A Prison Justice Sermon

By Betty Edson

Strafford – JULY 20, 2008

 I probably shouldn’t tell you this, but I am using Strafford as a guinea pig today! I am to do a sermon at my church in Randolph sometime this summer about prison justice, and I thought to myself, “Aha! Strafford always gives me good feedback! I think I’ll come up with that sermon right now!” So here goes!

I’ve been Chair of the Vermont Conference Prison Justice Committee since its inception three years ago. There are many things in God’s weary world that we could and no doubt should be concerned about, but prison justice, it would be fair to say, is not apt to be a high priority for most of us. So it may be of interest to you to know how I happened to center in on that. I expect that many of you know or have heard of Hal Harrison. Hal was one of our Vermont Conference ministers for probably 25 years, and he is much loved. His primary area was Christian Education; but he also has been very involved in spiritual direction - he has been my Spiritual Director for 20 years. What many people do not know, and I have Hal’s permission to say this, is that one of his two adult sons has been in and out of jail many times, due to issues connected to drugs and alcohol – a real heart-breaker for their family. From time to time, over the years, Hal would comment casually that this was an issue no-one seemed to be interested in; and as the time for his retirement rolled around, some of us who were or had been on the Department of Mission made the decision that bringing the whole prison situation to greater awareness was the least we could do in appreciation for all that Hal has done for so many of us – and thus the Prison Justice Committee was born.

It has been an interesting journey; and if we have learned nothing else, we have learned that this is a HUGE and complicated issue, with more handles one could grab than our small group has wisdom, time or energy to do! Much of the three years has been spent in raising our own consciousness – we’ve had a meal at Dismas House, the half-way house in Rutland; we’ve met with the Commissioner of Corrections; some of us attended the annual workshop event of The Church at Prison, which is a very active and faithful and very fundamentalist ministry in Vermont; we visited one of the state’s Justice Centers; and we’ve had various speakers come to our meetings. What seems to be coming out of all this is three-fold – a website soon to be launched; efforts at advocacy when appropriate; and an effort to increase people’s interest in volunteering along the whole corrections spectrum. In that regard, we’ve held two workshop days, one in Springfield and one in St. Albans, with others hopefully to come, where we have a supper and some presenters about various volunteer possibilities, and then we have a tour of the correctional facility in the area. So I guess you could say we’ve made SOME progress, although it seems like very slow-going.

My biggest question for today was how to go about creating a sermon, an interpretation of God’s word, as opposed to just giving a lecture on the subject. So I’d like first, to establish a Biblical context here.

One of the passages I chose for today was the one from Luke 4, that begins, “The Spirit of the Lord is upon me, because I have come to bring good news to the poor.” It is one of my most favorite scripture passages, one that I made a point to learn by heart. You will recall that it takes place right after Jesus has struggled in the wilderness with temptation. He comes back from the desert, and we might say that this is his mission statement, as he starts his three year ministry. Significantly, it is a message of justice. It talks about giving sight to the blind, but it also talks about Jesus being good news for the poor, about letting the oppressed go free, AND about proclaiming liberty to captives. Jesus is reading here from the book of Isaiah, and although I did not have them read this morning, I’d like to recite two other verses right here, one from Micah and one from Amos, just to remind us that this theme of justice is a strong one in the Hebrew scriptures, as well as in the New Testament. “Let justice roll down like waters,” says Amos, “and righteousness like an ever-flowing stream.” And from Micah, “What does the Lord require of you, but to do justice, love kindness and walk humbly with your God.” So, over-all, ANY kind of justice is God’s business – and therefore ours. Clearly we want to keep our citizens safe and to protect them from harm, but there is plenty in the present correctional system that is not just.

Then there is this verse from Hebrews, which I also did not ask to have read - “Remember those in prison as if you were in prison with them,” and there is the wonderful passage from Matthew that we did hear this morning where Jesus says to those he welcomes into the kingdom, “When I was in prison you visited me,” and when they ask, “When? When? When were you in prison and we visited you?” he says, “When you did it unto the least of these, you did it to me.” So we might say that the call to prison ministry and justice is actually spelled out for us.

Lastly, we heard the story of the Prodigal Son. It is a beautiful story, reminding us that God’s forgiveness and willingness to welcome us and work with us are all-encompassing. It is important for us to internalize the message of that parable. I am especially interested in the part about the older son, because he is you and me. We make our mistakes, but, for the most part, we see ourselves as good citizens, and it is, therefore, easy for us to sit in judgment of those who are in trouble with the law. Given media hype and TV drama, we have a mental picture of criminals, and it’s a scary one. One woman who went on one of our prison tours commented on how the inmates looked like really nice young men. Not all of them are! But there are a lot of people locked up who have made a mistake, possibly even a bad one, but who are, nonetheless, redeemable, and God’s arms are open to them, as well, if they are trying to get back on track.

