Column on Dealing with Crime Locally

UCM, United Congregations of Metro East, is holding a workshop the first Saturday in May. It deals with a difficult topic, the role of churches in helping released prisoners re-enter society. As always with this group, to uses the faith as a springboard to address social ills and matters of justice. Its main focus has been race relations, development, and the environment.

Churches are geared to acts of charity, called service or mission, in religious parlance. Charity provides help for basic human needs on an individual, piecemeal basis. Its failing is that charity is often a Band-Aid on a weeping wound. It becomes part of the patchwork of living day to day, but charity does not address a system that seems intent on producing so much difficulty. Justice moves in a social dimension, and it brings to light inequities in the structures and systems of how we operate. UCM is designed to hit nerves.

I can think of few areas that demonstrate its moral courage as much as this one. As their material suggests, most of us prize the criminal justice system because it punishes offenders. We see the threat of punishment as a deterrent against vicious behavior. For instance, I have no trouble with longer sentences for those convicted of violent crime or the use of a gun in a crime. (Let me guess, that could be the next frontier for the gun lobby, and they will ask for shorter sentences for those who use guns). In so many ways, we have given up on rehabilitation as a goal of the criminal justice system. UCM calls us back toward its consideration and implementation. In a struggling rust belt economy in the doldrums, how do we learn to match an opportunity for gainful work to offenders?

In its stead, UCM is proposing a model of restorative justice. This covers a lot of territory, but it often means looking to heal the breach in a society caused by crime. Some emphasize the victims of crime being restored form their losses, or receiving aid in coming to terms with the impact of a crime. Here, UCM is interested in helping to restore the offender to a new and secure place to start again in society. Jesus used visiting the prisoner as a model of charity in Mt. 25, but here we are extending the reach of the clarion call of the Old Testament for justice.

I struggle with the sheer size of the number of prisoners in this country, especially compared to other nations. One reason is our use of the drug laws to define drug use as criminal instead of the public health crisis it portends. Yes, I do realize that drug use can lead to crime to fuel the addiction, but we have a large number of people imprisoned for mere possession. Prisons are expensive, but so is addiction treatment. As a society, which path shall we continue to choose?

Further, since we closed down large mental health facilities, we have been negligent in creating a system of smaller in-house treatment programs for the mentally ill. Our biggest initial mental health treatment facilities in this country are jails. Hebrew ethics were always concerned with the vulnerable, the least of these: the widow, orphan, and sojourner in a society without a social safety net. In our time, I would certainly place the mentally ill in that category.

In biblical terms, released prisoners are lepers, untouchables. The clarion call of Jesus is toward healing, yes even those now chained ot the margins of society. I am in awe of the willingness of UCM to address the issue and to confront the churches, and our communities, with it.