The 2010 Report on Queensland Prisons makes awful reading.
Open it at any section and it is grim. For example what is it like trying to visit someone in prison? Well it sounds demeaning and brutal and dehumanising.
I am left with a strong sense that prison is not a place any of us would ever want to be.
Yet a lot of people mostly men are in prison. Indigenous imprisonment rates are very high and are growing quite unlike non-indigenous imprisonment rates. It raises all sorts of questions.
What it doesn’t discuss are the offences people commit that are leading to imprisonment.
I can’t help but think that having a strong internalized sense of right and wrong is essential to protect us from going badly off on the wrong track and ending up suffering the awful consequences of prison.
How are we learning right and wrong? What does our legal system identify as right and wrong? What is defined as ‘wrong’ for the purposes of sentencing someone to prison?
Is there a racially-differentiated perspective on right and wrong? For example how much agreement is there about what is right and wrong across cultures particularly the indigenous cultures? Are some people committing ‘wrongs’ because they refuse to accept our justice system and laws?
If our parents don’t have a good idea of what is right and what is wrong how can they teach us? If our close community doesn’t have a good idea of what is right and what is wrong how can we learn to choose to do right rather than wrong?
If the social media (TV games social networking sites) provide us with the wrong information about what is right and wrong how can we recognise and correct this?
If people aren’t respecting churches or attending churches regularly where else can they get taught to distinguish right from wrong? Do churches systematically teach right and wrong nowadays or is this too confronting?
It is notable that the Catholic Bishops didn’t include any prison ministry to systematically teach or provide opportunities to discuss and reflect on questions of what is right and what is wrong and how we can know. Is this seen as too moralising and judgemental? But if the churches won’t stand up and teach and make statements about right and wrong who will?
Are schools teaching ethics and the law in regard to right and wrong?
We get well-taught about the road rules. It is easy to know that speeding is against the law. It is also easy to get a short sharp lesson in what the punishment is for speeding.
But what is the punishment for having drugs on you? What is the punishment for graffiti? What is the punishment for sexting (sex-texting) to your girlfriend if you are 18 and she is 17? What is the punishment if you are a parent and you hit your child when they have done something wrong? What is the punishment if you steal a packet of biscuits from the local supermarket? What is the punishment if you drink and drive? What is the punishment if you shout abuse at someone in a public place? What is the punishment if you ignore a court order? What is the punishment if you don’t pay a fine? What is the punishment if you pressure a young woman to have a form of sexual contact you’ve seen while viewing pornography on the net?
And so on. The law can be very picky and complex nowadays. How many of us really have any understanding of it?
If we were illiterate and mentally ill and already known to the Police how would we fare?
What about the churches being much more pro-active on teaching and preaching about right and wrong? Maybe they could consult with the Police to develop an understanding about which areas of the law (both state law and natural law) were least understood in the community.
It must be a terrible thing for anyone to end up in prison. Sheer hell. If the whole justice and legal system doesn’t make much sense to you it could hang over you like a huge threat.
Knowing what is right and wrong and being skilled at keeping within the law is a basic survival skill for all of us.
There is nothing cool or clever about breaking the law. Someone who breaks into someone’s business or robs something from a car or who gets into sex crime is doing themselves a serious disservice setting themselves on a miserable life.
How can they be forgiven? Resurrected? Do their penance? Be absolved to make a new start? Traditionally it required owning our own guilt confessing our guilt and committing to make a new beginning. Some of the deepest sacraments of the churches are around dealing with our guilt cleansing and forgiving our souls so that we can start again and try not to sin. This is spiritual work that when we reject churches is taken over brutally and harshly by our prison systems. The miserable sinner kneeling in the church pews praying for forgiveness is a fortunate soul compared to the poor sod who ends up in one of QLD’s prisons for something he has done wrong.
Think how hard it is to accept fully your forgiven status if you have broken even a ‘small’ rule. What would it be like to have done some seriously awful wrong-doings and have a sense of being a deeply evil person? How hard it would be to admit even to yourself how wrong what you had done was. How hard to imagine that you could ever be forgiven or go on to become a truly good decent person.
Yet it happens. This is the work the churches do best. It is great work. The benefits flow outwards into our whole communities. I say all strength to every priest every pastor who has the courage to get up in the pulpit and preach about right and wrong. If some people in prison ministry have the courage to lead discussion groups on this theme then bless them.