I have put out back a little fact sheet, and I will mention only a couple of the facts on it, to whet your interest. The U.S. has 5% of the world’s population; yet we incarcerate 25% of the world’s prisoners - one in 100 American adults. The cost nationally to us, as tax-payers, is $60 billion dollars annually, and in Vermont alone, $100 million. That represents a five-fold increase in just twenty years. Of note here is that the great percentage of these crimes are non-violent crimes, and they are frequently related to addiction. Being “tough on crime” has indeed brought down the crime rate, but although Canada has not increased the percentage of people it incarcerates over this same period, its crime rate also has gone down. It is VERY important to crack down on violent crime, but our over-all getting tough policy has gotten tough on the tax-payers, without really significant public safety benefit.

I want to share with you a very interesting experience that I had last summer. The Brattleboro Justice Center invited people from somewhere in the Midwest to do a simulation, in which I took part, of what it is like to rejoin society after incarceration. There were probably 50 of us participants, and we were each given a packet of materials, which included our supposed identity, as a specific released prisoner. I was supposedly a man, about 45 years of age; I was a sex offender, although my crime had been consensual sex with a woman who would soon come of age. Not good, but not really what we think of as pedophilia either. I was required to wear a green arm-band to indicate that I was a sex offender. In my packet, I had a social security card; the chance for a job, because I had had welding training in jail; temporary housing; maybe $35. in cash; a check for about $1000. which represented a small inheritance I had received and money I had earned in jail – and some other things, including a list of what I needed to accomplish during the first month after my release.

We were all sitting in the middle of the auditorium, and around the edge were various stations that represented the agencies we would need – parole board, church, Food Shelf, Thrift Shop, bank, vocational help, and that sort of thing. The idea was that, when the whistle blew, we were to take the list of tasks from our packet and start working on them. Fifteen minutes later, the whistle would blow again and we were to return to our seats immediately. This would happen four times, to represent our first four weeks as free people.

Well, when the whistle blew, I headed right off to the Parole Board and registered. My list said I needed an ID, so I went to that table next. That was going to cost more cash than I had, so I was told that I would need to go cash my check. The line was LONG. JUST as I got to the teller, the whistle blew. Once back in my seat, the leader asked the “policeman” if there needed to be any arrests, before we started week two; and to my great surprise, I was arrested and sent back to jail for a brief period. I had failed to register as a Sex Offender. Well, once released from jail (after two minutes, to represent a couple of days), I IMMEDIATELY signed up as a sex offender, as you may imagine, and then got back in the line for the bank. Again, I didn’t quite make it, and again I was arrested, because I had failed to go back to the Parole Board for my Week Two appointment! At the end of the four fifteen-minute periods, I had managed to get through the tasks that I was supposed to do in the first week!

What was interesting, though, was what was going on inside of me during these experiences. When I went back to the Parole Board, once week three started, the very nice Parole Officer, who was a man who really had been in jail, and was now on the straight and narrow, and who, I am sure, treated me more kindly than a real Parole Officer might have, said, “Why didn’t you report last week?” “Oh, my gosh,” I said, “You wouldn’t believe it! There was no way I could have done everything!” “I don’t think you’re taking this very seriously,” he said, and I could feel the tears coming up into my eyes. Thus did I learn that my wiles, the way I get through life successfully, by laughing and trying to be pleasant and making light of things, didn’t work in this situation. Standing in line for the bank, the third time around, I remember thinking, “I can’t do this. I really can’t. I’m absolutely overwhelmed. I’m going to go to the church and say to the pastor, “I really need your help,” but when I looked over to the church table, it was closed; and I expect that is not unusual, either, either literally or symbolically, due to the fear and/or apathy of many congregations. The second time I was returned to jail, one of the men who was in jail with me, looked at my green armband and said to the guard, “Get her out of here. I don’t want to be in the same room with her.” The guard refused to comply, but said that actually, it was time for me to be released; and as I stood up to leave, this man looked at me with hatred and said, “Well, stay away from MY kids!” I don’t get angry easily, but I could feel the anger rising, because I knew what my crime had been, and that it had nothing to do with molesting little kids. At the end of the four time periods, the leader asked how many of us had arranged for permanent housing. I hadn’t even managed to get to talk to my temporary housing person! The leader asked those of us who had not managed to arrange housing to assemble at one side of the auditorium, and it was most of us. “I just want you to be aware,” she said. “you are now homeless.” It was a VERY powerful exercise. The present system really does a very good job of setting people up for failure; yet we continue to put far more money into building bigger and bigger prisons than we do into rehabilitation programs or programs that might help a person through such a transition.

