created by our criminal
justice system that has resulted in the highest in the world incarceration rate. Take steps:
·
To identify, publicize, and challenge abuses by
law enforcement, and all participants in the criminal justice system, that lead
to oppression of American citizens and the highest incarceration rate in the
world. We specifically oppose the profit
motive in criminal justice.
·
To survey research publications and other information
and produce resources to inform public policy discussions on topics related to
incarceration and official oppression and abuses by law enforcement and the
criminal justice system.
·
To educate professionals in the fields of family
counseling, Christian ministry, family medicine, law enforcement, and criminal
prosecution to better equip them to identify and intervene in the lives of people
engaged in addictive behavior before it puts them into the criminal justice
system.
·
To develop and provide focused public
information programs to enable and encourage people suffering from addictions
to self-identify and seek therapy.
·
To develop programs for referrals to competent
professional therapists and follow-up care to ensure the highest possible
success rate for therapy for individuals identified as addicted.
·
To provide personal assistance and support for addicted
individuals who have been accused of crimes to ensure that they have
professional and capable legal representation as well as therapy for their
addictive behavior.
·
To visit and support through prayer and
compassionate care those prisoners suffering from addictions (and their
families) who have been convicted of criminal offenses, and to assist them in
appeals and other efforts to rebuild their lives.
Summary
We are not calling for the abolition of all
police agencies, prosecutors, judges, or prisons. We live in a fallen world, a world thoroughly
corrupted by sin. Police, courts, and
prisons are necessary to restrain the rampant evil that would otherwise
prevail. We do not advocate
anarchy. However, we believe that it is
self-evident that we are already living in a police state. The balance has been lost between individual
freedom and personal liberty on the one side and the necessity of maintaining
public order and a peaceful society on the other. The danger to our society posed by the police,
the criminal justice system, and the prison industrial complex is arguably
greater than the danger posed by real criminals and people of violence. We challenge every Christian in not just the
United States but throughout the world: Be
a voice calling for an end to the profit motive for arrest, prosecution,
conviction, and incarceration. Be a
voice calling for decriminalizing private behavior and addictions that result
in countless lives destroyed by our criminal justice system. Be a voice demanding that our police,
prosecutors, and the prison industrial complex be made accountable for the police
state that they are inflicting on the people of the United States.
[2]
More than a decade ago, when New York State was considering repeal of the
draconian ‘Rockefeller Laws’, which were widely recognized as resulting in
onerous sentences far out of proportion to any crimes committed, Nancy Little,
then a New York State Senator from an Upstate New York District, objected. She spoke passionately on the floor of the
New York Senate and in media interviews about the necessity of maintaining the
status quo. Her sole rational for
keeping laws that everyone agreed were unjust was that by repealing them, the
prison population would be reduced and prison guards would be laid off. Her district was highly dependent on prison
related jobs. Ms. Little shamelessly put
the interests of the prison guards’ union, which supported her politically,
above the freedom of the thousands of New York citizens entombed in the prisons
located in her district. This is but one
of thousands of similar examples of how the prison industrial complex has
corrupted politics.
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