Imprisonment and Punishment
In the wake of the Supreme Court’s June 20 decision in Utah vs. Strieff that gives police officers the right to stop you for no reason at all, discover you have an outstanding warrant, search you, and then use anything they find as evidence against you in court, I feel a kind of despair. Our insatiable need to contain, corral, and punish those who threaten our money, power, or comfort is so strong we’re willing to erode all safeguards against police overreach.
In her rebuttal to the court’s decision in the Utah vs. Strieff case, Supreme Court justice Sonia Sotomayor wrote, “We must not pretend that the countless people who are routinely targeted by police are ‘isolated.’ They are the canaries in the coal mine whose deaths, civil and literal, warn us that no one can breathe in this atmosphere.” Unwarranted search and seizure could happen to any of us.
Sotomayor points out that the Court’s justification in this case is “remarkable.” She writes: “The mere existence of a warrant not only gives an officer legal cause to arrest and search a person, it also forgives an officer who, with no knowledge of the warrant at all, unlawfully stops that person on a whim or hunch.” And lest only hardened criminals have outstanding warrants, the June 20th Atlantic informs us that 7.8 million people in the United States have warrants against them, often for minor crimes such as traffic offenses.
Punishment and Our Brains
Why do we increase the severity of our punishments, harass the poor and struggling, and make it so hard for formerly incarcerated individuals to rebuild their lives? I realize I am naive in thinking laws should protect all of us, not just throw away some of us. Perhaps I am naive in thinking we should pay attention to research. After all, the research defies our beliefs. Against our common sense, it tells us that punishment doesn’t deter crime, and it’s not so good at reducing recidivism. In fact, prison sentences may increase recidivism. So why do we spend so much money on this prison machine?
A lot goes into this. There’s a “war on drugs,” for example, that some say is really a war on people of color or the poor. We also have the illusion that putting law-breakers in prison makes us safe, as if only the bad get incarcerated and only the good live outside. But I think the most important reason we depend on imprisonment is that punishing people makes us feel good. When we force someone to obey or take revenge for the pain they caused us, we feel strong and in charge. Immediate punishment also tends to lead to immediate obedience, so we think it’s an effective tool for change. If our children or our prisoners act out when out of our sight, we figure it’s because they’re bad and need more punishment, not that the punishment failed.
Research, however, has shown, and many parents already know, that if we want our children or prisoners to care about others, accept responsibility, and do what they know is right, then punishment doesn’t work very well. Imprisonment in particular is a costly, ineffective way to reduce recidivism and improve lives.
Punishment versus Forgiveness
If punishment doesn’t make us treat one another with respect and kindness, what does? It seems obvious to me that if we want people to behave in a certain way, we must first act that way with them. If we want them to be angry and reactive, we should yell, judge, and incarcerate them. If we want people to be kind and respectful, we, too, should behave that way. We should help them understand the feelings of others and guide them in making amends.
It’s strange that in this country we have such difficulty understanding this, because the majority of people in the United States are Christian, and Christianity is all about using kindness and gentleness to change hearts. It’s all about love and forgiveness.
What would it be like if we really behaved as Christians? What would happen if we stopped punishing people and started forgiving them?
Of course, some people would take advantage of our forgiveness. That’s human. Yet when we feel forgiven, when we truly accept and honor the love that is ours simply because we exist, we are transformed. By taking in that forgiveness, we learn to forgive.
Radical Forgiveness
Now it’s easy for us to forgive those we identify with or feel sorry for. What about those we are angry with? Can I forgive the men and women who punish the people I love? Can I forgive those who punish me, who abuse their power, who control our country’s wealth, who take and take and laugh at those who cry out in pain? Can I forgive the policeman and the courts?
I don’t mean forgive in the way the Supreme Court did in the Strieff case when they let an officer ignore a man’s Fourth Amendment protections. I mean forgive because we want to heal, because in forgiveness is solace, comfort, connection, life. I mean forgive in the way of a God who loves us so intensely She can do nothing but gather us in Her arms for eternity.
Forgiving as God Forgives
In Jesus’ parable of the Prodigal Son, a young man offends his father by asking for his inheritance. Then he wastes it on riotous living, ends up broke, and has the audacity to go back home asking for help. The young man deserved death, yet the father hugs him and throws him a party. This is radical forgiveness. All the father cares about is that his son is home.
This is not the end of the story, however, for the prodigal son is not the only child in the family. There’s also an elder brother. He stayed home, followed the rules, worked hard, and never asked for anything for himself. Seeing his brother rewarded, he’s furious. He’s not interested in joining the party. He’d rather hang onto his resentment and feed his self-righteousness, than enjoy himself. In fact, all those years when his brother was gone, the elder brother denied himself pleasure. Now, seeing that his father would have loved him just as much if he’d thrown his own party now and then, the elder brother is livid. He didn’t know. No one explained. It’s not fair.
What is sometimes overlooked in this story is that the father forgives not just the younger son, but also the elder. He forgives him his pettiness, rigidness, blame. He welcomes the elder son to the party, loving him as much as he loves the younger. He knows that if these sons of his can accept his love and forgiveness, they will experience grace. They will then be transformed by that grace and learn to love with the father’s intensity. Any child who knows that kind of forgiveness, will live as a true child of a tender God.
The Faith of a God
That is faith, the faith of a god, the faith of a parent, the faith of one who is patient, consistent, tender and firm and solid. Not every child has the capacity to accept forgiveness. Not every child will experience the grace that is there like rain. Not every child. Yet that doesn’t stop God from forgiving.
Which is easy for God. After all, our outbursts and aggression don’t touch God’s self. God is safe from us. Yet we humans harm one another all the time, and people we forgive can turn around and harm us again. How can we possibly forgive the way God does?
That question presumes that forgiveness means allowing others to take advantage of us, that it means welcoming the villain into our home. It does not.
Forgiveness does mean, however, that we no longer demand revenge. We don’t expect the bad to be punished and the good rewarded, knowing as we do that good and bad are not so simple and revenge ultimately destroys the one who seeks it. Forgiveness isn’t fair. It favors relationship over legalism, generosity over anger, and healing over resentment. Even when we’ve been humiliated, beaten, detained, and our life is turned upside down, we can find peace and wholeness by forgiving those who have hurt us.
Loving toward Forgiveness
A colleague of mine told me of his recent experience singing in the Portland Gay Men’s Chorus. Their sang at the Arlene Schnitzer Concert Hall in memory of Orlando, then they sang at the Pride Parade, where people of all kinds came together to witness, celebrate, and heal. Although not directly a statement of forgiveness, the chorus’s songs filled hearts and souls. They invited laughter, tears, dancing, remembering. They helped us release resentment, anger, and bitterness. In song, in dance, in hugging one another, we find solace. We also find forgiveness. For ourselves, for one another, for the world.
In faith and fondness,
Barbara
Photo Credits: The Sarcophagus of Marcus Claudianus (ca. 330-335, Palazzo Massimo, Rome), by Dick Stracke – Own work, CC BY-SA 3.0, via Wikimedia Commons
