The revolving door of the justice system

M.’S MOTHER WAS A SEVERE DRUG ADDICT. When she was two years old, M. was taken away, possibly already abused, developmentally delayed.

Since then she has been in and out of foster homes, never really bonding, and having no conscious memories of being valued or loved. Trying hard to adjust and cope in a society that seemed to reject her every step of the way, her teen years were frustrating, leaving her feeling like a physical and social failure. She was attracted to certain youth who befriended her, but slowly she found herself getting into drugs and trouble with the law.

Now she just finds herself in and out of jail. It is like a revolving door to her.

I remember the big revolving doors they used to have in department stores and hotels. I remember being scared of them, making “swooshing” sounds as they sucked me up and, with luck, deposited me on the street outside. Afraid of being hit from behind or getting stuck, I fearfully kept going around in circles. After some practice, especially with help from my friends, I managed to make a game of it and go round and round, going in circles, going nowhere.

Round and round

The phrase “revolving door” is often used to describe the need to “improve” the current system of justice in hopes for improved public safety – namely by “stopping the revolving door.”

The metaphor could be stretched in interesting ways, but the implication is that individuals in conflict with the law are playing with the door of the courts and prisons, just going round and round, and not spending enough time in prison. The implication also might be that once one goes through the door, one must spend a mandatory length of time in prison, preferably a fixed, long time for serious offences, and that will make the person better and society safer.

One important question is, however: after the prison time is up, will the person feel or be wanted back in the community? Or will she/he feel safer in the familiar surroundings of prison and go back through the door?

Working as a prison chaplain for over 15 years, I have seen many inmates afraid of going out through the door, since they did not have a community that wanted them back, a place where they would feel valued. Some would even be treated as an undesirable, a refugee, or worse, as an unwanted outcast.

Where could they go and find people who understood them, would listen to them or respect them? Where could they find decent housing, jobs that afforded wages to live on?

In prison they had health services and counseling for addictions, help for mental illness and for behaviour problems. There they had a support system. Where would they find these services in the community? Who would be their guide and coach as they treaded the mill of seeking and keeping appointments?

Out of proportion

Visiting a prison, one is struck by who is there, not just by the overcrowding and the controlling environment. Our Canadian prison populations include a disproportionate number of minorities and poor. Aboriginal people are notably over-represented: Statistics Canada reports that Aboriginal people make up 2 to 3 percent of society but 17 percent of federal prisoners.

Also, an increasing proportion of Canada’s prison and penitentiary population have mental illnesses, learning disabilities and personality disorders.

That observation is backed up by the Office of the Correctional Investigator (the ombudsperson for federal prisoners), which calls it a “dramatic rise” in its 2004-2005 report. The majority of these dispossessed and marginalized individuals committed their crimes while on drugs, and for drugs, in desperate attempts for survival.

The underlying roots of this sad situation are many. I see the oppressive social and structural roots of criminal behavior in racism, in the poverty of so many women – so many single mothers (this has been called the feminization of poverty) – and in how our individualistic, consumer-fixated society gets us to want so much stuff and spend so much money.

One cannot but be struck by the great disconnect: we are removing people with intense health, social and emotional needs from society, to teach them to be more healthy and responsible in society, without seriously addressing the structural forces and realities that keep these individuals and their families stuck in a cycle of poverty, addictions and crime.

Measure of a country

There is, I contend, a direct connection between crime and social justice in any community. Of course, many factors comprise the roots of crime. Bad individual choices to offend are beyond dispute; but it is also indisputable that some socially oppressive situations make criminal choices more likely.

A description I find most apt is to call the incidence of crime “a symbol of a lost community.” This puts into perspective the oft-quoted maxim of Winston Churchill: “The mood and temper of the public in regard to crime and criminals is one of the most unfailing tests of the civilization of any country.”

In other words, how we respond to crime reveals the ethos or spirit of our country. I marvel that those who need community and social support the most are likely the ones whom communities do not want to support. “Not in my back yard” (NIMBY) is often the community response when one tries to establish supportive structures for these needy human beings. Those who have this need include sex offenders, psychopathic individuals, people with both mental illness and substance abuse issues, those on methadone, and those with serious sexually transmitted diseases like HIV/AIDS.

Public safety is actually enhanced if we support and welcome these individuals, and assist them in obtaining local support services. It is not a so-called “soft” justice or prison system that creates the revolving door. Often the lack of community, and the lack of support and mutual accountability, is a big part of the problem.

It is a tragic commentary on Canadian society that prisoners have to go to jail to experience basic human rights, such as food, shelter and community. An important ethical rule we must protect is that criminals may lose many civil rights, but they do not become unworthy of basic human rights. We were created equal, each in the image and likeness of God, and a common-sense “get tough” approach is in danger of ignoring that creational norm.

Loving troubled neighbours

Responding to crime in a public and pluralistic, responsible way is often counterintuitive; it is as paradoxical as acknowledging that when we are weak, we are strong.

