RATIONING FORGIVENESS

By Rebekah Jones

Today, the United States holds the world’s largest incarcerated population of 2.2 million people.[1] This reality has caught the attention of policymakers, researchers, and active citizens, leading a fervent push for criminal justice reform. To many, it has become increasingly clear that somewhere in the American pursuit of justice, there exists a grave error. 

In 1973, there were roughly 330,000 housed within our nation’s jails and prisons. The next 40 years would bring an increase by more than 500%. Our nation currently spends roughly $182 billion each year to incarcerate such a large portion of our population. But, the cost is more than monetary– studies have linked incarceration with increased risk of mental illness, poor labor market prospects, political exclusion, and many other emotional, social, and political effects. 

More so, these effects are disproportionately distributed. In 2017, Blacks and Latinos represented 12% and 16% of the U.S. adult population, respectively, but 33% and 23% of the sentenced prison population. In comparison, Whites accounted for 64% of adults but only 30% of prisoners. Minority populations are overrepresented in our nation’s criminal justice system. In addition to racial misrepresentation, studies show that incarcerated populations are significantly poorer prior to their sentence than those not imprisoned. Amongst 2014 inmates, the median income prior to incarceration was $19,185, which is 41% less than non-incarcerated people of similar ages. Generally, our system has been credited with creating a revolving door of low-income populations, leaving them in worse positions to re-enter society after release, and amplifying the probability of their re-offense. 

What can explain our nation’s orientation to crime and punishment? With many factors at play, making sense of our nation’s rise of incarceration is no simple task. In 2014, a National Research Council (NRC) report concluded that the American rise of incarceration can be attributed to “an increasingly punitive political climate surrounding criminal justice policy formed in a period of rising crime and rapid social change.”[2] They argue that as past crime rates rose, the social and political climate made way for a broad chain of policy choices that significantly increased sentence lengths, required prison time for minor offenses, and increased punishment for drug crimes. 

As suggested by the NRC, the most prominent illustration of our shift towards punitiveness is in public policy. During his time in office, President Richard Nixon nationally affirmed a punitive approach to the rising epidemic of drug abuse. Today, we refer to it as the War on Drugs. In his 1971 speech, President Nixon set the foundation for battling crime and drug abuse, saying, “America’s public enemy number one in the United States is drug abuse. In order to fight and beat this enemy, I have asked the congress to provide the legislative authority and the funds to fuel this kind of offensive”. From the 1970s to the early 2000s, federal, state, and local governments would wage a ruthless policy war; the effects of these policies continue to shape our nation’s punitive approach to crime and punishment.

In response to Nixon’s call to arms, the New York’s Rockefeller Drug Laws were established, putting hundreds of thousands of low-level drug crime offenders behind bars for life without parole or probation. By 1998, the Anti-Drug Abuse Control Act was passed. In it, a mandatory sentence for selling 50 grams of crack was set for five years; selling 500 grams of cocaine carried the same penalty. Similarly, Michigan imposed mandatory life imprisonment sentences without parole for those convicted of selling 650 grams or more of cocaine. Despite these harsh laws, these punitive policies have yet to be proved as a primary cause of the eventual decline in crime.[3] Similarly, although rates of crime fell in the 1990s and remained drastically lower than they were in the 1970s, sentencing practices have not changed accordingly; long sentences and the villainization of low-level offenders still continue. 

Despite the lack of proof that these sentence practices reduce crime, the American federal government continues to shell out billions of dollars to fund our nation’s prisons. In 1980, roughly $1.5 billion was invested federally; that number rose to $6.7 billion in 1990. More importantly, throughout this expansion of drug law enforcement, a mere 29% of total expenditures were allocated to treatment and prevention. On the state and local levels, some researchers estimate that in just 1990, $18 billion was allocated towards enforcement.[4] Evidently, rehabilitation has not been the underlying conviction in our push towards incarceration. 

What has driven these policy initiatives? Some have argued that this increasing punitiveness was primarily driven by political elites. However, some scholars have considered the role of public opinion in contributing to these policies formed during the period of “rising crime and rapid social change.”[5] Cornell University professor Peter Enns argues that an increasingly punitive populous has actually been a driving factor of these policies, as public preferences for “tough on crime policy” rose between the 1960s and 1990s. After controlling for crime rates, illegal drug use, inequality, and party control, he finds that if public punitiveness stopped rising in the mid-1970s, the current rate of incarceration would be 20% lower.[6] 

Our “tough on crime era” produced more intense forms of policing, quicker trials, and harder sentences. Within state prisons, federal prisons, juvenile correctional facilities, local jails, Indian country jails, military prisons, immigration detention facilities, civil commitment centers, state psychiatric hospitals, and U.S. territory prisons, our nation continues to be enamored with inflicting punishment on the most vulnerable among us. Although the United States has only 5% of the world’s population, it constitutes nearly 25% of the world’s prisoners. Embedded within the tough on crime era was the importance of individual agency and responsibility. Those who found themselves trapped within the grips of crime, violence, poverty, or drug abuse were akin to social deviants to be “set straight” by our corrections system.

