Editorial - Anne-Marie Zilliacus

Prison Abolition Minute - Canadian Yearly Meeting 1981 - Ruth Morris, Fred Franklin, Richard Broughton

Where is the Justice in our "Justice System"? - Marc Forget

A Matter of Degree - Pat Steenberg

Know One Another in That Which is Eternal - Edith Miller

      Learning to Tear Down the Walls - Shelley Greenley

What Canst Thou Say?

The law and order agenda being pushed on us these days by politicians and the news media could lead us to think that discipline and punishment are the way to ensure a safe and secure society. But how does this crime-control industry actually serve us? It provides a university of crime for a growing segment of the population -- a segment made up primarily of the disenfranchised, the poor, the unemployed, the badly educated -- the underclass whom the new economy has excluded. Prisons are places not for treatment, nor for education, but places where the unwanted are interned, out of sight, so the majority of citizens need not feel any connection with those who are made to suffer.

Does it have to be like this? Do we have to be tied to punishment of offenders which, besides being enormously expensive, pushes us towards a society where the sensitivity to suffering is reduced? An article in this issue describes how Canadian Yearly Meeting, in 1981, became clear about prison abolition. There are alternatives, which Marc Forget talks about in his article. He tells us about restorative justice.

But those who break the law are not really different from the rest of us, nor are those who are violent or those who do horrific things. Pat Steenberg addresses this issue in her article A Matter of Degree. Violence is part of the human condition, all of us find some aspects of it in some part of our lives but prison inmates are forced into situations where the practice of violence is the norm --while the prisons create jobs and wealth for those who build, supply and operate them, and control the underclass contained in them.

The sacrifice of one person's right for another's is not the way to build a good justice system. There are alternative models. In Finland, imprisonment has been reduced because there is almost no jailing of juveniles. It seems obvious, but delaying that first visit leads directly to a cut in prison numbers overall. And in Finland people are fined rather than imprisoned for theft. Theft is, after all, an economic crime and should be so treated. That's something we should remember when we hear people call for longer sentences and tougher measures for young offenders. An article and poem by a young woman serving time in the prison for women in Kingston talks about the effect that the system has had on her life. I met her during an Alternatives to Violence workshop and was deeply moved by her story. Several articles about AVP this month show that many people are keenly interested in doing something to change the system. AVP has grown so fast. Perhaps it should be made a mandatory course for judges and prison guards!

I know that many Canadian Friends are committed to trying to change our criminal justice system. We need society as a whole to recognize that prisons are a black mark on society's honour. There are better ways to deal with crime that balance the interests of all, victim, offender -- and the state.

AMZ

The Prison Abolition Minute - Canadian Yearly Meeting 1981

Ruth Morris, Fred Franklin, Richard Broughton - Toronto MM

"...Today Friends are becoming aware that prisons are a destructive and expensive failure as a response to crime. We are therefore turning from efforts to reform prisons to efforts to replace them with non-punitive, life-affirming and reconciling responses.

The prison system is both a cause and a result of violence and social injustice. Throughout history, the majority of prisoners have been the powerless and the oppressed. We are increasingly clear that the imprisonment of human beings, like their enslavement, is inherently immoral, and is as destructive to the cagers as to the caged..."

With those historic words, Canadian Friends in 1981 became the first religious group in the world, so far as we know, to adopt a united position for the abolition of prisons. Given the leadership of Friends in the movement for abolition of slavery, this seems a harmonious step. But how did Canadian Friends manage to be world leaders in this wonderful witness?

The seeds of that Minute began in 1973, when Richard Broughton and JoLeigh Luckott (later Commandant) visited a prison abolition workshop run by the redoubtable American Quaker Fay Honey Knopp, at Powell House in New York. Inspired by that experience, they held an interest group at the next Yonge Street Half Yearly Meeting. Out of that interest group, the Quaker Committee on Jails and Justice was born.

The fuller story of QCJJ's journey to and with prison abolition is told in Ruth Morris' pamphlet "Seeds of Abolition." Suffice it to say here that the QCJJ journey is the wonderful new-old story of how individuals can create important changes, for better as well as for worse. Richard's dogged vision and JoLeigh's fertile creativity - polished in a visit to the Philadelphia Movement for a New Society - planted the seeds. Fred Franklin's amazing years of work in the jails, especially with refugees, and his years of Clerking were vital.

