In this episode, Rev. Deborah Duguid-May and Dr. M. Elizabeth Thorpe discuss the difference between reformation and punishment in the prison system.
Transcript generated by automated process.
DDM [00:03] Hello and welcome to The Priest and the Prof. I am your host, the Rev. Deborah Duguid-May.
MET [00:09] And I’m Dr. M. Elizabeth Thorpe.
DDM [00:11] This podcast is a product of Trinity Episcopal Church in Greece, New York. I’m an Episcopal priest of 26 years, and Elizabeth has been a rhetoric professor since 2010. And so join us as we explore the intersections of faith, community, politics, philosophy, and action.
DDM [00:43] Hello, beautiful people. Hello, Elizabeth. Hello. So this week, Elizabeth and I want to be looking at the issue of prisons, prisoners, the prison system. And so, Elizabeth, let me begin by sharing my earliest experiences around the concept of being sent to prison.
DDM [01:03] When I was just becoming a teenager and I wanted to start looking more grown up, I went through this very short phase of trying to read the newspapers, actually an in-print newspaper, which it was in those days. And I remember very quickly reading a front page article on our national newspaper on how a man and a woman were being sent to prison because they were in a sexual relationship, but he was black and she was white. And I remember reading this and I was horrified. And I remember thinking, I must have been about 12, 13.
DDM [01:45] And I remember thinking, they can send you to prison for that? And I remember speaking to my parents about it. I remember the feeling, I don’t remember the dialogue, but I remember the feeling of that almost cold horror that sets inside of you. And then, of course, always in the background in South Africa was the imprisonment of Nelson Mandela, decades spent in prison for terrorism charges.
DDM [02:15] And then later learning as I grew older of fellow clergy who were anti-apartheid activists being imprisoned even in solitary confinement. And then equally personally, the number of my own friends who’d been jailed for being gay and in gay relationships, which until, I think it was the 1990s, was still illegal and a criminal offense in South Africa. And so I think I learned growing up that prisons are not about whether you are good or bad, but that prisons very often are used as a fear tactic of trying to control our behavior, and that many really good people are imprisoned for doing the right thing.
DDM [02:59] And so I think my perspective on prisons has undoubtedly been deeply shaped by those experiences.
MET [03:07] OK, before I start talking about what I want to talk about, I want to acknowledge that my understanding of the penal system of prisons is not as personal as yours. When I speak, I’m definitely speaking of a very privileged person who, you know, I understand this kind of academically and intellectually and then kind of as an advocate, but I don’t understand this in the same personal way that you do. So feel free to jump in at any point and be like, you know, Let’s talk about this. So I acknowledge that your perspective on this has a lot more weight to it in the individual sense.
MET [03:59] So I just want to want to center that before I even start. But let me give you my kind of my input here. It will not surprise anyone to know that I am a member of something called the National Communication Association.
DDM [04:12] No, it doesn’t surprise us.
MET [04:15] No one’s gasping in shock at that. This is the largest association in America of communication professionals, and many of them are academic. These are people who study, practice, and apply all of the theories and methodologies and practicalities that come with the field of communication. It’s a really big association.
MET [04:37] When we have our conference every year, which of course not everybody goes to, but about 5,000 people show up. I know that’s not as big as some associations, but we definitely take over a whole convention center. It’s a nonprofit organization and a professional one. I’m giving you this background to emphasize it is not a political organization.
MET [05:01] However, it does advocate for practices and policies that aim for healthier and more effective communication. The reason this is interesting today when we are talking about prisons is because a while back, NCA took a stand on a particular issue dealing with the judicial system. NCA was very vocal and has done some real advocacy on the issue of solitary confinement.
DDM [05:28] That’s interesting.
MET [05:30] Yes. Solitary confinement, as you probably know, is the practice of locking a prisoner away so they have no contact with anyone for a particular amount of time. No conversation, no sight, no physical contact. They are completely alone. This can be done for their protection.
MET [05:47] If for whatever reason an inmate is in danger, they may be moved to an area of a prison where they will not have contact with anyone in order to keep them safe. Or, as is often the case, it can be used as punishment. Now I want to let that marinate for a minute. We protect people the same way we punish them.
DDM [06:08] Isn’t that interesting? I never thought of that connection.
MET [06:11] Yeah, there’s a whole conversation waiting to be had on that little nugget right there.
MET [06:17] But this is important to NCA because it is specifically a communication issue. In solitary confinement, you are cut off from all people. You’re cut off from all communication. There is no input or stimuli coming to you at all.
