Forgiveness, redemption, ways forward instead of imprisonment and reoffending
by Gerry Georgatos (November29th,2015)
There is nothing as profoundly powerful as forgiveness. The forgiving of others validates self-worth, builds bridges and positive futures. Forgiveness cultivated and understood keeps families and society solid as opposed to the corrosive anger that diminishes people into the darkest places, into effectively being mentally unwell. Anger is a warning sign to becoming unwell. Love comes more natural to the human heart despite that hate can take one over. In the battle between love and hate, one will choose love more easily when in understanding of the endless dark place that is hate and of its corrosive impacts. Hate can never achieve what love ever so easily can. Hate and anger have filled our prisons with the mentally unwell, with the most vulnerable, with the poor – and not with the criminally minded.
I have worked to turn around the lives of as many people in jail as I possibly could but for every inmate or former inmate that people like me dedicate time to in order to improve their lot – ultimately there is a tsunami of poverty related issues and draconian laws that flood offenders and fill prisons. Jailing the poorest, most vulnerable, the mentally unwell, in my experience, only serves to elevate the risk of reoffending, of normalising disordered and broken lives, of digging deeper divides between people, of marginalising people. It has been my experience that in general people come out of prison worse than they went in.
We push maxims such as violence breeds violence, hate breeds hate but yet we incarcerate and punish like never before. Instead of prison sentences working as some sort of deterrent we have reoffending, arrest and jailing rates increasing year in year out.
One of society’s failures is the punitive criminal justice system and the penal estate. However despite the punitive penal estate having clearly failed society, we continue with it. For some it has become easier to lie and act as if the failure is a success or as if there are no alternatives than to accept the workload in another direction. Fyodor Dostoyevsky, in the Brothers Karamazov, wrote, “Above all, don’t lie to yourself. The man who lies to himself and listens to his own lie comes to a point that he cannot distinguish the truth within him, or around him, and so loses all respect for himself and for others. And having no respect he ceases to love.”
We have lied for so long in this capitalistic meritocratic society that for far too many, especially for those in the consummation of privilege – they have ceased to love and to forgive. The psychological, emotional and spiritual wellbeing of others, of those most vulnerable – lost to them. The mantra these days is the suffocation of ‘self-responsibility’.
Dostoyevsky, who also authored Crime and Punishment and the House of the Dead, wrote, “The degree of civilisation in a society can be judged by entering its prisons.”
Australia has doubled its prison population in the last 20 years with a disproportionate hit on the marginalised, particularly the descendants of the First Nations peoples of this continent. First Nations people comprise 28 per cent of the total prison population though they are less than 3 per cent of the nation’s total population. I estimate that by 2025 First Nations people will comprise one in every two Australian prisoners. This is an abomination – moral, political and otherwise. From a racialised lens, Western Australia, the Northern Territory and South Australia jail First Nations peoples at among the world’s highest rates, with Western Australia competing for the mother of all jailers.
But what are their crimes? They have been born into extreme disadvantage, extreme poverty and into a spectrum with deplorable levels of likelihood of their deterioration from a state of hopelessness to being mentally unwell. Socrates understood that esteem was imperative to the striving for justice and goodness. This is where we fail people, we are not there to build or rebuild their esteem, to strive lovingly. Socrates would have us believe evils are the result of the ignorance of good. I am with Socrates, we have a society that is not bent by reinforcing the innate, of reinforcing ‘good’, but we are a society that demands an impression of what good might be and punish those who transgress. What we are after is unilateral orderliness among all people – and justice argues itself as blind, where everyone is equal but this is a stupendous lie, the law supports privilege and thrashes into the vulnerable, poor, sick – inequality is entrenched by the criminal justice system.
Sjoren Kierkegaard argued that sin meant wilfulness and unlike the Socratic view of ignorance of good, Kierkegaard was bent by the view that some people simply do not want to be good. As naïve as I may appear, the Socratic view aligns with what I have seen in prisons – of people who want to be good, innately are good, but who have accumulated despair, displaced anger, resentment from impoverished or disrupted upbringings.
– An inmate said to me, “It is best I am here, and best I keep on coming back, because it is the only hope my children have.”
– An inmate said, “I have no hope in here but it’s even worse out there.”