John Martin and Bob Melcombe, who came from a health food bakery collective, pushed us to ever stronger advocacy; during John's years in charge of the Don Jail programme, the group would walk in every Monday night and begin, "We are the Quaker committee on Jails and Justice, and we're for the abolition of prisons!" Bob Melcombe, as an agnostic, had more faith in the capacity of Friends than those of us who were members, and it was his conviction that Quakers could arrive at the Minute that challenged us to pursue it.

Ruth Morris' adventures with Ontario Corrections ranged from working for them to organize demonstrations against new jails and included a steady stream of accused persons she bailed out, some of whom came to live with Ray and Ruth. In founding the Toronto Bail Programme, the Galbraith Bail Residence, and two other alternatives to prisons, she tried to demonstrate experientially that we can live in community with those we find difficult.

But it was the travels of many QCJJ members to Half Yearly and Yearly Meetings, facilitating interest groups, raising the issue, talking with Friends, sometimes bringing along an ex-prisoner, which most prepared the soil for the Abolition Minute. And it was our sense of process that made it possible too. For when we asked Friends to consider the matter prayerfully, in 1979, our goal was to have a respectful, open, and broadening dialogue. The response of Friends in going further was one of the most wonderful surprises of our lives.

In the years since, new Friends and attenders have come, and not all of them know about our position on prison abolition. But if we believe in that of God in every person, how can we advocate that we separate, stigmatize, and cage some?

The pathway to prison abolition has led some of us far beyond, to penal abolition, and to a deep awareness that the penal system exists mainly to reinforce racial and class barriers. So we recognize that abolition of our revengeful system of justice is an important step, but only the first step in the social transformation Jesus and other great spiritual leaders called for.

The work for refugees, the struggle against poverty, the call for justice for developing countries, the demand for justice for native peoples, and the saving of our environment are all part of that social transformation. The vision of Canadian Friends is to stand firmly with one who came to set the captives free: cagers and caged alike. The powerful 1981 Prison Abolition Minute is our commitment to that vision.

Where is the Justice in our "Justice System"?

Marc Forget - CFSC

With a federal election looming, it might be interesting to explore with our local candidates the state of our current criminal justice system, and find out exactly where our candidates and their respective parties stand on justice issues. We may start by asking why the inmate population in our federal prisons has grown by about 50% in the last 10 years; or why Canada incarcerates its citizens at a higher rate than any other western democracy except the United States? If incarceration were an effective solution to crime, why does the U.S. have both the highest incarceration rate AND the highest crime rate among western democracies? We may also ask why most politicians equate getting tough on crime with the harsher punishment of offenders; is this not akin to a physician getting tough on symptoms without treating the disease causing those symptoms?

However, we may want to go further and question the very foundations of our criminal justice system, a system that defines crime as an offense against the "state," as a violation of the law instead of as an act of one person against another within a community. Why is it, for instance, that if I assault my neighbour, and someone calls 911, at the moment the police arrive I am arrested for having broken a law, not for having harmed my neighbour? When I subsequently appear in court the prosecutor represents the "Crown," or the state, not the victim of my actions. The state has become the victim because my crime has been defined by the state as an offense against it (the state). If my neighbour, the actual victim, appears in court at all, it is only as a "WITNESS!" Finally, when I am sentenced, I am ordered to pay a fine TO THE STATE, not to the neighbour I assaulted, and if I'm sentenced to spend time in prison, it is to "pay my debt to society" (the state). Is a debt owed to society, or is it rather owed to the person who was assaulted? Does our system address the needs of the victim at all? Will a stay in one of our correctional institutions help correct the conditions which caused or allowed me to assault my neighbour? How will society benefit from spending over $53,000 a year keeping me locked up in an environment where my survival will depend on how well I can adapt to a set of truly bizarre rules, when my very adaptation to this inside law will make it nearly impossible for me to function normally in our society whenever I am released?

It is interesting to note that the early legal systems on which our criminal law is based all emphasized the need for offenders to compensate their victims. Restitution to the victim was central to Old Testament, Greek, Roman, and Anglo-Saxon law. Adam Starchild wrote in Friends Journal (July 1991): "The focus changed in England with the Norman Conquest. William the Conqueror, as part of a political struggle to entrench his power, took more control over the process of handling crimes. His son, Henry I, consolidated his power by defining a crime not as an offense against a specific victim, but as an offense "against the king's peace." Thus criminal punishments were no longer viewed primarily as ways of restoring the victims of crime, but instead as means of redressing the injury to the king. This concept allowed Henry to enrich his treasury by taking a portion of the compensation due a crime victim under the old Anglo-Saxon code. Over time, the amount confiscated from the victim increased, and eventually restitution was seldom ordered - the defendant was simply fined."

