First Unitarian Universalist Society of Albany
"Crime and Punishment"
Rev. Samuel A. Trumbore March 18, 2001

Prisoners in tense and overcrowded penitentiaries live in an environment where a knife to the throat or a metal pipe to the back of the head is a socially appropriate response to an insult or indiscretion. People may be attacked for looking someone in the eye, glancing into someone else's cell or, as in one case described to me, taking too long in the shower. Prisoners must be ready to defend themselves at all times and failure to retaliate will likely be exploited as a sign of weakness.

For a drug dealer, a prison sentence is a business opportunity. In a society that puts more drug abusers in jail than in treatment centers there will always be a demand for dope in prison. There will always be visitors, staff or trades people to smuggle drugs in. Prison life encourages people to use drugs more. Prisoners resort to drugs to relieve tensions and boredom. Even non-users feel pressured to indulge, so that their peers do not suspect them of being informants.

Apathy
Many people believe that tough prison sentences teach inmates discipline. But they usually have the opposite effect, making prisoners passive and lazy. In a maximum-security prison, inmates are told when to leave their cells in the morning, when to go to work and when to go to bed. Meals are served on trays. More securely controlled prisoners have the trays brought to their cells. Prisoners forget how to shop, cook, look for work and generally fend for themselves. 'Sometimes I wish I was back in that cell. It was so easy,' confides one former prisoner.

Selfishness

Prison teaches you to be selfish and suspicious of other people. Helen, a former inmate at the Prison for Women, realized this change in herself when a neighbor knocked at her door asking if she could spare some milk. Before her long sentence, Helen lived communally, espousing ideals of peace and co-operation. Now she was asking herself: 'What's in it for me? What's her angle? Is she trying to con me?' One has to ask such questions in prison, because people are continually trying to con one another and it is dangerous to be perceived as an easy mark.

Conclusion
It is perhaps somewhat paranoid to believe ... that correction officers expect that inmates will commit more crimes and return to jail in future. C.O.'s do not need to drum up more business in a world where crime is rigorously prosecuted, but poverty and other social ills ignored. It is probably more reasonable to conclude that it is in spite of the best efforts of most staff members to create a rehabilitative environment that prisons teach people to be more violent, angry, helpless and hopeless.

(The following quotes are from women incarcerated at Bedford Hills who participated in the Family Violence Program, a therapeutic program for survivors of family violence. Bedford Hills is a New York State maximum security prison in Westchester County.)

"The way we grew up we were in prison in our homes and all our lives. No one listened and when we spoke up it was turned against us. There was never anyone to trust, no confidentiality, no one cared. We're human beings, who, in spite of it all, survived."

"How can you change when you're always looking over your shoulder, when you are always living and reliving trauma? How can we even know who we are or what we are in this life in the midst of all the incest, abuse, foster homes, jails and turmoil? How can we know who we really are when we were always told we're nothing, a piece of dirt, we'll never amount to anything and should have never been born, we never did anything right."

"Understand what fear and terror do to a women's life - when we feel safer turning tricks on the streets than going home at night to our families, when the dope fiend friends are safer than our fathers, when the gangs and drug dealers treat us better than our mothers. When we look at the terror in our eyes, reflected in the terror of our children's eyes, when we hear our children begging us not to leave them, not to do any more drugs, fighting off those that hit us and crying, always crying."

By Eve Ensler, director and playwright who worked with women in that writing group at Bedford Hills Correctional Facility

"Everyone is at Bedford because of a mistake -- Some of those mistakes occurred within months - some within minutes. Most of the mistakes were dreadful, catastrophic Now we have frozen them in their mistake. .. Marked them forever. .. Held captive. .. Discarded. .. Hated for their mistake. .. They have essentially been forced to become their mistake, the walking daily embodiment of their mistake. Held in the monument constructed to punishing mistakes.

Before I came to Bedford, I imagined the women there - mistakes lying on mistake cots behind steel mistake bars.

Mistakes do not have faces or feelings or histories or futures. ... They are bad. .. Mistakes. .. We must forget them - put them away. .. Then I came to Bedford.

Slowly I began to meet the mistakes -- one by one. They had soft, delicate voices, strong hands, beautiful faces, feisty spirits, outrageous laughs. These mistakes were mothers, daughters, sisters, aunts, Christians, Muslims, Buddhists, Jews - they had fantasies and toothaches and bad moods and funky t-shirts.

There is the mistake. .. It is one moment. .. It is in the past. .. It is ruined. .. It cannot be changed.

Then -- there is the woman.

Our system of criminal justice is horribly, tragically broken. The readings just give a taste of what is going wrong. Lives are wrecked rather than reconstructed in most prison settings today, all because of mistakes. Can this kind of inhuman punishment really fit their crimes?