The penal estate is not rehabilitative, not restorative. There are limited job skills programs, limited education opportunities. The penal estate should have been an investiture in people rather than a dungeon, an abyss. The opportunity for healing, psychosocial empowerment, for forgiveness, for redemption, for education skills and qualifications are continually bypassed. This madness never ceases to shock me.
Australia’s overall prison rate of 151 prisoners per 100,000 population ranks 98th of the world’s 222 ranked nations. Australia is an affluent nation, the world’s 12th largest economy. However standalone Aboriginal and/or Torres Strait Islanders and compare their prison rate against the world’s national prison rates and they would have the world’s highest, just higher than the Seychelles which incarcerates at 799 per 100,000. The United States of America is second ranked at 698 per 100,000. However in Western Australia, First Nations peoples are incarcerated at more than 3,700 per 100,000. In Western Australia, one in 13 of all Aboriginal adult males is in prison.
No less than one in 10 and up to one in 6 Aboriginal and/or Torres Strait Islanders living has been to jail.
Forgiveness is not an act of mercy but of empathy, compassion, of virtue. According to vast bodies of research forgiveness has many benefits, outstripping negatives and risks. Forgiveness strengthens families, communities, societies. The most significant finding is the obvious, that forgiveness makes us happier. Forgiveness improves the health of people and communities. Forgiveness sustains relationships. Forgiveness builds and rebuilds lives. Forgiveness connects people, and what better medium for this than through kindness. It was Archbishop Desmond Tutu, the chairperson of South Africa’s Truth and Reconciliation Commission who argued forgiveness as the only way forward to “true enduring peace”.
Someone I correspond with regularly emailed me the Chinese proverb, “It is better to light a small candle rather than curse the darkness.”
We have seen where we will be led to when the only response to crime is punishment. The United States jails nearly one per cent of its total population – 2,300,000 people. Are so many really so bad or is the United States extremely harsh on its most vulnerable? One in four of the world’s prisoners are in American jails. This is the future we need to avoid. If Australia would consider an amnesty – an immediate release – of very low level offenders – more than 8,000 of its 35,000 prison population would walk out today. If Australia was prepared to release its mentally unwell either into community care or specialist care, again more than 8,000 would walk out today. But at all times we should be working closely, lovingly, forgivingly with those inside and so bring them out of the prison experience not worse but better.
As it stands now, there is an elevated risk of death by suicide, substance misusing and misadventure in the first year post release – up to ten times according to all the research. We do ever so little for people pre- and post-release.
Society – the criminal justice system, custodial systems and ancillary support systems – will gain more from forgiveness, helping, empowering people than from any other measure. This is not to suggest some crimes should not require imprisonment but that all people are capable of redemption, and that there are far too many who should not be jailed and instead supported, and that at all times we should be doing what we can for our most troubled souls.
People are more likely to be good without having to go to prison but instead who are supported. For those who are sentenced to prison, these must be places where people come first, not last. But there must be forgiveness. They must be assisted in every way to forgive themselves. As a society our focus must be on forgiving and redemption. The most powerful kick-start is a society – the justice systems and our Governments – who are forgiving and hence the message of love will rush to everyone. For far too many people, repentance without forgiveness is torturous. But we must be a forgiving society to make this possible, and for now the odds are against us, as for too many forgiveness is a radical, gratuitous proposition.
Risk of death high after release from prison
by Gerry Georgatos (November9th,2015)
Not enough is being done for people while in jail. There are far too many people in prison mentally unwell rather than criminally minded. There are far too many incarcerated for low level offending. When it comes to Aboriginal and/or Torres Strait Islander peoples, just about every family has had a family member or close relative incarcerated. From a racialised lens Australia jails Aboriginal and/or Torres Strait Islander peoples at among the world’s highest rates.
Having visited prisons and long worked with ex-prisoners, most of them soon after release, to improve their lot, it is my view that in general people come out of prison worse than when they went in. Trauma – situational, multiple and composite – is the end-result for the majority of the prison experience; particularly for those who were dished up a prison sentence for effectively ‘non-criminally minded’ offences such as fine defaulting. The mentally unwell become more unwell, with many breaking down altogether. Those who went in for low level poverty related offending come out of prison ‘brutalised’ by abuses, fear, anxieties and debilitated in having to fa much the same of what led them into prison. They face a life without secondary and university qualifications, without job skills. They continue on in the harsh reality of poverty and in a society that does not give the poor a break.
