Dean Emilie Townes: “How do we reconcile faith and mass incarceration?”

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From the course by Vanderbilt University

Justice, Mercy and Mass Incarceration

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Vanderbilt University

Justice, Mercy and Mass Incarceration

22 ratings

There are three orienting facts that render mass incarceration in the United States an ethical problem worthy of our deep consideration. First, the rate of incarceration has grown dramatically over the last 40 years so that today there are 2.2 million people in prison or jail, and another 5 million on probation or parole. This means that 1/32 adults in the USA are under state supervision. Second, the application of incarceration is disproportionately applied to the poor, people of color, and other vulnerable populations. Research shows that 85-90% of those in the criminal justice system fall below the poverty line, and the experience of incarceration only impoverishes people further. The consequences of having a criminal record are harsh and debilitating, ranging from family disruption, social alienation, and disenfranchisement. In these ways and others, the current situation of crime and punishment represents a dramatic moral challenge. Finally, victims of crime are themselves poorly served by the current system, often ignored or sidelined in the machinery of punishment. This course seeks to discover alternatives to the current systems of crime and punishment in order to imagine a more inclusive, just and moral society.

From the lesson

Justice and Mercy: Alternatives to Mass Incareration

The course has examined mass incarceration as a significant social and ethical problem. In this final module, we turn our attention to alternatives to the present system of punishment. Following Dean Townes' invitation, we seek to "respond to the dehumanizing effects of imprisonment." We explore community policing, criminal justice reform, and alternative models, including restorative justice, in a bid to locate possibilities for hope.

Dean Emilie Townes: “How do we reconcile faith and mass incarceration?”6:39

Dean Emilie Townes: "How do we respond to dehumanizing effects of imprisonment"6:58

Dean Emilie Townes: "How can we help people avoid re-incarceration? Building capacity in people by partnering with communities of faith”5:53

Meet the Instructors

Graham Reside
Assistant Professor
Vanderbilt University Divinity School

[MUSIC]

I'd like to return to this question of what theology might be able to contribute

to that kind of understanding of the complexity of human experience.

But I also want to, before we do that, return to an issue that you brought up,

which is this issue of inequity in the system itself.

And I just want to cite three statistics that I think are central to our course and

that we'll be considering over the course of our time together.

That is that roughly 85% of people caught up in the criminal

justice system are at or below the poverty line.

That 95% of people plead, never go to trial, but take a plea agreement.

So that means some people may be innocent or

may be guilty of a different crime altogether, but

because of the power of the prosecutorial office they're forced to accept a plea.

And the third is the racial inequality or inequity in our system so that if you're

a young black man, you have a one in three chance right now of being incarcerated.

If you're a hispanic male you have a one in six chance of being incarcerated.

And if you're white it's 1 in 17.

I mean it's not good for anybody.

But it's clear that it is particularly onerous on brown and black communities.

So I wondered if you might help us think,

what does theology or what does the communities of faith

have to say about this kind of fundamental inequity?

>> Well, I would hope the first thing that communities of faith would say is

this sucks.

That this is not the way that we

understand creation should be spinning out into the universe.

That when you have such stark inequities,

that there's a system that is somewhat broken if not fully broken.

And that we may not well be meeting the purposes we say we want to in

the kind of incarceration system we have right now.

And so our job, I would think,

as people of faith is to say, we need to work to find a better way.

I think this is one of the reasons why the Restorative Justice Movement has

begun to pick up steam, in that you are forced to sit down and

look at each other across the table and deal with each other.

So that, that family that said he's never said I'm sorry,

gets to hear someone say I'm sorry.

If that's where they are, if it's not, then it's a hill of beans.

That's another thing altogether.

But to not have a place where people can come

to try to think through what was broken.

What was destroyed, even?

I think that's our job as people of faith to say we've got to

find those resources within us.

There is a big tradition of forgiveness

within certainly the Christian tradition that's at stake here.

And it's not the kind of forgiveness that says there there,

everything's all good, all fine.

Don't worry about it honey, it'll be all right.

But a forgiveness that's wrapped up in a sense of justice and fairness and

integrity and respect for humanity.

A respect for life.

That says in light of those things that are important.

In light of the fact that if you want to be Biblical and

you look at the book of Genesis, every time a mark of creation happens,

there is always the affirmation that God said it was good.

If we're trying to live into that goodness of creation,

then that's what we should be trying to move back to, I think.

And instead, we spend far too much time dwelling in the Garden of Eden and

the mistakes made by Adam and Eve.

And therefore, we are set on our path of being fundamentally wrong.

In some traditions, fundamentally wretched.

And we forget all about the way that creation was marked as good.

Let's move more toward the doctrine of creation, a doctrine of goodness.

And make it as robust, if not more robust,

than the high doctrine of sin and evil that most of us spend their lives in.

And has not been to good effect over the centuries, frankly,

because we have managed to create within ourselves in a society,

a society that's scared of itself.

And that's not what people of faith are supposed to be preaching and teaching.

We're supposed to be saying,

can we look into each other's eyes and find the light of God there?

In some traditions, the face of Jesus.

And to realize that that's not just a reflection,

that's also what's dwelling inside that other person.

>> Thank you, that seems to be getting harder and

harder just to do at a practical level to see the face of another.

>> Even with people we love.

That's harder and harder, so

imagine, what that means when a relationship's been broken or destroyed.

>> I do think that's a call to visit people who are incarcerated.

To meet them, visit people who have been the victims of crime and

to see them face to face, but increasingly I think it's difficult to do.

It's harder to get into prisons now than it was even five years ago.

So there are obstacles to doing the very kinds of I think spiritual work

that you're talking about.

[MUSIC]

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