Few incarcerated individuals are happy with the fairness of their punishment. Raskolnikov the main character in Dostoevsky's book Crime and Punishment, believed his crime of murder was justified because his victim, a money lender, was a social pariah. Yet he was deeply affected by his crime in ways his reason could not shake off. The torturing divisions in his character make the book a timeless classic.

Except for the psychopaths and sociopaths, every person who commits a crime has this same inner conflict. There are personal motivations that drive them toward the crime and social motivations that restrain them. Laws help us balance our personal motivations with what is good for others. The foundation of our law comes from our deepest values and beliefs.

Historically laws were based on religious injunctions as they still are today in Islamic society. The reason thieves' hands still get cut off for stealing is because that punishment is specified in the Quran and codified in the hadd. With the separation of church and state in the Western world, today we do not put people in jail because they break the 10 commandments but rather because they have violated a secular legislated body of law.

Laws against harm to oneself or others are probably the most obvious kind of statute most societies codify. The cohesion and commitment to a social order depends on inhibiting and redirecting the urge to strike out in anger. In some parts of the world violence may be legalized in ways such as self defense, revenge killing, blood money and honor duels but the murder of the innocent in just about all societies is prohibited.

The most controversial laws are what we commonly call victimless crimes. "Hey, if I smoke some dope at a party, who have I harmed?" "If I like the stimulation of pornography what's the big deal?" "It ain't nobody's business but mine." I'm afraid this isn't how the laws are written. The values and social norms of the society are harmed by these actions. Some substances are so addicting that just one use is enough to wreck one's body chemistry. Self-destructive behavior harms the social order. Addiction destroys families and decreases economic productivity. Some kinds of pornography involve the abuse of children. Even if the pornography involves consenting adults, it typically degrades women and directs people's sexual energy away from the social good of committed relationships and wholesome family values.

Why do most of us follow these laws even though at times we might wish to do otherwise? We have internalized these restraints for the common good. Society can exert these claims on us because we participate in a social contract. In exchange for some limitations on our freedom (to kill, to steal and to smoke dope) we gain the benefits and protection of society. And when the social contract is violated, punishment is meted out. The challenge is fitting the punishment to the crime.

This problem can sometimes inspire a Solomonic sense of justice. A lawyer defending a man convicted of burglary tried this creative appeal:

"My client merely inserted his arm into the window and removed a few trifling articles. His arm is not himself, and I fail to see how you can punish the whole individual for an offense committed by his limb."

"Well put," the judge replied. "Using your logic, I sentence the defendant's arm to one year's imprisonment. He can accompany it or not, as he chooses."

The gavel hit the bench with a thud. The defendant smiled. With his lawyer's assistance, he detached his artificial limb, laid it on the table, and walked.

I don't think any of us appreciate the challenge of fitting the punishment to the crime until we become parents. All of a sudden, we are charged with the responsibility of directing a child away from anti-social behavior and toward pro-social behavior. Reward and punishment become daily tools of justice making. If my son Andy takes what isn't his, refuses to do his homework or breaks a family rule, Philomena and I must decide what the consequence will be. Unhappiness is likely to be the immediate result for all of us.

Let's take the example of stealing. The punishment I'll settle on will depend on what theory of punishment I'm using. The simplest form of punishment has no other motive than to administer retribution. If you steal money from my wallet, you're grounded for the week. Each offense has a logical and rational consequence. Do the crime, do the time. The crime upsets the social harmony and the just punishment restores it.

Most people in prison grew up with parents or adults who only knew retributive punishment, lashing out at their children for any misbehavior, teaching violence as a solution to injustice.

Yet if the punishment is too weak, it may not prevent future infractions. A child can put up with his mom yelling at him for stealing if he knows there will be no other consequences. Yelling restores the social order for the mother by blaming the child but may not change the child's behavior.

Closely linked to retributive punishment is the theory of deterrents. If I want to instill fear in my child's mind, I'll make the punishment so unpleasant that the thought of such future punishment will deter my child from ever stealing again. This kind of punishment is a very effective form of adversative conditioning as long as the punishment is severe enough and the child premeditates the action. Unfortunately, choosing to strike out in anger and other crimes of passion or addiction, do not respond as well to this theory of punishment. Few criminals are good at rational cost-benefit analysis. Few non-criminals are either.

The more modern view of punishment focuses on rehabilitation. The reason my child is stealing is because there is some abnormality in his psyche and character that needs correcting. She is acting out aggressively because of an unresolved trauma that dates back to her toilet training. He has a problem at school and is acting it out at home. There is some kind of a disharmony in the child's inner world that needs attention and resolution. Sadly, not everyone can be rehabilitated this way. This theory of punishment assumes our happiness and satisfaction comes from successful social integration. It isn't so effective when the crime comes from desire or anger rather than pathology or ignorance.

