Race and Incarceration

Cherith Brook, the Catholic Worker house here in Kansas City's northeast, publishes a newspaper and recently asked me to contribute some reflections. They are below. If you are interested in reading the whole paper (DO IT!), it's here.



About a month ago, I had the privilege of attending a Roundtable Discussion at Cherith Brook. The topic was Race and Incarceration, and a panel of three experts contributed to the discussion. Slowly people drifted in, stopping for coffee and snacks in the back of the room and talking with people they recognized or had met there before. There were people from all walks of life- elderly, white men in blazers greeting mid-twenties hipsters who were mingling with middle-aged black men who were standing in circles with people experiencing homelessness. It was the kind of group you wouldn’t see anywhere else- such stark differences in appearance and lifestyle and ways of thinking. As the room filled and people took their seats, Eric, a Cherith Brook community member, opened up the evening with a word of prayer and a general outline for the evening.

Each panel member brought with them a unique perspective and a plethora of experiences with the race and incarceration topic. Eric Wesson from the Kansas City Call and organizer of the group One Goal brought stories from the people he interacts with on a day-to-day basis. He shed light on the issue of crime being about economic development- ‘dollars and cents’, as he put it. Prisons are built in economically depressed, rural areas and are increasingly privatized, creating a certain number of beds that need to filled. More prisoners lead to more prisons, which brings money to an otherwise economically depressed area. Construction companies are needed to build the prisons themselves, motels and Greyhound for visiting family members, and a Wal-Mart for a place to shop for their loved one’s basic necessities. Food and meal production along with cleaning services has to be contracted out for the inmates. His point was that there are many built-in incentives for incarcerating people- one of greatest ones being capital.

Dr. Sims of St. Paul School of Theology focused on the idea of a person’s debt to society. There are many laws and social rules that decrease the likelihood of an ex-felon to move forward with their life in a positive direction. Once a person is released from prison, they will always have the label ‘felon’. With every application for a job or apartment, they must reveal the stigma from their past, causing most employers and landlords to reject them without a second thought. Dr. Simms asked the question of us all, “If a person serves a sentence/term, when is that debt satisfied? How long after a person serves that sentence/term does that individual have to keep paying?” The fact that I had never thought about this question disturbed me. Why would someone who has paid a debt have to keep on suffering under that punishment? As a Christian, especially, is that not counterintuitive to what Jesus repeatedly taught about forgiveness of debt and our souls?

Many other issues were brought up: 1) More African American men were locked up in prisons during Bill Clinton’s presidency than any other time. 2) People are incentivized to plead guilty so as to secure a shorter term, 3) Users are being incarcerated, not the people making money off the system (dealers), 4) After a person’s third drunk driving offense, they are convicted of a felony with a 12 month cap. After the first possession with crack, a person receives a felony with a 250 month cap, 5) A large majority of convicts have a mental illness or addiction, but prisons aren’t designed for any kind of rehabilitation, 6) African American males are incarcerated at a rate seven times that of Caucasian males.

While the statistics were startling, I think the most moving part of the evening came at the end. Many people that were experiencing life after incarceration were able to share their experiences and struggles with their attempt to re-enter society. Rejections from job interviews, apartment complexes and public benefit specialists were the common threads in each of their stories. Stigma and fear keeps their neighbors and churches at arm’s length and many wrestle with the temptation to return to the streets- mostly out of desperation. One man’s story struck me when he was recounting a conversation with an employer who had interviewed him for a job post-incarceration: “You say everybody deserves a second chance, but you won’t call me back”. His frustration was the underlying theme of most of the stories from that night- society’s ideas for justice and forgiveness only go so far- people don’t want to be affected personally.

Eric challenged the hearers at the end of the evening, “How, then, are we as Christians called to live?” For me personally, the simple act of listening to people’s stories from that night has changed my perspective. I now have faces that personalize the statistics, and am able to share their stories with others to break down stereotypes and stigmas. I am wrestling with the principles of the upside- down Kingdom that call for justice for the downtrodden and acceptance for the outcast. What does that look like with our neighbors in Kansas City who are ex-felons? As a Christian employer, could we consider hiring an ex-felon? As a landlord, could we open our building to ex-felons, treating them like any other person looking for a home? As social workers, could we locate resources and help fill out job applications? As fellow human beings, could we invite someone who has been incarcerated into our home to share a meal, share stories, and ultimately share a life?

The night ended with a prayer and people shuffling out the door slowly- taking coffee, snacks and thoughts back to their homes, schools and slabs of concrete under bridges. On our way out, Eric said something that has stuck with me. He acknowledged that as people from all walks of life, experiences and backgrounds come into a place to discuss such a personal and complicated topic, we run the risk of disagreement. “I hope each of you has learned something you can take away from this discussion, and that you all experienced some discomfort.”

If we aren’t uncomfortable, we haven’t truly listened to the people who think differently from us. The only way to move forward unified as Christians is to sit in that discomfort, and through prayer, dialogue and meals, come to a solution together.