Thread by @JoshuaBHoe

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Thread:

One thing I saw time after time during the #KeepThemHome Twitterthon yesterday was the glib response:

"If they did the crime, they should do the time"

So, let's go through this again

Let's start with the notion of "The Time"

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1. Sentence lengths are largely made up - there is no basis for them from experience or science

2. Two people with the exact same crime will often have very different sentences, some judges are tough, others lenient, different states have different guidelines and practices

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3. Almost always, black and brown people and poor people will receive longer sentences (it's a fact, look it up)

4. Most, but not all, systems have ways for incarcerated people to EARN back time for good behavior, for completing programming, & for meeting certain criteria

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So, if sentence lengths are made up, different people get different times for the same crimes, and those "times" are applied unfairly....why are they just desserts again?

In addition, the vast majority of people who commit crimes are NEVER ARRESTED or SENTENCED

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In other words, the whole idea of sentencing - in addition to being disparate and unpredictable - is a moral hazard and only applied to a small percentage of the "deserving"

So, "TIME" is a pretty problematic concept, what about the public safety aspect?

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1) If you care about public safety - you actually should care about conditions in prison and about people released - good treatment and good reentry services make for safer communities

As @RachelBarkow once put it

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2) Prison is criminogenic. Even accounting for incapacitation, incarceration causes more crime than it solves....it does not make us safer and remember 96% of people come home from incarceration and HOW THEY COME HOME matters

In addition, trauma creates trauma and hurt people hurt people....prison makes people worse and not better....I personally spent three years inside and saw an incident of violence almost once a week for three years.

Being in the middle of so much pain doesn't fix people

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And remember, as @WesternBruce explained in his book Homeward, most people in prison have been witnesses and victims of violence as well as perpetrators of crime....almost ALL of what we see in crime is part of cycles of trauma

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For a good contemporary personal narrative about how this all works I would recommend the book "Bird Uncaged: An Abolitionist's Freedom Song" by @_marlonpeterson

It will help you understand how this works in people

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And let us also remember that it is easy to say people are "bad" in the abstract, now - be honest - and take a second and imagine they were your mother or father, brother or sister, or son or daughter....that is the reality for MILLIONS of people in the United States

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These are people - like all people - who have issues, sometimes suffering from untreated and unresolved trauma, addiction, mental illness, and suffer horrible abuses in a system that rarely cares or tries to help

I know, I have been there

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This does not excuse what people do, it asks a second and equally important question - what are we doing to create systems that make people and our communities safer.

Do the time, misses the point, the time causes LESS SAFETY for us, them, and you

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Okay, but what about the argument from ethics?

1) People are more than their worst moment, I can’t tell you how many people I have met who were sentenced for killing somebody who had NO IDEA they were capable of killing someone until they snapped and it happened.

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2) I also can’t tell you how many people who committed a horrible crime & later turned their lives around and started helping people and saving lives. When we throw people away, we don’t just punish them, we prevent them from doing the good deeds they could do in the future

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I literally know people who saved lives after having taken lives....I know people who spent the rest of their lives doing good - making places safer - helping people find a better way.....That would not be possible in a world in which we simply discarded people

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3) Also, as the great Dave Chappelle said, we have to attack systems not people. Attacking people doesn’t fix any of the reasons WHY people become violent or the trauma or mental illness or addiction pouring fuel on the fire

Incarceration doesn't end or solve crime

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We have been hearing a lot of stories about a huge increase in crime....guess what, when the homicide spikes started the Barr DOJ cracked down and arrested hundreds of people....the spikes continued unabated

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You can't punish your way out of crime - crime is not about a few "inherently bad" people who, if we just incarcerate them, will leave the rest of us to live ideal lives

If that made sense, there would be no crime, we have the most policed and incarcerated society ON EARTH

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In addition, turning people over to a brutal system says MORE ABOUT US than it does about them, it says we are taking part in the same kinds of behaviors that we send people to prison for

We are becoming brutal, and letting people know we are exactly what he dislike

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Now let's talk about Democracy

In the instance we were discussing yesterday, these are folks who have been home for 16 months with no incident, incarcerated for low-level crimes, and released under strict regulations

What does it say, if even this is too much?

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Alexander Hamilton once said in Federalist 74:

The criminal code of every country partakes so much of necessary severity, that without an easy access to exceptions in favor of unfortunate guilt, justice would wear a countenance too sanguinary and cruel.

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That seems much smarter to me than

"you did the crime, do the time"

The mere fact that incarceration has become our default response to social problem we should be starting to question our actual commitment to FREEDOM

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Incarceration should be something we do only with great reluctance and extreme care because we are supposed to be in the freedom business, it is entirely antithetical to who we are as a nation to lead the rest of the world - by far - in the forced deprivation of freedom

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And what about justice?

First, "If you can't do the time, don't commit the crime" gives a social permission to prisons to destroy, abuse, and kill people…sometimes, we even collectively get off on the idea of people in prisons being tortured

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What I have learned is that people often really enjoy finding places where they feel like they have permission to be cruel to other people

In many ways, we live in a kind of purge world, where people can't wait to find the people they can make feel bad, or hurt

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There is nothing healthy about this kind of thinking, justice is about amends, being responsible for what you did, and healing the wound you created…TRUE AMENDS and ACCOUNTABILITY are about agreeing NEVER TO HARM OTHERS....it is an active, not a passive pursuit

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In fact, in most research I have read, the #1 request of victims of crime - and many of us who have committed crimes have also been victims - is that people DO NO MORE HARM

If the systems we embrace pile trauma on top of trauma, that is not the likely outcome

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This argument - that sentences = justice also assumes that innocent people are not convicted of crimes....heck, we know that is nowhere near true....we know, without a doubt, that we have executed innocent people

Think about that for a second

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But we also know that:

* Sentences are not uniform or just
* Prison is not the best solution or likely to keep us safe
* Brutality is not the same thing as justice

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Some will say what about the victims (with the caveat, some are perpetrators and victims)

Victims have the right to feel however they feel, and we owe duties of care to our victims and have to be committed to never harming people again

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But also, survey after survey suggests that not all victims want harsh punishments and retribution, as I mentioned many victims simply want meaningful solutions and healed people who don't harm people anymore

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As @LenoreAnderson put it:

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As @daniellesered of @Common_Justice put it:

Finally, deterrence

Mountains of evidence concludes that certainty of punishment deters while the length or severity of sentence does not. In addition, as John Pfaff has detailed that we actually only punish about 5% of all violent crime

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But the final truth is that glib sayings might feel true, but they are really intentional cruelty - they are examples of people taking advantage of what they believe is permission to be cruel

At the end of the day, glib sayings heal nobody and keep nobody safe

Thanks!

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