Another theory of punishment that is becoming more popular today is one called restorative justice, combining the retributive with the rehabilitative. The goal is to actively rather than passively mend the social fabric torn by the crime. If a theft is committed, returning the stolen property and apologizing to the person violated might resolve the situation. The goal is to find a way to repair the social damage created by a crime AND reform the person who committed the crime.

The right theory of punishment proportionally calibrated to fit the crime supports the social order, encourages obedience to the law and builds social commitment and loyalty. The wrong theory misused or the right theory disproportionally or incorrectly applied creates the kind of mess our prisons are in today. And women's correctional facilities prove the point.

The draconian drug laws have filled our prisons with women being punished using the theories of deterrence and retribution. What is really needed is rehabilitative and restorative justice. In 1970 there were fewer than 6000 women in prison across our nation. By 1998 there were 80,000 incarcerated with another 14,000 teen-age girls in juvenile facilities. And eighty percent of them were mothers of children under 18.(2) The social cost of incarcerating mothers goes far beyond whatever crime they have committed. The trauma families' experience is difficult to comprehend. One of the most frightening statistics I discovered was about half the children of fathers and mothers in prison end up there too.

I don't think putting mothers in jail is what the public wants. In careful research done by the Edna McConnell Clark Foundation(3) in the early 1990's, subjects were interviewed about their theory of punishment. The researchers discovered their subjects held coherent and rational positions on punishment. They favored imprisonment, not because they liked it, but because it is closer than nothing to what they want. They basically wanted offenders to be changed. They were unhappy with prisons in this regard because prisons don't do the job. They understand rehabilitation as moving from undisciplined hedonism to self-control and disciplined work. They believe the ingredients for this change are work, supervision, discipline, and a modality of self-improvement such as education, vocational training, and therapy. They envisioned prison as an indentured change experience. The only people they believe need to be held in prison for long periods of time are violent offenders. The rest need rehabilitation.

Some in the corrections world are hearing the people and responding. In Pine Bluff, Arkansas, the inmates are separated from the main prison population and organized in therapeutic communities for 90 days to 24 months. The program offers a range of services from vocational counseling to parenting training.

In the Women's Correctional Institution in Wilmington, Delaware, roughly 42 women at a time live and work together in a positive family environment for 6 to 18 months. A "women oriented" focus is used to deal with issues of self-esteem, sexuality/intimacy, interpersonal skills, relationships with family and significant others, cultural/ ethnic identity, parenting, health issues, empowerment, job skills, leisure time, and drug/alcohol use. The village staff is primarily female. Among the many techniques used are transactional analysis, psychodrama, branch groups, encounter and feelings groups, and seminars. (4)

Broken as our system is, there are innovators out there looking for new ways to break the cycle of poverty, addiction, crime and hopelessness for women that assume they have inherent worth and dignity. These women should not be exiled from the human race when they go to jail. It is morally objectionable to have them incarcerated in situations that strip them of their worth and dignity. We have a responsibility to speak out against locking people up 23 hours a day for extended periods of time in what are euphemistically called Special Housing Units.

When we treat human beings like animals, they become animals that cannot function in society anymore, if they ever could. Particularly with first time non-violent offenders, we need to find new ways, like the ones being tried in Delaware and Arkansas, to build people up rather than tearing them down. We know they can be prepared to re-enter society and almost all will be returning at some point in time. And we know that if we address the social problems and oppressions when they are young, they may never end up in jail in the first place.

There are no panaceas, or easy answers here. Some will be beyond help. Most will not. These men and women have made mistakes. They have been hurt, frightened and abandoned. In the words of the great Universalist John Murray, let us not give them hell but hope. Let us turn our correctional system from a form of torture to a foundation for a new life.

Copyright © 2001 by Samuel A. Trumbore. All rights reserved.

(1) New Internationalist, 1996, Issue 282,

(2) Kauffman, Kelsey, "Mothers in Prison", Corrections Today Magazine, February 2001 issue, p 62.

(3) Duff, Anthony, et. Al., Penal Theory and Practice: Tradition and innovation in criminal justice, Fulbright Papers 14, 1994, Manchester U. Press, p. 125-6

(4) Substance Abuse Treatment for Women Offenders Guide to Promising Practices Technical Assistance Publication Series 23 Patricia A. Kassebaum U.S. DEPARTMENT OF HEALTH AND HUMAN SERVICES Public Health Service, Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration, Center for Substance Abuse Treatment Rockwall II, 5600 Fishers Lane, Rockville, MD 20857