Given this, it is important to be informed and wise in considering crime control, and to exercise our collective moral attitude in a restorative manner towards our weakest, poorest and often problematic neighbours. We may not just abandon them as foreigners, but we must support and welcome them as one of our own. As we do that – as we act positively and wisely in addressing the needs and the harm done – we are creating a safer society for us all.

Responding to our troubled neighbours in punishment, by running them out of town or leaving them to “hide” in the anonymity of drug-infested and crime-ridden ghettoes will not help them, nor create a safer society. Withdrawing support as punishment will only force them to rely on resources they don’t have, and no doubt they soon again will go in through the prison door.

We know that mentally ill people and people with problem personalities (such as those affected by fetal alcohol syndrome) don’t learn from punishment. Addiction, we know, is more a health issue than one of rational choice. So why would we, as a wise society, want to use strategies that don’t work?

An ancient proverb in the Talmud goes something like this: “When you punish your brother or sister, you make them twice your relative.” Using this logic, it doesn’t make sense to further damage individuals, for then they would be a double burden for us to care for. In imposing damage on these sisters and brothers with whom we have an intimate bond, we abandon our responsibility. Any “punishment” we inflict should not further incapacitate, debilitate or further marginalize. Our interventions should serve to restore.

We already have the tools

The Canadian Criminal Code (sec. 718.1) advises that the least intrusive and invasive methods appropriate to the offender be used in sentencing. Mandatory minimum sentencing makes no sense from that creative and contextually dynamic standpoint. Both adult and youth offender systems endorse proactive and community options for creating a safer society. Removing individuals from society to an institution that has total control over their lives does not help them develop healthy self-direction, nor democratic social skills.

Since the 1960s (when the Ouimet Report of the Canadian Committee on Corrections was released), correctional policy has creatively sought alternatives to institutionalizing prisoners by making more community alternatives possible in sentencing. However, the public has also increasingly been voicing opposition to these community alternatives.

Home placement in the correctional system can be equated to home care in the health system – economical, effective, de-institutionalized solutions. However, many people don’t catch this parallel. Home placement gets called undeserved “house-arrest,” and seen as a weak alternative to “hard time.”

Clearly more public education is necessary on important practices such as restorative justice, conditional sentences, probation and parole.

It is important for citizens to voice their concerns and fears. Perhaps safe forums need to be created for public dialogue on criminal justice issues, because the community is a vital stakeholder in creating public safety. Local Canadian statistics and research are available, and it is important that each community be informed with facts specific to their own community, and not react from what is happening in other Canadian cities or south of the border.

Being poor is not a crime

In Vancouver we have the largest and poorest area in Canada, named the Downtown East Side. History and policy have conspired so that all the resources to address the needs of the poor and of addicts have been concentrated in this area.

Other communities just don’t want needle exchanges, methadone clinics, recovery homes, structured housing for the mentally challenged, shelters, social housing, etc. Thus, by default, all resources and expertise are placed in one concentrated area. That creates a scary place and puts the vulnerable poor at risk to health and safety, not to mention relapsing into addictions and crime.

Vancouver Sun architecture critic Trevor Boddy recently suggested that this concentration of human misery is dysfunctional, and that the whole city and province need to share the responsibilities of meeting these needs by locating social housing and appropriate support and structures elsewhere. I would desperately like to see structured housing provided for mentally challenged prisoners being released to a community, a service that is just not there, especially when they carry the stigma of “ex con.”

It is almost as though being homeless, poor and mentally ill is a crime in itself. Many who end up in prison are also drug addicts, having tried to manage their disorders on their own by self-medication. Housing allowances and minimum salaries are so low they place safe and affordable housing out of range for them, “outlawing” them to mouldy rooms in drug- and crime-ridden areas.

Another way to Welcome the Stranger

This is a call for communities in Canada to evaluate their attitude of welcome to those “returning strangers” as they come back from jail or are under correctional authority in their community.

Can we extend to them a welcoming hand out of genuine grace? Can we work with local advocacy and restorative justice agencies, correctional agencies and boards to address crime for youth and adults in a way that responds to the needs of victims and offenders, and to the needs of ourselves, the community?

Can we do this in a way that will not further alienate and destroy struggling families that are at risk, and place even more heavy burdens on them by sending wage-earners away to prison for a long time?

Much more dialogue needs to happen locally, but one fact I am sure of is that God calls us, in agape love, to respond to our neighbour, motivated not by what they deserve, but rather by what they need. Then we are on the path to creating a safer society, a society that extends shalom to all, even to the least of our brothers and sisters.

CPJ member Henk Smidstra is a chaplain in women’s prisons in Surrey and Maple Ridge, British Columbia. He was inspired by CPJ’s Welcome the Stranger: Becoming Neighbours initiative to write about other ways Canada can be a more welcoming society … and got his petitions filled out in support of refugees too.

This article was first printed in the Catalyst, the newsletter of Citizens for Public Justice