In American culture, it is quite common to refer to an incarcerated person by their crime: they are a murderer, a rapist, a robber, etc. In our minds, they become indistinguishable from the worst moment of their lives; they are their crime. Alternatively, most of us can expect that people will not judge us based solely on our worst moments.
In our all-too-brief hour together, the great gap between our lived experiences became stark: the everyday terms that come from being on the inside that were new to me, the importance of putting up a strong façade to hide vulnerability. How young were they before others wrote them off as bad apples, mere "pre-criminals" who were swiftly pumped into the school-to-prison pipeline? Did their mistreatment become a self-fulfilling prophecy?
More than anything else, I saw hurt young men, who had subsequently hurt others. It was but a mere moment amidst a series of unfortunate events, decisions, and exclusions. We need to have forms of accountability when we hurt others or damage relationships, but our society's solution seems to be to isolate and demonize young men in need of healing. All that "getting tough on crime" shows is that we worship a God of retribution more than the God revealed in Jesus, a God who is crucified on behalf of power and domination.
Our visit was but one small moment, one brief encounter, one tiny facet of our greater system of mass incarceration. Nevertheless, it made me wonder: if these boys were not the scary "criminals" I'd been taught to fear, what about the thousands, the millions, set apart for far lesser crimes? It makes one want to pray for resurrection, where we love the "criminal" as ourselves and work for policies and personal practices that reflect those relationships.
In hope,
Timothy Murphy
Executive Director