When the law jails people because they are gay, punishes people for marrying outside designated cultural groups, incites hate, should we abide quietly by those laws? Today, the world – most of its nations – jails more people than ever before in human history. “A theologian said that all will be well with me and all permitted to the degree that I obey the Council, and he added, ‘If the Council were to declare that you have but one eye, despite the fact that you may have two, it is your duty to agree with the Council.’ I replied to him: ‘Even if the whole world were to affirm that, I, utilising whatever reason I may possess, could not acknowledge such a thing without a rejection of my conscience.” (Karel Kosik, Czech philosopher and victim).

During the mid-18th century, notable Swiss physician Samuel Auguste Tissot published his medical treatise, L’Onanisme, in he which conjecturally argued ‘ill-effects’ from masturbation. His now discredited arguments were presented as scholarly and as scientific work and supported by respected luminaries such as Immanuel Kant and (Francios Arouet) Voltaire. For two centuries it was believed that masturbation was unhealthy. Cruel injustices were borne.

In the Puritan colony of New Haven, Connecticut, masturbators could be sentenced to death. So too homosexuals and blasphemers could be sentenced to death. Throughout humankind’s history laws have been borne by politicians and the production of these laws is endless, with the majority of these laws punitive measures to control humankind.

Today, the American prison industrial complex jails one in four of the world’s total prison population. Nearly two and a half million Americans are in jails. The majority have been jailed for victimless crimes.

I have written of redemption and forgiveness as ways forward instead of imprisonment and reoffending. There is nothing as profound as forgiveness. The forgiving of others validates self-worth, builds bridges and positive futures. Forgiveness cultivated and understood keeps families and society solid as opposed to the corrosive anger that diminishes people into the darkest places, into effectively being mentally unwell. Anger is a warning sign to become unwell. Love comes more natural to the human heart despite that hate can take one over. In the battle between love and hate, one will choose love more easily when in understanding of the endless dark place that is hate and of its corrosive impacts. Hate can never achieve what love ever so easily can. Hate and anger have filled our prisons with the mentally unwell, with the most vulnerable, with the poor – and not with the criminally minded.

I have worked to turn around the lives of as many people in jail as I possibly could but for every inmate or former inmate that people like me dedicate time to in order to improve their lot – ultimately there is a tsunami of poverty related issues and draconian laws that flood offenders and fill prisons. Jailing the poorest, most vulnerable, the mentally unwell, in my experience, only serves to elevate the risk of reoffending, of normalising disordered and broken lives, of digging deeper divides between people, of marginalising people. It has been my experience that in general people come out of prison worse than they went in.

We push maxims such as violence breeds violence, hate breeds hate but yet we incarcerate and punish like never before. Instead of prison sentences working as some sort of deterrent we have reoffending, arrest and jailing rates increasing year in year out.

One of society’s failures is the punitive criminal justice system and the penal estate. However despite the punitive penal estate having clearly failed society, we continue with it. For some it has become easier to lie and act as if the failure is a success or as if there no alternatives than to accept the workload in another direction. Fyodor Dostoyevsky, I the Brothers Karamazov, wrote, “Above all, don’t lie to yourself. The man who lies to himself and listens to his own lie comes to a point that he cannot distinguish the truth within him, or around him, and so loses all respect for himself and for others. And having no respect he ceases to love.”

We have lied for so long in this capitalistic meritocratic society that for far too many, especially for those in the consummation of privilege – they have ceased to love and to forgive. The psychological, emotional and spiritual wellbeing of others, of those most vulnerable – lost to them. The mantra these days is the suffocation of ‘self-responsibility’.

Dostoyevsky, who also authored Crime and Punishment and the House of the Dead, wrote, “The degree of civilisation in a society can be judged by entering its prisons.”

Australia has doubled its prison population during the last 20 years with a disproportionate hit on the marginalised, particularly with the descendants of the First Nations peoples of this continent. First Nations peoples comprise 28 per cent of the total prison population though they are less than 3 per cent of the nation’s total population. I estimate that by 2025 First Nations people will comprise one in every two Australian prisoners. This is an abomination – moral, political and otherwise. Staring from the racialised lens, Western Australia, the Northern Territory and South Australia jail First Nations peoples at among the world’s highest rates, with Western Australia competing for the mother of all jailers.

What are their crimes? They have been born into extreme disadvantage, extreme poverty and into a spectrum with deplorable levels of likelihood of their deterioration from a state of hopelessness to being mentally unwell. Socrates understood that esteem was imperative to the striving for justice and goodness. This is where we fail people, we are not there to build or rebuild their esteem, to strive lovingly. Socrates would have us believe evils are the result of the ignorance of good. I am with Socrates – we have a society that is not bent in reinforcing the innate, of reinforcing ‘good’, and instead we have a society that demands an impression of what good might be and punish those who transgress. What we are after is unilateral orderliness among all people – and justice argues itself as blind, where everyone is equal but this is a stupendous lie, the law supports privilege and thrashes into the vulnerable, poor and the sick – inequality is entrenched by the criminal justice system.

Sjoren Kierkegaard argued that sin meant wilfulness and unlike the Socratic view of ignorance of good, Kierkegaard was bent by the view that some people simply do not want to be good. As naïve as I may appear, the Socratic view aligns with what I have seen in prisons – of people who want to be good, innately are good, but who have accumulated despair, displaced anger, resentment from impoverished or disrupted upbringings.

–          An inmate said to me, “It is best I am here, and best I keep on coming back, because it is the only hope my children have.”

–          An inmate said, “I have no hope in here but it’s even worse out there.”