If we are to live in anything resembling a just society, we need to completely redefine what justice is and how it is to be administered. We need a vision of justice that recognizes that crime is fundamentally an act committed against a person, or persons, within a community. According to Dr. Mark Umbreit, chair of the U.S. Association for Victim-Offender Mediation, we need "...a vision of justice that recognizes that those who are most affected by crime (victims, offenders, and the community) should have a very active and direct role in responding to crime. A vision of justice that is more concerned about restoring the emotional and material losses that follow in the wake of crime and victimization, than dispensing pain and retribution upon the perpetrators while ignoring victim needs..."

Restorative Justice is one approach that moves the focus from punishing offenders to addressing the needs of all those affected when a crime is committed. In his very important book CHANGING LENSES: A New Focus for Crime and Justice, Dr. Howard Zehr explains that justice as viewed through different types of lenses presents highly divergent images:

RETRIBUTIVE JUSTICE:

Crime is a violation of the state, defined by lawbreaking and guilt. Justice determines blame and administers pain in a contest between the offender and the state, directed by systematic rules.

RESTORATIVE JUSTICE:

Crime is a violation of people and relationships. It creates obligations to make things right. Justice involves the victim, the offender, and the community in a search for solutions which promote repair, reconciliation, and reassurance. (Zehr, 1990, p.181)

In his address to the 1995 International Prison Chaplain's Association Conference, Dave Gustafson said "Seeking justice involves meaningful interaction between the members of the community as they struggle to deal with offending behaviour, encourage responsibility taking, heal the wounds, resist the erosion of the community often caused by crime, then set about to reweave the rents in the fragile fabric of that community." "The basic tenets of the Restorative Justice Paradigm are rooted in the wisdom literature of the world's ancient civilizations. At the core of most of the world's cultures there are powerful community and peacemaking ethics similar to those from which the Restorative Justice Paradigm derives its substance. In the sacred writings of Jews, Christians, Muslims, Hindus, Buddhists, and in oral traditions among aboriginal peoples, the stories are told, eon upon eon, revering their wise: the healers and the peacemakers among them."

Restorative Justice is an approach to crime which is implemented through the use of a variety of models such as mediation, healing circles, family group conferencing and sentencing circles. For both victims and offenders, the opportunity the restorative models offer for them to be involved in the process of addressing the harmful behaviour and its consequences results in a much more positive experience of justice than the one our current system delivers. The end results can be very impressive: some community programs show that restitution contracts negotiated between victims and offenders are fulfilled at a rate of 95%, which is 75% higher than the rate for court-ordered restitutions.

Many initiatives have demonstrated the effectiveness of the restorative models in the past 20 years. Canada pioneered a number of them, some of which are now in use throughout the world. There is a wealth of information available on alternatives to a system solely based on retribution and punishment.* We have the tools, the experience, and the statistical information; why then are our politicians still brandishing the old rhetoric calling for more prisons, longer sentences, and harsher treatment of prisoners as the only response to crime?

It is time we demand a new approach, a new vision, rather than continuing to accept Band-Aids applied to a system which is fundamentally wrong in its vision of justice, and which fails to achieve even its own stated goals of reducing crime and creating safer communities. Isn't it time we tried a legal system focussed on justice rather than a justice system focussed on laws?

"Satisfying Justice," an excellent compendium on such alternatives, was recently published by, and is available through, The Church Council on Justice and Corrections, 507 Bank Street, Ottawa, ON, K2P 1Z5. Telephone: 613-563 1688; Fax: 613-237 6129.

A Matter of Degree

Pat Steenberg - Ottawa MM

Recently I watched the film Seven. I wish I could say that I had no prior knowledge of its content. But that is not true. I knew it was a psychological thriller about a serial killer; I also knew that it had received generally favourable reviews. I chose to watch it; I was totally unprepared for what followed.

The story revolves around a grisly series of murders inspired by the seven deadly sins. To atone for gluttony, a monstrously obese man is forced to eat, literally until he bursts. Indolence is drugged and bound to his bed, and there confined in a state of living death while the bedsores and maggots slowly consume him. Envy and rage precipitate the pivotal scene in which we discover the killer has sexually assaulted and decapitated the pregnant wife of the investigating officer and watch as the young man comes to the horrified realization that the box he has just been delivered contains her severed head.