MET [06:33] And this is, in every way, a form of psychological torture. People who are in solitary confinement for an extended period of time pretty much lose their minds. having no contact, no communication with another person for that extended period of time will completely warp your emotional and mental stability. And I was thinking about this, like, I know introverts love to joke about how they’d love to just crawl into a hole and never talk to people.
MET [06:57] And I know priests love to say they want to go off into the wilderness and pray in silence. But I don’t think people realize the psychological toll it takes on us to be completely removed from all communication and stimuli. Because we are, at our core, social creatures. And solitary confinement is different than just, I can’t talk to anybody.
MET [07:16] You are cut off. And to be cut off from that, which is our evolutionary nature, right? Be around people, be stimulated in some way. All of that to be cut off from it is a form of torture.
DDM [07:30] I mean, we’ve watched movies where you see people in solitary confinement, even building relationships with the ants that crawl into their cells, you know?
MET [07:39] Now, there are a lot of studies that confirm this and people can roll their eyes or call me a snowflake or whatever. But honestly, that is their ignorance, not my permissive attitude. This is not a question. For people who take psychology and well-being seriously, this is pretty much a settled issue.
MET [07:57] And people have tried to argue this to the courts and to elected officials and to anyone who will listen. We can’t treat people this way. But you know who doesn’t care about this? The prison system, the judiciary system.
MET [08:11] We have presented all the proof over and over again. Like I said, this is a settled issue. Solitary confinement is torture. But either those in power don’t believe or don’t care.
DDM [08:24] And I mean, we have torture routinely used within, I think, the prison and the military system.
MET [08:33] That is precisely what I was about to say. This is one small issue in the grand scheme of prison reform. It doesn’t even break that high on what counts as a problem, but it is indicative. Because we are talking about psychological torture, and it is just part of the system. Our judicial system just kind of accepts torture.
MET [08:54] And the reason for this is because our judicial system is punitive, not reformative. All over the world, recidivism rates are lower than ours, literally. In almost every developed nation, recidivism is markedly lower than in the U.S. But in the U.S., if you are convicted of a crime, you are almost guaranteed to be convicted of another. Crime is systemic, and that is largely due to our prison system.
MET [09:25] Our prison system makes no effort to reform people. Unlike systems in other parts of the world, it is just a matter of punishing and controlling. And anybody who knows anything about parenting or teaching or just people in general knows that simply punishing and controlling will do nothing to fix a behavior, it will just set it in stone. This could not possibly be more clear than it is right now.
MET [09:56] As we ship more and more people off to El Salvador, and I am specifically saying people and not migrants, because we know we are sending American citizens over there too, we are seeing the pictures.
DDM [10:09] And migrants are people too.
MET [10:13] Yes, 100%. These are not places you send people to get better.
DDM [10:15] No.
MET [10:16] These are places you send people to torture and kill them.
DDM [10:20] You know, Elizabeth, I really like how you differentiated between our prisons as being places of controlling and punishing parts of our population rather than necessarily working on reforming. What’s interesting, this is interesting from a scriptural point of view, that the Torah, which is a part of what we call a section of the Old Testament, actually lacks any concept of imprisonment or punishment. Isn’t that interesting? Like, as I was starting to look at this issue, you know, from a biblical point of view, I realized that, that the early parts of the Torah and the Old Testament literally have no concept of imprisonment.
DDM [11:04] In later Mosaic law, there was a process given if somebody stepped out of line for restitution. So there was always a way in which a person could make something right after they’d done something wrong or they had corporal punishment or you were put to death. Now I’m not advocating obviously for any of the latter, but simply to point out that there wasn’t this concept of imprisonment in much of the Old Testament, earlier Old Testament books.
DDM [11:35] But by the time that the prophets and the kings emerge, we see imprisonment has definitely started. And so we largely hear of the prophets being imprisoned because of the threat they are to the state for speaking the truth and holding power to account. And then if we move into the New Testament, one of the core aspects of how Jesus understands his own mission, and therefore by implication our mission, is to proclaim, and I’m doing quote-unquote, liberty to captives and setting free those who are imprisoned or oppressed. That’s that key Luke passage around which the ministry of Jesus is based.
DDM [12:20] So we see that freedom, in direct contrast obviously with imprisonment, is one of the primary missions of Jesus’s life and work. To create a society obviously where people who are bound in whatever form are set free and to find that way into freedom. Jesus also says that those who visit people in prisons are in fact visiting him. So here we see Jesus identifying himself with those who are in prison and saying, if you want to be with me, go and be with those who are imprisoned.
