A false balance is an abomination to the LORD, but an accurate weight is his delight (Proverbs 11:1)

I call upon all people of goodwill to support H.R. 1459, the Fairness in Cocaine Sentencing Act of 2009. Senator Jim Webb recently sounded the alarm about the brokenness of our prison systems. His pronouncement, of course, is nothing new, but it lends visible and much-needed support to the cause of prison reform. And, to be sure, altering cocaine sentencing policy lies at heart of prison reform.

But why, inquiring citizens ask, should we use every available means at our disposal to contact our respective members of the House Judiciary  and House Committee on Energy and Commerce and express support for H.R. 1459? Briefly phrased, cocaine sentencing disparities disproportionately impact minorities, interrogating our national commitment to equal justice under the law. H.R. 1459 aims to alter the Controlled Substances Act and eliminate two things. First, it aims to “eliminate increased penalties for cocaine offenses where the cocaine involved is cocaine base.” And secondly, it aspires to eradicate “minimum mandatory imprisonment penalties for cocaine offenses.” The title of H.R. 1459, Fairness in Cocaine Sentencing Act, assumes that a gross inequity exists within current sentencing policy (the Anti-Drug Abuse Act of 1986, PL 99-570, to be exact). The inequity, referred to by many as the “100:1 quantity ratio”, means that “it takes 100 times more powder cocaine than crack cocaine to trigger…harsh five and ten-year mandatory minimum sentences”. According to a report by the 2009 Criminal Justice Transition Coalition, the disparity, despite being “facially neutral”, unevenly penalizes minorities. 

If we are to achieve our country, as the eloquent James Baldwin once said, then policies championed by the White House must not unfairly punish those who go to the crackhouse. If we are to achieve our country, let us call on Vice President Joe Biden, a repentant architect of this sentencing policy, and the White House Office of Urban Policy to proudly and persistently support this bill. All too often, the penal structure of our criminal justice is a modern-day example of unbalanced scales. Although not always in intent, cocaine sentencing consistently—and adversely—impacts minorities in ways that are so horrifically disproportionate that the words of the black bard Tupac Shakur come to mind: “Lady Liberty needs glasses/ And so does Mrs. Justice by her side”. Let us march one step forward from aspiring to equal justice under the law to its actuality, and inch towards achieving our country by supporting H.R. 1459.   

Shoutout to James Rucker and colorofchange.org for being a drum major for justice on this critical issue.

A few takes from me:

1) The notion of solitary is actually monastic in origins. Penance is the root for Penitentiary.  Historically you can track the notion of incarceration and “doing time” directly back to the early monastic movement.  In large part, that is why the incarceration based Penil-system is a distinctly western phenomenon. 

2) Solitary is the most dangerous part of the prison for guards.  It is where they are most likely to get “gassed” – a mixture of feces and urine, or stabbed by spears through the feeding whole, and face constant verbal abuse from prisoners who are going through severe psychological drama.  The conditions of guards is often left out of the prison reform conversations, but here is a case where solitary is not a healthy space for them either.

3) Solitary is an outcome of a vengeance-based legal system rather than a justice based legal system.  Biblically, justice and righteousness are the same word – actually in Greek and Hebrew.  Theologically, justice is best understood as a restoration to the creation we were meant to be.  Our legal system should be in the business of restorative justice towards our created selves (or a normative existence) rather than vengeance.  In a culture that rightly values the suffering of victims and their families this can be extremely difficult to do.  Yet, I’m unconvinced that emotive appeals are a basis for justice… as much as they are an appeal to our desire for vengeance.  Justice/Righteousness is not a “you-took-from-me/therefor, I-take-from-you” matter, yet a restorative one.  Solitary shows very little evidence of serving any restorative purpose.

My Dad was a guard in the prison and my Grandfather was a warden. They attended Church on Sundays and knew where Pickett stood on the death penalty. Ministering to convicts you know should not be put to death, and the guards who are carrying out the executions, is perhaps the definition of a prophetic call. Pastor Pickett is truly a light in the darkness of Huntsville.

ESPN’s Rick Reilly tells the story of what he calls “the oddest game in high school football history” down in Grapevine, Texas last month. Now I’m pretty use to schools like my own and Grapevine Faith being the hub of the Christian Right Culture and football. Growing-up those two fit together well. Rarely do they do anything to show love, kindness, or caring. This is football after all.

But, from the beginning Grapevine Faith vs. Gainesville State School was a bit strange. For instance, the Gainesville players (the away team) took the field and found a 40-yard spirit line of people rooting for them even though they came with no fans of their own. (This is a practice, if your unfamiliar with high-school football, where the fans of the home team make a pathway of people for their team’s players to run through). The fans of Grapevine Faith had made a “spirit line” for Gainesville State’s players.

That never happened when I was in school. Further, the Grapevine Faith folks “even made a banner for players to crash through at the end. It said, “Go Tornadoes!” Which is also weird, because Faith is the Lions.”

