Black and White Justice (and color of all kind)

What is your personal experience with the criminal justice system?

This was the worship sharing question.  My Meeting is small and there were not a lot of us there.  Everyone sitting in the circle was white. I knew that of the people in the room that I had by far the most personal experience with the criminal justice system.

My experience has many levels and spans 4 states: as a volunteer, as a visitor, an observer of post prison inmate experience, and my own experience as an activist with arrest, detention and courts.  I started at age 20 in college going into the local prison as a volunteer...why?  Because my peer group were all being required to register for the draft for the first time in 11 years and they were taking a stand and saying no, the result of which was that some of them were going to go to prison (and did).  I wanted therefore to understand what prison is. 

Volunteering to be inside:

I was an Alternatives to Violence Project facilitator over a 10 year period of time. 

After my experience as a volunteer in the IN prisons, in Missouri I learned AVP which I did for a year before moving to WA and starting the WA state AVP.  At points I was going in once a month for 3 days straight.  I would spend beautiful summer, spring and fall days in windowless rooms.   I knew men guilty of all variety of crimes and I learned the culture of prison.   I spent hours and hours listening to men describe their experience inside, both beautiful and horrible.  I never asked anybody why they were locked up because it is considered impolite, but often they would tell me, sometimes in great detail.  I knew people doing "short" sentences of a few years, and men doing "life" anything over 13, and I still know men inside who are doing life without the possibility of parole. Vastly disproportionately the men doing life without were Black men.   I listened to men talk about how they did time, how they coped.  I listened to men describe lifestyles so hard on the outside that they said they were grateful they had come to prison because it had saved their life.   And I listened to men hate the place they lived and everyone they could never, never get away from.  I challenged myself to find that of God in each of them and I did.  I made friends and I loved men I knew inside those walls.

Long before there was a book called No New Jim Crow I understood that prisons were a way to both separate men of color from the rest of culture and also permanently bar them from equal opportunities.  It took only one look around any prison room to see that.   In the very white state of WA when the majority of prisoners are people of color the evidence of discrimination is blatantly obvious.  I listened to many men tell me about public defenders so overloaded, incompetent or indifferent that their lawyers seemed unaware of basic facts of their case or in some case even of their names.

I met guards who seemed far more cruel and heartless than the "criminals" they were watching and I also met guards well liked by the prisoners who managed to be kind to everyone.  Mainly I saw the incredible boredom of the guards and understood why the prisoners would say "they are doing time too without doing the crime."  It also became clear to me how the power tripping and cruelty were simply how some of them entertained themselves or felt important in the very small pond that was their world.  Not dissimilar to the power struggles that went on among the prisoners.

As the administrator of our program, I also spent a lot of time talking to the prison administration and dealing with rules and attempts to get reasonable accommodations for the program.  I eventually lobbied the legislature to try to change some of the most egregious things about the prison system.  I learned to not try to meet the rules of the prison with logic because they were not based upon logic but upon layers of history, egos, and power tripping - they were arbitrary and inconsistent and sanity was only to be had when you could accept that.

Visiting injustice

I eventually stopped being a volunteer and became a visitor and then endured the even more disrespectful ways the friends and family of prisoners would be treated. Metal detectors and pat searches and time wasted waiting because they had not even called the person you went to visit.  The covert message always being there must be something very wrong with you and worthy only of contempt if you cared about someone in prison.  The truth frequently being communicated that they had all the power and you had none and don't forget it.

The Post Prison “set up”

I also watched many, many men I knew come out...and 90% of the time fail.   They failed because they were set up.   The ones who had done the longest had been deprived for so long of the ability to make even the simplest of choices: what they would eat, or when they would sleep, or what products they would want to use....that having to decide all these things on the outside was overwhelming.  Street culture is so different than prison culture that they were lost.  In addition, after years of being penalized if they objected or asserted themselves, they struggled in society to have a voice, to set boundaries or to ask for things.   Those who came out without family were really sunk - released with only some clothes, no job, and money in a check form (but no id and thus no easy way to cash their check) they were easily ready to become homeless or steal something.   After years of not having consistent access to drugs and alcohol and now maximally stressed, many would very quickly be back to addictions within weeks or months.

Activism and arrest and trial

And all of the above...this does not begin to address my own receiving end of the criminal justice system.  As a political activist I have twice committed civil disobedience, so I have twice gotten arrested, been handcuffed and taken down to the station and on one occasion stayed refusing to give my name in solidarity with others in my group not giving their name.   So I have spent time both before and after sentencing in jail.   I have been to court for both arraignment, trial and sentencing.  Having spent so much time with people who desperately tried not to get arrested I am painfully aware of the privilege involved in choosing to risk arrest.  I also am supremely annoyed by activists who spend some hours or days in jail (jail being completely different from prison) and then think they know about incarceration.  I would like to say clearly that what I know about imprisonment is lightly impressed by my personal experience and heavily influenced by the sharing of literally hundreds of inmates.   And listening to something is not the same as living something.

Courts and the criminal injustice system 

I have been in more courtrooms than I can now count for trials of fellow activists - some of whom were facing decade long sentences for Plowshares actions ("We shall beat our swords into plowshares" the inspiration for personal acts of disarmament against nuclear weapons in the 80's)  and more recently for trials of activists acting against our fossil fuel system.   

In these disgraceful experiences I have learned that in some ritual of authority all must rise for the judge or risk contempt charges or being barred from the room.  I have learned that the judge can limit what evidence and lines of defense people are allowed to offer to the point of preventing their defense.  I learned that jury instructions can be given in such a way that the jury is virtually told they must ignore their conscience and only interpret the law as the judge interprets the law to them - essentially saying that they must find them guilty.   I have watched juries come to quick decisions so they can home that night.  I have watched jurors be selected and dismissed on the basis of their believing anything that might bring actual justice to bare.  (ie anyone who does not believe in the death penalty is dismissed from capitol cases.)  In short I have learned that there is not much justice in our criminal "justice system."

The Color Gap

So my experience is with jails, with prisons, with courtrooms, with arrests, with police who were arresting people around me, with guards, with prison administrators, prison rules, parole boards, etc.  I want to be very, very clear.  That is a lot of experience for a white person – but it is only a glimpse of what people of color go through.  I chose my experience which is in itself an act of privilege.  I don’t have to fear that for a broken tail light I will have an interface with the criminal justice system that could become deadly.  I observed people of color being treated differently by cops and guards, but I did not have that experience.   And the only reason why my story is worth telling is for what I next have to say.

With all of the experience I have listed imagine the jolt to my system to hear my fellow Friends around the circle say, sometimes apologetically, that their only experience with the criminal justice system was with being stopped (treated respectfully and then let go) by a police officer.  These are all Friends who I love and have good, good hearts....and suddenly in one shattering moment I understood how really wide the divide actually is between white people and people of color in this country.   For all the things I have written about above...are the common experience of people of color.   It is hard because of the discriminatory arrest, prosecution and imprisonment practices in the US for there to be a person of color who does not have a family member, friend or self who has not had the experiences I describe above.   The fact that white people on the other hand can live their whole lives without having experiences with the criminal justice system and generally not know anyone either who has had a personal experience...that is a cavernous gap which separates us.

I am still trying to wrap my head around how that gap can be bridged.  It is not going to be tours of jail ...that just does not begin to be three dimensional.   Frankly, it takes time genuinely spent, and sadly I don't think most white people I know would see the benefit of spending that time.  And so, we sit in camps with life experiences so different that we don't even begin to comprehend how different the experiences actually are.