DDM [12:57] Now this is a radically different understanding of faith than often we grow up with and hear in many of our churches, let alone the broader society. And then of course, Jesus himself was arrested, tortured and ultimately killed by the state. So in the short years that Jesus lived, like the prophets before him, he was arrested, tortured and killed for doing and saying things that the state and even the religion found too threatening and deemed dangerous. And I think very often in our ordinary churches and amongst ordinary Christians, we forget that the Son of God actually died being labeled a criminal.
DDM [13:42] And then Jesus’s ministry and teaching also, I think, gives us theological principles that really challenge the punitive incarceration systems in our society. Because for Jesus, it was always about how to redeem and restore a person rather than being punitive. So for instance, the woman caught in adultery, for which the punishment was death, Jesus instead calls for the community to see their own sin and to choose not to judge her but instead to restore her dignity. The prodigal son is a story about a young man who after a long period of quote-unquote immoral living wants to come home and he’s prepared to come home even as a servant but instead the father symbolizing God restores him as a full son and in fact celebrates his
DDM [14:36] return to the family. So if we go through the Gospels, they are full of such stories. And that’s really not surprising, given that Jesus teaches that the capacity to forgive one another is actually central to our faith. Yeah, sure.
DDM [14:52] We’re to forgive each other in the same way that God has forgiven us. And then there’s that teaching that for those who feel there are sins that are somehow larger than others, Jesus says those who’ve been forgiven much ironically are the ones who end up loving much, but those who are in less need of forgiveness may find themselves less able to love unconditionally. I
MET [15:15] mean, we say it every Sunday, right? Forgive us our trespasses as we forgive.
DDM [15:19] Absolutely. So that understanding that none of us have got our lives together, that we all make mistakes, that we all do things that we shouldn’t do. So for Jesus, it’s about forgiveness and about restoring right relationship rather than punishment, let alone imprisonment. Now that doesn’t mean I think that Jesus doesn’t call out sin and ask everybody to change destructive patterns.
DDM [15:44] Jesus at times in the gospel speaks truth to people of groups and individuals in very plain terms. But it’s always calling them to change rather than to punishment; to transform their lives rather than necessarily to be put away from the rest of society. And so throughout the Gospels we see Jesus working to reintegrate those who have been excluded from the community no matter the reason.
DDM [16:12] He works to enable people to come back into full participation in their families or communities, but always with dignity. And the teachings of Jesus, I think, call us to create a different way of living that always prioritizes justice but very much linked with mercy and compassion. So it’s ways that honor always the sacred dignity of every human being, no matter what we have done, and to model that there’s always the capacity for forgiveness.
MET [16:47] So if you have been with us on this journey for a while now, one of the things you will have noticed about Deborah and I is we are very concerned with the systemic nature of things. Deborah and I both recognize, and I think I can probably speak for Deborah on this. We both believe that you can’t treat the symptoms of a problem. Many of the issues that we’re dealing with in the world today are not just an instant that has to be addressed.
MET [17:22] These are things that the root is foundational. So with that, here’s a little story many people know but is worth repeating. For decades, the punishment all over America for possession of cocaine and possession of crack, these were very different punishments. Possessing crack was a much harsher punishment.
DDM [17:46] Can you explain the difference quickly?
MET [17:49] Well, I’m getting there. This is where I’m going.
MET [17:50] Possessing crack was a much harsher punishment than possessing cocaine.
MET [17:56] And that’s the question. What is the difference between the two drugs?
DDM [17:59] Okay.
MET [18:00] Cost.
DDM [18:01] All right.
MET [18:02] Poor people use crack and rich people use cocaine. And that’s pretty much what it comes down to.
MET [18:07] They’re the same drug.
MET [18:08] They’re the same drug, one is just refined.
DDM [18:11] Ah, interesting.
MET [18:12] So if you were caught with crack, you were looking at sometimes decades of your life in jail. If you were caught with cocaine, you were looking at a few months to maybe a couple of years, probably less with good behavior. The result of this difference was catastrophic.
MET [18:29] People of color and other poor people were imprisoned in droves for crack possession. Wall Street brokers got a slap on the wrist for coke. But I cannot emphasize this enough, they are the same drug. One is just the version for rich people, one is the version for poor people.
MET [18:48] And this is one of those things that is so obvious, so blatant. It is hard to look away. There is no denying that poor people and people of color were locked away at two to three times the rate that rich white people were for the same crimes that, like, they were the same crimes, and people of color were kept longer in prison. Anyone who denies this is simply being obtuse, and you can tell them I said so. So, That in and of itself is an indication of how we get to mass incarceration. The law is literally written to separate poor people and people of color away from their families and from their communities and create a prisoner class. Please hear me say that, a prisoner class.