Recalling the Paul Bernardo trial, reporter Kirk Makim wrote that "the things (the media) knew (were) often too searing to convey to friends and family."⁽¹⁾ Yet millions of people, including some of these same friends and families and, most likely, the journalist himself, paid millions of dollars to see Seven. The capacity to visualize "unspeakable" depravity is not the exclusive purview of serial killers. The imaginative capabilities of the individuals who create and write the films screened routinely in our theatres are every bit as grotesque and depraved as Paul Bernardos. When do we call it simply entertainment and when do we brand it evil?

This is not to suggest that seeing a film like Seven turns otherwise 'normal' individuals into serial killers. However, the popularity and enormous profitability of these films does demonstrate that, on some level, serial killers are just like the rest of us; or, to put it more bluntly, on some level we are just like them.

Researchers specializing in forensic psychiatry believe there is something organically wrong with the brains of sexual deviants and have found that the most vicious criminals are, overwhelmingly, people with some combination of abusive childhoods, brain injuries and psychotic symptoms. While none of these problems, taken alone, indicates criminality, in combination they act to impede the individual's capacity to inhibit antisocial impulses.⁽²⁾

In the ideological lexicon of the new right, old notions of collective responsibility have lost their currency. Individuals are responsible for their behaviour and good and moral people know that rape and torture are wrong. People who commit crimes are either evil or immoral or both and must be held to account for their actions.

Perhaps this explains our frantic efforts to dissociate ourselves from Paul Bernardo. We cannot accept that he could be one of us; worse still, that we could have produced him. We all sympathized with the parents of Leslie Mahaffey and those of Kristin French, but how many of us identified with Mr. and Mrs. Homolka, or the Bernardos?

But, if Bernardo is accountable for his actions, so are we for ours. When we continue to support, tacitly or expressly, social policies which privilege the already privileged at the expense of the vulnerable -- policies which perpetuate, even aggravate, conditions which ensure that the cycle of abuse continues from one generation to the next -- as a society we are accountable. A society which accepts horror and depravity as a legitimate form of popular entertainment and, by its patronage, ensures its continued marketability, is accountable. Journalists who critique films like Seven as they would any other, enticing audiences by sustaining the suspense, having no regard for their effect on damaged individuals whose inhibitory apparatus functions imperfectly, these journalists too are responsible.

What we cannot as decent human beings bear to hear in the court room, we pay money to watch on the screen. Paul Bernardo is a human being and his crimes are human crimes. However monstrous, they are a product of human society and the human imagination. If we accept that some people find watching the acts of serial killers entertaining, we must accept that others may be entertained by the acts themselves. The evil is simply a matter of degree.

1. Makim, Kirk, "The World of Courtroom 6-1", The Globe and Mail, Saturday, September 5, 1995, pp. D1 and D5.

2. Much of the material summarized here was taken from a recent article entitled "Damaged", by Malcolm Gladwell. (New Yorker, February 24 and March 3, 1997, pp. 132-47)

Know One Another in That Which is Eternal

Edith Miller - New Brunswick MM

I'm standing out on a lawn which cushions my flat-arched feet, in rapt conversation with a tall young man of 28, the age of my middle son. He puffs on a smoke, my son's habit too. Would I like a coffee, he asks, and pours it from a thermal canteen into a foam cup. The lawn congregation mills about us.

We talk about his family, and I rejoice or commiserate as the case may be, making comparison with my own family. A course he is taking is unlike those he had at St. Thomas University. His aspirations differ from those of most people I know; his current home, radically removed - for home, where we now stand, is a maximum security prison.

The party we are attending is on the "sweat grounds" of Atlantic Institution at Renous, NB. It is reserved for the "Sacred Circle Society," the Native Brotherhood group incarcerated within. And this is their chapel.

A big teepee encloses some of their sacred ceremonies; near it stands the frame of a sweat lodge, branches arched in a dome, in preparation for a future "sweat," held every five or six weeks. We don't have a sweat today for this is a celebration of the fall season. Besides, regulations probably prohibit mixed sweats of men and women and children.