OUR HUMAN CONVICTION

Our nation’s punitive approach to crime and punishment can be understood as the result of support from both the political elite and the public. As we discuss our broken system, what should be our conviction to think critically about our approach to crime as active citizens? Perhaps, more importantly, what should the pursuit of justice look like to a fallible human being? 

Best-selling author, Donald Miller, provides us a helpful framework for answering these questions. In his book, Searching for God Knows What, he invites us on a thought experiment.[7] 

He writes, “If there were a lifeboat adrift at sea, and in the lifeboat were a male lawyer, a female doctor, a crippled child, a stay-at-home mom, and a garbageman, and one person had to be thrown overboard to save the others, which person would we choose?”

In the book, Miller presents this thought experiment to a group of elementary school students, who do not hesitate to place their bets on the most dispensable individual. Although a seemingly juvenile illustration, Miller draws our attention to a tendency common to the human experience: rationing value. He posits that in the lifeboat, where there are limited resources, one is tempted to quantify the value of another based on subjective criteria of intrinsic human worth. However, he does not end there. He rightly highlights that even within our real society, where there seemingly exists no shortage of resources (unlike these folks on a boat), our tendency to devalue others still remains. 

Why does this tendency exist? Why is the dehumanization of individuals on the basis of race, wealth, gender, religion, ideology, attractiveness, physical-capacity, or status so common to the human experience? As Miller suggests, perhaps a further look into the source of human affirmation is necessary. 

The Christian tradition offers a unique perspective. Within this tradition, Christians believe that the desire for love, affirmation, identity, and purpose have been placed in us by God. Our deep desire for love is due to our need for He that is love; our desire for affirmation is only truly found in He that truly knows us. Within all of us lies that which can only be satisfied by direct connection with our Creator. 

However, the Christian tradition also recognizes that this connection has been ruptured. Within the Garden of Eden, humanity made its choice regarding where we would choose to search for our love and affirmation: anywhere but God. In our arrogance, we severed our connection with the ultimate source of goodness, resulting in a society of human beings bound to ration that which they lack. If Miller’s Lifeboat Theory is correct, then the fallen human condition would make us interested in the demonization of others. In rationing our love and affirmation to those who affirm our own insecure identities, we exaggerate the levels of separation between “us” and “them.” 

Miller writes, “In the context of the lifeboat (motivated by self-preservation), the characteristics of ‘other people’ become inferior simply because they are not our characteristics. Logic is thrown out the window, or worse, used as a tool to validate our prejudices. Philosophies, ideals, or even religious convictions become weapons for slaughter.”  Racism, sexism, class strife, ideological disputes, and hierarchies of morality are born out of the brokenness of the human heart.

However, the story does not end there. The Christian also believes that we have been rescued from the pit that is brokenness. Lifeboat theory suggests that the origin of hate, racism, and bigotry is the rupture of the connection between God– the endless source of love and affirmation– and man. Without a relationship with God– the giver of life and love– we are bound to withhold it from others. 

Perhaps in the American context, one of the most vivid illustrations of the brokenness of our condition is in our orientation to crime and punishment; our tendency to ration love. With backs turned and fist waving at the God to whom we’ve ignorantly accredited our suffering, we’re met with an all-consuming and mesmerizing light of love. Any true Christian can describe that experience—just ask them about it! With no feasible reason for redemption, forgiveness is handed to us the moment we accept it into ourselves. At once, our hearts are made aware of the starvation of love that has led our quests for jobs, money, security, intimate relationships, drugs—anything and everything. It pales in comparison to the love of Jesus Christ. 

How then do we orient ourselves to our brokenness and failure in the lifeboat? Supernaturally adjoined with the giver of all love, should we not love in abundance? Should we not refrain from the insecure ideologies that place the morality and worth of human beings on a hierarchical scale? Justified by grace alone, should we not make every opportunity to extend forgiveness to those who—at least, by our societal standards—don’t deserve it?

If we’re honest with ourselves, we’ll acknowledge that as we fall deeper in love with God’s perfect character, we become more aware of the brokenness of our own. If we’re humbly aware enough to receive the truth of His grace, we’ll be compelled to extend it to others. In fact, we’re called to do so.

As our nation has waged war, perhaps we’ve been complicit. Perhaps amongst the attack of fear, ignorance, or panic, we’ve internalized the claims of an insecure society. However, intertwined with the rhetoric of our nation’s infatuation with punishment lay the lie that some of us are past redemption. As we consider reform in our nation’s criminal justice system, let us be compelled by the profound power of grace in the universal story of repentance and redemption. Let us not be moved by the persuasive lies of hate, fear, and ignorance that attempt to spread the chasm between “them” and “us.” Let our love be distinguishable in the lifeboat.

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