MET [19:38] These are not just people who have committed a crime. These are people who have been rounded up and put into the penal system in an effort to create a group of people separate and beneath those who can afford to do things like cocaine. And it doesn’t end there, my friends. In most places, felons can’t vote.
MET [19:59] So for decades, the judiciary and penal system has been scooping up people of color and poor people and throwing them into a system designed to create a prisoner class out of them, and then spitting them out, knowing them they’ll be back, and denying them the vote.
DDM [20:15] And you know, Elizabeth, I’ve also noticed, because I live in the rural areas, I noticed the same thing happening amongst rural communities. The rate of people who are incarcerated in our communities, and a lot of it just stems from poverty, but the realization, because when we were speaking recently around voting, realizing so many of my friends and neighbors are not able to vote.
MET [20:42] So if you’re keeping up with this, you will recognize this as one of the biggest voter disenfranchisement ploys since Jim Crow. We have written laws specifically to target poor people and people of color. We have put these people in a system designed to keep them uneducated, angry, poor, and likely to commit more crimes. And then we take away their right to vote.
MET [21:05] This is exactly what people mean when they say that things like racism is systemic. There’s no individual white supremacist sitting around somewhere saying, haha, I’m going to make it so most black men can’t vote. Well, I don’t know. Maybe there might be right now, but that’s a whole other story.
MET [21:24] But there are laws in place that were written so that poor black men were imprisoned at undeniably destructive rates while white people who were committing the same crimes were not. And once people of color were in prison, they lost their right to vote. The result is that a huge portion of the black population does not have the right to vote. And if you are sitting there uncomfortably thinking, why does this remind me of Jim Crow or the three-fifths compromise?
MET [21:51] You’re not the only one. The law, the system itself is set up to keep certain communities broken and disenfranchised.
DDM [21:58] No, absolutely. And I think also the free labor or the virtually free labor that emerges. I mean, it’s almost a form of slavery when you see how the prison system is now using people for labor. And I mean, I think also given that the USA has one of the highest incarceration rates in the world, this is really, again, another way in which you might say there is not true democracy in this country.
DDM [22:25] And I mean it’s very obvious the more you look at the law in so many of our societies is written to benefit the wealthy and the powerful and always to oppress the poor and vulnerable. And it’s interesting that if there is a time in scripture where we see Jesus truly angry, it’s when he’s dealing with the scribes and the Pharisees, the religious leaders of the time. Because I think Jesus himself was watching in his context how the law was being used to place burdens on ordinary people that they just couldn’t carry. And so in the Gospels we see Jesus actually calling out with anger that those who use the law to oppress and marginalize the vulnerable will be judged in a way that no others will.
DDM [23:11] And I think it’s a good reminder to us as well that not all laws are just, and not all laws are good. Just like the laws against mixed-race marriage were unjust laws, and as people of faith, I think we’re called to stand up and to not obey laws that are unjust, even if that puts us at odds with society or with the legal systems in our countries. And so if you look in scripture, there’s so many examples and critiques of where law and the legal system were literally weaponized against vulnerable populations. You know, the prophet Isaiah says, woe to those who make unjust laws, to those who issue oppressive decrees in order, and this is so interesting, to deprive the poor of their rights, and to withhold justice from the oppressed.
DDM [24:05] So it’s interesting that Isaiah is very clear that there are unjust laws and that laws very often are being created specifically to deprive the poor of their rights, which is what you were speaking about, Elizabeth, and to prevent oppressed groups actually from justice. So the law actually ends up becoming a stumbling block to justice. And I think that really ties in directly with what you were saying about laws being crafted to further marginalize already vulnerable groups in society. And so if you read the prophets, I mean, the prophets call out against these legal systems that have become corrupt, able to be bribed by the wealthy and the powerful.
DDM [24:48] And so the legal systems themselves have become a tool for the wealthy to become more powerful and enriched at the expense of the poor. And so really, in a way, Jesus, in the tradition of the prophets, reminds the people and the leaders that the Sabbath was made for man, not man for the Sabbath, meaning that the laws that are given to serve us are there in a way to enable us to come into wholeness and fullness of being, rather than where we are simply being created to serve a legal system. And so I think we see clearly in scriptures that the law itself is not inherently just and our systems of law require critique to make sure that they serve justice and serve the most vulnerable rather than becoming tools for the wealthy and powerful and being used to further
DDM [25:41] marginalize others and strip them of their dignity. And that’s what I think we’re seeing a lot of today in the USA, but of course, in other countries as well, you know, is that stripping of human dignity.