This recently built maximum penitentiary has modern, foolproof fencing and surveillance, and the sweat grounds is a little secure oasis, itself encircled by a fence within a fence. I guess, like with a pet or crawling baby, it is just easier to deal with the special group's activities by containment. Is it privileged treatment, I ponder, do the non-native inmates, taking their exercise the other side of the fence, scorn or envy the natives?

Chaplains give Christian services, and there are counsel in the prison chapel every week. In the midst of this, natives have the less-than-monthly service of elders for their spiritual ceremony and counselling. At an interfaith pastoral dinner I attended, the Correctional Service of Canada director of chaplaincy at the time, Pierre Allard, stated his belief that, "Pastors can make light happen in the dark of the prison."

Although the ministry, or spiritual guidance, of the native elders may not be so evident to the general public as the Catholic, Baptist, United Church, Quaker, Salvation Army, Mennonite representatives of Christian faiths in attendance at the banquet - native elders are essential for enabling the light to shine in the dark for native prisoners.

The warmth I felt in the teepee in Renous that day was not just due to the heated rocks periodically renewed in the firepit. As I joined in the drumming and chanting, I sensed a confluence of the spirit, for we can "meet together and know one another in that which is eternal, which was before the world was." (George Fox, ca. 1656)

When an elder joined the gathering, some of the men were laughing at their having forgotten parts of the traditional songs. Singing with authority, she inspired them to stronger drumming and chanting. I added my rhythm to the drum heartbeat with a rattle, made by an inmate, of horn and wood enclosing seeds.

Tea was ladled out of an enamel pot, hot from an open fire. Its superiority to the dunk-your-own-teabag tea surprised me! Soon we lined up at a picnic table a bit stunned in the glare of the sky's mist after the teepee. The traditional Indian meal complemented the ceremonies, like a holistic communion: salmon grilled over the firepit of coals and rocks, bannock, and a soup of beans, corn and potato - all prepared by inmates.

The course being taken by the man I talked with out on the grass seemed to be a very worthwhile one, on salmon fishing and cultivation. He was planning to transfer to B.C. and put this training to use. I hope he returns to the Atlantic provinces to enrich the fishing industry here somehow.

If he isn't "paying back society" enough by his imprisonment, perhaps he can make a more productive payment through meaningful employment and by contributing to the fishing industry. And perhaps he can heal, and a more restorative justice can be met with the spiritual support of the elders and visitors.

Shelley Greenley - Kingston Prison for Women

My name is Shelley Greenley. I came from a family of seven. Through a series of traumatic events, I became a child of the system. I was raised in foster homes and became very bitter. I learned to build walls in order to survive the cruelty and abuse I suffered at the hands of sick foster parents. As I grew, so did the walls. Running away became second nature to me. I soon learned about drugs and survival on the street. Already pregnant at age 17, I married my then husband in Whitby jail. He was serving time for trafficking narcotics, sixty-six lbs of marijuana, a charge for which he was later deported. The marriage ended. I have remained in the criminal element most of my life, sinking deeper into the drug sub-culture. I believed it was the only life I could have. My walls became my fortress, a place where no one could enter or hurt me. It was sort of my light spot... A safe place. I'm writing this letter from the federal penitentiary where I'm serving two and a half years for robbery, narcotics and fraud. Although there is a big prison wall that surrounds this institution, it doesn't compare to the inner walls I've built over the years, trying to maintain my existence. These same walls, built for my protection, got so high that they eventually became my prison... The prison that lies within. It's just as painful learning to tear down the walls as it was learning to build them. But, with the help of some wonderful people who are now part of my life and through the Grace of God, I've finally begun.

The prison that lies within

By Shelley Greenley

By walls I am protected
The kind you cannot see,
Barriers of thoughts and emotions
That hide inside of me.

Bricks of pain and anger
Disguised by outer charm,
I built them for security
To keep me safe from harm.

But today I am their prisoner
Locked away here all alone.
The real person inside me
Is not the one I've shown.

Tell me who can rescue me,
Not knowing what is wrong.
They can't see the pain inside
I've hidden it so long.

I always show a smile
For everyone to see.
I try to keep their spirits up
Or they'll fall apart on me.

Sometimes I feel so frustrated.
In this place I don't belong.
I ask the Lord for strength
"Oh God, please keep me strong."

Memories of my daughter,
Our laughter, and our talks,
Special songs we sing,
Times we went for walks.

Deep down inside my heart
I feel so all alone,
I know it's not forever,
And one day I will go home.

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