One thing I’ve learned over the last two years is about the manifold frustrations that are involved for families of people who are incarcerated, and for inmates. Although family support is a significant plus in efforts to rehabilitate, visitation is next to impossible if “your” prisoner has been sent out-of-state, as about 500 Vermonters have been; and family members who are able to get to Kentucky or Virginia may discover that this nets them a two hour visit, and that’s it. Here at home, someone can visit a prison all summer long in shorts, and then, with no warning, they can arrive one day to learn that anyone wearing shorts will not be allowed a visit. Though it is not a significant problem in Vermont, there are frequently exorbitant phone fees charged to inmates, because prisons make deals with phone companies and receive a percentage of the money. A prisoner with whom I correspond, who is now in Kentucky, wrote me, “This facility is the worst as to inmate pay. As a Teacher’s Aide in the Virginia facility, I earned forty-five cents an hour; here for the same job and the same six hours a day, I get eighty cents a day. On the flip side,” he continued, “many items that we received free in Vermont, we have to purchase here – hygiene products, for example.”

Well, there is much that I could tell you and that you could read, and believe me, I do not have any easy answers. I guess my hope today is, quite simply, to encourage your interest in the issue. Doing something like adult basic education or helping conduct a worship service in a correctional facility is very interesting and enlightening, but Strafford is not situated near one of the Vermont prisons. If you are at a place in your life where you are open to another volunteer job, however, there are, many possibilities across the corrections spectrum – court diversion, parole and reparation boards, writing to prisoners, helping with Camp Agape, the camp for children with incarcerated parents, or working with a victims’ rights group. My guess, however, is that I am speaking to a group of people who are already in over their heads as to volunteer or other commitments, but even if that is the case, there is still the possibility of learning, of increasing our awareness. There is a wonderful and quick read, entitled “Do Not Pass Go” which is a book written for middle-school kids. It’s about a young boy whose dad is in jail, and how he struggles with that. Unfortunately, our web page won’t be up and running until Jim Thomas gets back from vacation, but it will, hopefully, offer lots of links to articles that can raise our consciousness. The whole sex offender thing looms large right now, of course, given the terrible tragedy in Randolph, and it is an excellent example, I think, of how our emotions can get ahead of our common sense and find us endorsing “remedies” which make us feel good but really do nothing to solve the problem about which we are concerned.

The LEAST we can do, I think, is be well-enough informed that we don’t make knee-jerk decisions. I am still very upset that my home town was unwilling to even put to a vote the possibility of having a work camp there. The Work Camp in St. Albans has done amazing work at the UCC Atkinson Retreat Center in Newbury over the years, with NO problems and, as a matter of fact, some very positive interactions between people putting their lives back together and the citizens of that town, but the stereotype won out in Randolph, and we didn’t even consider it.

In closing, let me bring us back to what I believe to be the bottom line, theologically. The Bible verse that springs to mind is the one about taking the log out of one’s own eye, before worrying about the speck in the eye of your neighbor – the whole idea that every one of is, at the same time, both Prodigal Son and Older Son. We are, most of us, essentially good, but we know, if we are really honest, that we are also, each of us, sinful and flawed. What I am going to read is from a funny little book I bought back in the 60’s, and it was, at the time, an eye-opener for me. Here it is. “I always thought: there’s one commandment Moses brought down from the mountain that I could NEVER break. Thou shalt not kill. Inconceivable that I would use a gun or knife or anything to KILL someone. But . . . is this the one? Is this the one that covers killing somebody’s joy, enthusiasm, incentive, faith in himself, or faith in others? Killing hope? Reputations? Making a killing in business?? Not a gun or a knife, but a look, snicker, a comment (or NO comment), paying a starvation wage, wielding your authority as boss or parent or teacher or bishop. Kill – with a ball point pen or sharp tongue, you can strangle, shoot down, choke or stab. It may take them 37 or 53 years to die, but you have killed them (just the same). May God help each of us to remember that there, but for God’s grace, go we; may God help each of us to stand fast on the need to protect society, but move beyond stereotypes to good policy that will do that in a more just fashion, and will implement programs that might, where possible, help those who have made mistakes become productive members of society. We sometimes say facetiously, “You can pick your friends, but you can’t pick your relatives.” I say to you, very seriously, we are all part of the family of God, whether we like it or not, and these are our brothers and sisters that we are talking about.