Debating Incarceration

Happy Thanksgiving, Sunday Morning Coffee drinkers/readers! I hope you had at least one day with friends and family enhanced with scrumptious food and a nap somewhere in the mix. We had a house full of family and friends, complete with a ton of kids. When I say a ton, I mean it. I’m not a person who sticks with traditions just for the sake of it. One that my little family of three started, unintentionally, a couple of decades ago, was to just cook a lot of food and then open our doors to whomever wanted to drop by, or stay all day, or spend a few days. I find that it’s the best way to give thanks. When you see how many people are in your life who love you and whom you love, when you see the needs of others and help fill them, when you let them fill a need in you (maybe even one you didn’t realize you had), when you acknowledge you live in abundance (no matter the level), and when you just get to bask in the glow of community. Life doesn’t get much better than that.

This year was no exception. Friends came and went throughout the day and our table was always full (of food and people). There was one teeny tiny moment, though, that marred my day, just a little bit. One guest came in hot. He made a bee-line to me and said, “Well, the crime in Maryland committed by kids has increased by 200%, all because the governor decided to quit putting them in jail.”

Hello bombshell.

Now, usually, I’m up for this kind of debate. I communicate a few real statistics, talk about real statutes, and explain how there’s no statistical or anecdotal correlation between incarceration and crime rates. I did all of that. But this was one of those debates that wasn’t going to be a debate at all. And I don’t engage in those. I politely exit the conversation at the time I realize the other person doesn’t want to hear anything, just wants to say a lot of things. In my defense, I did try to politely exit the conversation and get both of us back to the festivities of the day, but, alas, resorted to being rude (for me) by saying, “I love a debate about mass incarceration, but it’s obvious you’re totally unarmed, so let’s just watch the dog show” (part of the tradition of the day is the Macy’s Day Parade and then the National Dog Show). He didn’t take the not-so-subtle hint and just kept going about how we needed to “round” up all the kids in these cities and lock them up. Of course, we’ve already done that, and look where it got us, but my guest wasn’t interested in hearing it.

But we have done that. In the 90’s, we “rounded” up every kid in a gang, and some we just assumed were in a gang, and we gave them inordinately long sentences. Look where that got us. We waged a war on drugs, beginning in the Nixon administration, then hitting it hard over the next 30 years in the form of mandatory minimum sentences, “rounding” up superpredators, and enforcing three strike laws, and where did that get us? Have we won “the war on drugs?”

I don’t have all the answers, but I know that incarcerating mass numbers of people for most of their natural lives isn’t one of them. This isn’t my opinion. I have evidence that it hasn’t worked. It hasn’t worked for so long that I can say with confidence it will never work. I can point you to other countries who stopped doing what we do and tried something different and got the results they wanted. I can debate this topic with real statistics, real-life examples, and I can do it without my personal opinion, if that’s the debate you want.

But debating with people who are just convinced that others are born to be “bad” and that public safety simply means getting rid of those people…I’m not as equipped to do that. It’s hard to reason with the unreasonable. Especially on Thanksgiving Day.

So what happened? A family member, who’s a mutual acquaintance of my sparring partner, finally stepped in and said, “Try picking up on social cues, Bud. She’s asked you politely and she’s asked you not so politely to stop talking. So stop talking.” lol! It takes a village, huh?

Here’s the thing. One of the biggest answers to the problem of mass incarceration in this country is empathy. Another is compassion. Until we stop looking at others as lesser-than and start looking for solutions that don’t entail discarding people, then we’ll just get more of the same. More people locked up and, oddly enough, more crime (if you didn’t read my post on How Much Punishment is Enough, then you can check it out now for a short treatise on the Inverted U Theory).

It was a teeny tiny blip on the radar. After I was done being annoyed, I reminded myself of how blessed I am to have friends and family with whom I can disagree and still break bread. Of how blessed I am to have bread. Of how blessed I am to have a career that not only sustains me and my loved ones, but is a great passion and hopefully does good in the world.

I’m also thankful for you. Your comments, your emails, your phone calls, your partnership, your work, your support, and your addition to my “village” are blessings. I hope that from now until next November is blessed beyond measure for you. If I can add to your joy in any way, clue me in. :)

Salut!