The penal estate is not rehabilitative, not restorative and not transformational. There are limited job skills programs, limited education opportunities. The penal estate should have been an investiture in people rather than a dungeon, an abyss. The opportunity for healing, psychosocial empowerment, for forgiveness, for redemption, for education skills and qualifications are continually bypassed. This madness never ceases to shock me.

Australia’s overall prison rate is 151 prisoners per 100,000 Australian population and ranks 98th in the world – of 222 ranked nations. Australia is an affluent nation, the world’s 12th biggest economy. However standalone Aboriginal and Torre Strait Islanders compared to the world’s national prison rates, they would be the world’s highest – higher than the Seychelles which incarcerates its people at 799 per 100,000. The United States of America ranks second to the Seychelles, with 698 per 100,000. However in Western Australia, Aboriginal peoples are incarcerated at more than 3,700 per 100,000 Aboriginal population. In Western Australia, one in 13 of all Aboriginal adult males is in prison.

Nationally, one in 9 of all Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islanders living have been to jail – in Western Australia it’s one in 6.

Forgiveness is not an act of mercy but of empathy, compassion, of virtue. According to vast bodies of research forgiveness has many benefits, outstripping negatives and risks. Forgiveness strengthens families, communities, societies. The most significant finding is the obvious, that forgiveness makes us happier. Forgiveness improves the health of people and communities. Forgiveness sustains relationships. Forgiveness builds and rebuilds lives. Forgiveness connects people, and what better medium for this than through kindness. It was Archbishop Desmond Tutu, the chairperson of South Africa’s Truth and Reconciliation Commission who argued forgiveness as the only way forward to “true enduring peace.”

Someone I correspond with regularly emailed this Chinese proverb, “It is better to light a small candle rather than curse the darkness.”

We have seen where we will be led to when the only response to crime is punishment. The United States jails nearly one per cent of its total population – 2,300,000 people. Are so many really so bad or is the United States extremely harsh on its most vulnerable? One in four of the world’s prisoners are in American jails. This is the future we need to avoid.

If Australia would contemplate an amnesty – an immediate release- of very low level offenders – more than 8,000 of its 35,000 prison population would walk out today. If Australia was prepared to release its mentally unwell either into community care or specialist care, again more than 8,000 would walk out today. But at all times we should be working closely, lovingly, forgivingly with those inside and so bring them out of the prison experience not worse but better.

As it stands, there is an elevated risk of death by suicide, substance misuse and by risk taking misadventure in the first year post-release – up to ten times according to all the research. We do ever so little for people pre- and post-release.

Society – the criminal justice system, custodial systems and ancillary support systems – will gain more from forgiveness, helping, empowering people than from any other measure. This is not to suggest some crimes should not require imprisonment but that all people are capable of redemption, and that there are far too many who should not be jailed and instead supported, and that all times we should be doing what we can for our most troubled souls.

People are more likely to be good without having to go to prison and instead supported. For those who are sentenced to prison, these must be places where people come first, not last. But there must be forgiveness. They must be assisted in every way to forgive themselves. As a society our focus must on forgiving and redemption. The most powerful kick-start is a society – the justice systems and governments – who are forgiving and hence the message of love rushing everyone. For far too many people, repentance without forgiveness is torturous. But we must be a forgiving society to make this possible, and for now the odds are against us, as for the many people forgiveness is a radical, gratuitous proposition.

“There is no such thing as good guys and bad guys. All people do good and bad things, including you. You can never know for sure what you would do in another person’s shoes,” wrote Michelle Alexander, the author of “The New Jim Crow: Mass Incarceration in the Age of Colour Blindness.”

Baz Dreisinger author of “Incarceration Nations”, referred to Norwegian prisons. The prisons are small with on average fewer than 50 inmates. The prisons are spread throughout Norway to keep inmates connected to their families and communities. Sentences are short and redemption is the imperative, with few having to serve out their full sentence. Norway boasts among Europe’s lowest reoffending rates. Healing and wellbeing are at the fore, and through this spreading of love there is validation – self-esteem and self-worth.

The governor of a Norwegian prison – Bastoy Island – said, “It’s really very simple. Treat people like dirt and they be dirty. Treat them like human beings and they will act like human beings.”

Rwanda, where only a little over two decades ago an entire nation was subsumed by mass slaughter has been failed by retribution, finishing up with among the world’s highest incarceration and reoffending rates. So Rwanda may go down the path of healing and forgiveness – for redemption, for transformational restorative justice.

Dreisinger argues that mandatory minimum sentences, three-strike laws, militarised police forces have led to the American prison complex, where millions are incarcerated, home to one in four of the world’s prisoners. But America has jailed its poorest – the most disadvantaged, its vulnerable. This has led to the prison industrial complex which is today is exploited as prison labour.

Nearly four-fifths of the American prison population is comprised effectively of inmates convicted of victimless crimes. Australia, and in particular, Western Australia and the Northern Territory, is jailing more and more people for victimless crimes – the marginalised, the poorest – Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islanders.

Many of the crimes of today are not crimes but some of our laws are in effect criminal – where we see fine defaulters jailed, where we see vagrants jailed, where we see the disorderly jailed, where we finish up with the mentally unwell incarcerated for low level offending, where we see people jailed for swearing. It could be argued that the legal system is unnecessarily harsh and ‘criminal’ in its general refusal to encourage healing and forgiveness and redemption.

Australia has doubled its prison population during the last two decades but the actual crime rate has not doubled. We are inventing new categories of ‘crimes’.

The legal language needs to change and we should urge this – without a cultural shift little will change. Politicians will continue to make bad laws unless we unfold a social justice and human rights vocabulary where forgiveness and redemption are majorly meanings.

 

–          Declaration of impartiality – Gerry Georgatos is a suicide prevention researcher and prison reform advocate with the Institute of Social Justice and Human Rights