The prisons I have visited are the sorriest tales of punitive tribulations, of neglect, of lost and troubled souls. Prisons are not about restorative and rehabilitative practicalities but places with the inmates in the longest queues – begging for education programs, including literacy. Only the few will score participation in the handful of education programs offering the opportunity of qualifications. The unmet need is not just sad but it is disgraceful on the part of governments – State and Commonwealth. More can be done but it is not.
I am not going to argue the economic benefits to society; that it is cheaper to invest in people’s education, training up, in alternatives to incarceration than it is to incarcerate and punish. These arguments disgust me. These arguments indict our national consciousness, our logic and our collective values. The economy should be geared to society and not the other way around. I prefer to discuss and urge moral imperatives instead of framing our values in economical imperatives.
We should be abominated by a society that incarcerates the poorest of the poor, the sickest of the unwell, that effectively punishes minorities because assimilation wants them to give up their cultural being. We should be abominated by this nation where at least one in 10 and up to one in 6 of Aboriginal and/or Torres Strait Islanders living have been to jail. This horrific statistical narrative should have long ago galvanised the nation to redress the intolerable racialised inequalities, the economic inequalities, the discrimination.
According to the Australian Bureau of Statistics (ABS) 86 per cent of prisoners did not complete Year 12. More than 30 per cent did not get past Year 9.
According to researchers Kate van Doreen, Stuart Kinner and Simon Forsyth – “the risk of death is greatly elevated among ex-prisoners compared with the general population.” They stated, “Although many deaths are drug-related or the result of suicide, little is known about risk and protective factors for death in this population.”
I have long argued that a significant proportion of suicides are of ex-prisoners and in most cases soon after their release from prison. It aches the heart to comprehend that people may have felt more secure while in prison than back in society despite that prison damaged them. The death rates from external causes and suicides of ex-prisoners are themes throughout our world and not confined to Australia. A number of studies estimate that these death rates from unnatural causes are up to 10 times the rates of death while in any year in prison.
Importantly, Kate van Doreen , Stuart Kinner and Simon Forsyth suggest, “young people experience markedly increased risk of death in the year following release from adult prison.”
“This elevation in risk is greater than that experienced by older ex-prisoners. Among young ex-prisoners, the majority of deaths are due to preventable causes, particularly injury and poisoning, and suicide.”
Aboriginal and/or Torres Strait Islander comprise more than one quarter the Australian prison population and standalone their median age is much less than the rest of the prison population. It is estimated that more than 90 per cent have not completed a secondary education. The majority come from the most impoverished contexts. They have little, if any, prospects post-release. I have brought a number of Aboriginal and/or Torres Strait Islander ex-prisoners into various educational institutions. Every single one of them took up the offer. Noongar man Mervyn Eades is the director of Ngalla Maya Aboriginal Corporation – an employment training provider for ex-prisoners. Mervyn knows what prisoners go through, understands their lot, having done time himself and Ngalla Maya enjoys a high retention rate among ex-prisoners working towards the pick up a qualification, to be able to legitimately compete for a job.
I am not interested in economic imperatives. I am interested in moral imperatives. It is the right thing to do for us as a society to improve the lot of others. The suicides will be reduced. The unnatural death rates that are damning this nation will be reduced. The impacts from loss and grief on families will disappear. I estimate, though the research is not yet in, that one quarter of Aboriginal and/or Torres Strait Islander suicides are linked in one way or another to ex-prisoners just out of prison – more on this in future articles. In my view a significant proportion of the prison population should not be in prison and instead supported with all sorts of educational and other assistance. Prisoners should not just be locked in those damn cells – instead help them with psychosocial counselling, mentoring, educational opportunities, job training and let us improve their lot. It is a disgrace and an indictment that prisons are missed opportunities for healing, education, the improving of one’s lot. Actually, it’s bullshit.
There is no greater legacy than to improve the lot of others – to the point of truly changing lives, saving lives. Actually, it is easy.
Comments are closed.