A call for prisoner amnesty
By ARTHUR JONES
NCR Staff
Release the worlds prisoners as part of the 2000 Jubilee
year, or at least free those serving less than 12 months and send home women
prisoners with dependent children.
The Catholic prison chaplains from around the world who called for
this global prisoners amnesty during their recent Mexico City meeting
added that amnesty for as many as possible should be only a starting point for
church involvement in criminal justice issues.
Fr. Jim Consedine of New Zealand, an expert on restorative justice
who has long been involved in prison ministry and in working for reform, gave
the keynote address in Mexico City. During a visit to Washington for a National
Cathedral conference on developing restorative and transformative justice, he
summarized some of the main views of the Mexico City gathering:
- The modern prison industrial complex is one of the
structures of sin Pope John Paul II wrote of in Sollicitudo Rei
Socialis (1988);
- Prisons now form an essential part of global economic
development strategies and continue to be built at an increasing pace despite
declining crime rates in many industrialized countries;
- There is a need to seriously examine the range of alternatives
to prison and implement them;
- Further, we need to reassess our understanding of crime
and ask why corporate crime and governmental crime advance virtually unhindered
while street crime has become a national and international
preoccupation.
In a wide-ranging NCR interview on justice issues,
Consedine, a Christchurch diocese priest who has been in prison ministry for
two decades, focused first on corporate crime -- endemic the world
over.
It hits us in so many ways -- from supermarket add-on costs
to pollutants in the air we breathe, said Consedine. Its the
hidden costs of our banking and financial systems, the costs of our medicines.
One tobacco company arguably kills and injures more people than all the street
thugs put together.
In Canada recently, he said, five companies in a
world bulk vitamin cartel pleaded guilt to rigging Canadian markets for years,
inflating prices by up to 30 percent. The $88 million fine was probably a fifth
of the profits accrued in that time. No one went to prison, yet they stole from
several million people.
Starvation wages in developing countries, in which governments are
complicit, mean were all complicit because we buy these products at
ridiculously low prices, Consedine said. There is an ongoing and
huge criminal offense against one-sixth of the worlds families. Does
anyone ever go to prison for this theft? Never. Am I truly my brother and
sisters keeper? Not really, it seems.
Following his 1969 ordination, Consedine started off not with
prisons but young Christian workers. Hed say Mass occasionally in prison;
his pastor was a prison chaplain. When the chaplain left, the bishop asked
Consedine to step in. He said no, unless the church also hired full-time lay
Catholic chaplains at the same pay scale as Catholic elementary school
teachers. (In New Zealand, the state pays the salary of Protestant chaplains
only.)
The bishop and his consulters demurred -- for a while. The
standoff ended when one lay chaplain was agreed to. Two more were subsequently
added. Years into the work, Consedine feared he was burning out and asked for a
parish part-time. Hes been pastor of St. Joseph the Worker, Lyttleton,
since 1985 while working for penal reform.
And he teamed up with other Catholic chaplains --
thats been my savior. We talk, we do scripture reflection. We
sustain each other.
What he had discovered entering New Zealand prisons was that while
Polynesian people make up 12 percent of the countrys 3.8 million
population, they were 50 percent of the prison population. And while he was
prepared to do some of the holding hands and traditional chaplaincy
work, he started seeking justice, which is what I think life is
about, he said.
Basically, we scapegoat the poor. Someone steals from the
drugstore, and you have four police vans and dogs there within minutes. Someone
steals the equivalent of a million times over from a bank or in a business
scam, and the police havent even got the resources, perhaps not even the
expertise, to deal with it.
So theres a whole range of injustice, he
said.
And a whole range of back-up problems for the poor: alcoholism,
drug abuse, intergenerational abusive and living patterns, he added.
In the late 1970s and early 80s, New Zealand took a new
approach to juvenile crime -- restorative justice -- and closed down all but
four of its juvenile detention centers.
A Maori judge, Macke Browne, was the instigator, Consedine said.
Browne saw the juvenile system getting nowhere. The perpetrators went to boot
camp, reform schools, detention centers and came out worse than ever.
He decided to try the traditional Maori system for justice: the
circle. The offender and his family and his support system -- teachers, friends
-- sit down with the victim and family and support system in the presence of a
skilled facilitator.
What we found, said Consedine, a trained adult-setting
facilitator, is that openness drives the system, openness to vehemence,
tolerance, compassion and, ultimately, forgiveness. This restorative
conferencing is a lot more progressive and compassionate than youd
expect. For one thing, despite what you hear on radio call-in shows, 70 percent
of the victims regard it as a better system than the court system. Why? Let me
tell you about my auntie.
Her place was robbed, said Consedine. From then
on she was always fearful. Every creak at night, she couldnt sleep. They
took her peace away from her. In restorative conferencing she would have been
able to ask, Why did you pick my place? Are you going to come back? Can I
sleep peacefully tonight? Unfortunately, they never caught the juveniles
who entered her house.
Restorative justice isnt perfect, said Consedine.
Id love to say theres no recidivism. But it is way down --
between 15 and 30 percent.
When does restorative justice not work? When people want to
torpedo it, he said. When people cant cope with it --
its a lot tougher than the normal system where a kid can stand there with
his head down and get sent away for a few months or years. When people
cant acknowledge what theyve done. And sometimes victims dont
want to go through with it.
The juveniles who do persevere through a restorative conference
almost invariably grow a little, mature a little, said Consedine. But he
believes the real place for such conferencing is with adult criminals.
Juveniles return to tremendous peer pressure. Adults have a chance to
step away from that.
In Mexico City, said Consedine, the 150 Catholic delegates from 55
countries wanted more from the church than simply focusing on sinful
structures. They called for alternatives in the restorative area -- wellness
centers for addicts, violent-men programs, victim/offender facilitation,
pioneering stuff.
Would it work in the United States?
The Mennonites are pushing for it, said Consedine, who
earlier had given a talk at Eastern Mennonite University in Harrisonburg,Va.
I asked the students, What does the Bible say about
law and order issues? They inevitably answered, An eye for an eye,
a tooth for a tooth.
I told them that appears only three times in the entire Old
Testament, and each time it was used to stop a lynch mob mentality as the
softer option. But Jesus said, You know an eye for an eye, but I say to
you, love your enemy. Do good to those who hate you. Walk the extra mile.
Consedine grinned. I told them, an eye for an
eye appears three times; mercy 3,000 times. Weve taken a
line from scripture thats quite graphic and misused it. The entire
biblical tradition is of restorative justice.
Fr. Jim Consedine is author of Restorative Justice: Healing
the Effects of Crime (Ploughshares Publications, Box 33-135, Christchurch,
New Zealand, -- US $15 including postage). E-mail:
jimconse@xtra.co.nz
National Catholic Reporter, January 7,
2000
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