MET [25:53] If you want to hear a historical figure just echo everything that Reverend Deborah said, I recommend you read Martin Luther King Jr.’ ‘s “Letter from the Birmingham Jail.”
MET [26:06] Because let us remember that an unjust law is not a law that we are called to obey. So Reverend is not a Deborahlone. Okay, branching off from that though, one of the most horrifying debates going on in America right now is the debate over due process.
MET [26:31] And this definitely relates to what we’re talking about in terms of what laws do you obey, right? We are rounding up people every day and shipping them off to prisons, quote-unquote, which are really death camps with absolutely no hint of any kind of due process or legal process. Now there are some people who think because they might be criminals that is okay, but I want you to think about that. We don’t know if they are criminals.
MET [26:55] They might be criminals. The only way we would know they are criminals is if they had due process.
DDM [27:04] Isn’t there that thing in America, you’re innocent until proven guilty?
MET [27:09] Yeah. So what is happening right now? is the U.S. is running rampant through the country, taking scores of people into custody on suspicion, shipping them off to foreign death camps, and never even bothering to find out if they did anything wrong.
DDM [27:24] It’s kind of frightening.
MET [27:25] Yeah, I was about to say, if that doesn’t terrify you, then you live in a world of either privilege or obliviousness that I truly cannot comprehend. The prison system is about to be overwhelmed by people, mostly brown people, who are just there because maybe they look like they have done something wrong. The prison system is becoming a babysitter for anything or anyone the establishment thinks doesn’t belong in public. And right now that means anyone who is brown or increasingly anyone who has published something like an editorial or put too many negative social media posts up.
MET [28:05] Let me give you an example. There was an incident not too long ago right here in Rochester where a middle class white guy, family man, an active Lutheran, answered his door and found the Department of Homeland Security there demanding to know about his social media posts. These are not safe times and the penal system is the end game.
MET [28:29] So the due process debate is important because the whole point of due process is to ascertain if somebody deserves punishment. We are skipping that now. We are going straight to punishment. There’s not a procedure to determine if somebody did something wrong.
MET [28:51] People are just being selected and thrown into the prison system. And as I have noted, the prison system is unforgiving. It is getting even more unforgiving as we make deals with foreign powers who have even less regard for human life than we do, and we ship our prisoners to these concentration camps. And please don’t blanch at that.
MET [29:12] We need to call them what they are. Okay, I am not trying to talk to you like a child, but I really need to make this clear. Due process is the only thing that separates an innocent person from the harsh reality of the American penal system. And the American penal system now includes concentration camps.
MET [29:32] Due process isn’t a thing anymore. Conclusion, there is nothing keeping innocent people out of concentration camps. Do you get that? Do you understand how important these issues are?
MET [29:44] The prison system isn’t just a bad situation, it’s a destructive force to democracy right now.
DDM [29:49] Yeah. And you know, Elizabeth, I think scripture would remind us that really none of us are innocent, and no one either is a criminal. You know, we are human beings making choices in a complicated world. All of us, I think, are called to try to speak truth to each other, to always look, as Jesus says, first at the log in our own eyes, and perhaps to focus more on where our own lives have become destructive.
DDM [30:19] and to be constantly practicing that discipline of being able to change ourselves, to forgive others, to always be working for the hope of the re-establishment of relationships that are just and healthy. And for those who wish to follow the teachings of Jesus, if we are to see Jesus in the face of those being imprisoned, We are by implication not only to treat them humanely but actually to see the face of God in them. Part of our faith practice should be to visit those who are imprisoned to make sure that they don’t become isolated from the rest of our society. We’re to actively work against current prison models because the freedom that Jesus calls for is the opposite of caging human beings which as we’ve said is really inhumane in of itself.
DDM [31:09] And our model should always focus on restorative justice and the potential of forgiveness rather than that punitive retribution. And so I think the ministry of Jesus actually asks us not just to reform prison systems, but to radically rethink the concepts of justice, human dignity, freedom, restoration, forgiveness, reconciliation, and as you say, Elizabeth, even ultimately democracy.
MET [31:55] Thank you for listening to the Priest and the Prof. Find us at our website, priestandprof.org. If you have any questions or concerns, feel free to contact us at podcast at priestandprof.org. Make sure to subscribe, and if you feel led, please leave a donation at priestandprof.org slash donate. That will help cover the costs of this podcast and support the ministries of Trinity Episcopal Church.
MET [32:20] Thank you, and we hope you have enjoyed our time together today.
DDM [32:24] Music by audionautix.com
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