As the Gainesville State players arrived at their bench – on the away side of the field – they found 200 Faith fans rooting for them by name. Ok, a little creepy and odd. Though, admittedly, we would often learn the names of other team’s players in order to taunt them – not cheer for them.

Isaiah, middle linebacker and Quarterback for Gaineville told reporter Reilly that, “I never in my life thought I’d hear people cheering for us to hit their kids…I wouldn’t expect another parent to tell somebody to hit their kids. But they wanted us to!”

Reilly then reports the cause of all this strangeness:

And even though Faith walloped them 33-14, the Gainesville kids were so happy that after the game they gave head coach Mark Williams a sideline squirt-bottle shower like he’d just won state. Gotta be the first Gatorade bath in history for an 0-9 coach.

But then you saw the 12 uniformed officers escorting the 14 Gainesville players off the field and two and two started to make four. They lined the players up in groups of five—handcuffs ready in their back pockets—and marched them to the team bus. That’s because Gainesville is a maximum-security correctional facility 75 miles north of Dallas. Every game it plays is on the road.

Kris Hogan, head coach of Faith, wanted to do something nice for the Gainesville team. He knew his team was going to win – Faith was 7-2 and Gainesville way 0-8 with only two TDs scored all year. Gainesville was an unorganized group of drug, arson, assault, robbery, etc. convicts – many of whose families could really care less about them – with one coach and seven-year-old equipment. This wasn’t going to match up well against Faith’s – best of the private schools – 11 coach staff, new training equipment, active booster club, nice training facility, and so on.

So Hogan suggested a unique idea:

What if half of our fans—for one night only—cheered for the other team? He sent out an email asking the Faithful to do just that. “Here’s the message I want you to send:” Hogan wrote. “You are just as valuable as any other person on planet Earth.”

A few were a little thrown by Hogan’s suggestion. One of his players asked, “Coach, why are we doing this?” Hogan replied, “Imagine if you didn’t have a home life. Imagine if everybody had pretty much given up on you. Now imagine what it would mean for hundreds of people to suddenly believe in you.”

So it happened. The Gainesville Tornadoes, for the first time ever, had fans! And, yes, even cheerleaders.

“I thought maybe they were confused,” said Alex, a Gainesville lineman (only first names are released by the prison). “They started yelling ‘DEE-fense!’ when their team had the ball. I said, ‘What? Why they cheerin’ for us?’”

It was a strange experience for boys who most people cross the street to avoid. “We can tell people are a little afraid of us when we come to the games,” says Gerald, a lineman who will wind up doing more than three years. “You can see it in their eyes. They’re lookin’ at us like we’re criminals. But these people, they were yellin’ for us! By our names!”

Isaiah, the linebacker/quarterback for Gainesville – to everyone’s surprise – asked to lead the prayer. “We had no idea what the kid was going to say,” said Coach Hogan. But this was Isaiah’s prayer: “Lord, I don’t know how this happened, so I don’t know how to say thank You, but I never would’ve known there was so many people in the world that cared about us.”

Reilly writes:

And it was a good thing everybody’s heads were bowed because they might’ve seen Hogan wiping away tears.

As the Tornadoes walked back to their bus under guard, they each were handed a bag for the ride home—a burger…and an encouraging letter from a Faith player.

The Gainesville coach saw Hogan, grabbed him hard by the shoulders and said, “You’ll never know what your people did for these kids tonight. You’ll never, ever know.”

And as the bus pulled away, all the Gainesville players crammed to one side and pressed their hands to the window, staring at these people they’d never met before, watching their waves and smiles disappearing into the night.

Anyway, with the economy six feet under and Christmas running on about three and a half reindeer, it’s nice to know that one of the best presents you can give is still absolutely free.

Hope.

Mr friend, Rev. Larry Coulter, who first directed me to this story as he used it to preach on Martin Luther’s notion of “left hand” and “right hand” power of Christ. The left hand, what Luther was arguing the Church return to, was that of a gentle, humble, compassionate, savior who is a King that comes as a Babe; This is distinct from the “right hand” notion of hard political power that the 16th century Church was often leaning towards.

Larry was on to something with his exegesis of this little tale. Though, I would like to highlight two other aspects we can take away. That every once in a while you come across people doing something so simple and so right. Calling an inmate by name. Rooting for the underdog. Offering a Meal.

My High School – the Conservative Baptist One – used the games against Juvenile Delinquent Schools as a chance to pad their stats, to run-up the score. Grapevine Faith got something we didn’t back in High School. Caring for somebody is a lot bigger than football.

Secondly, we have spent a lot of time in the past few months discussing the politics of prayers. Thankfully, after the inauguration, we have moved on to actually getting things done. But, through all the debate I think something was lost concerning what prayer can be.

And while, This story has gotten a lot of attention in the Focus on the Family world for the extremely powerful act of Coach Hogan. But what about Isaiah? What about the criminal? With Isaiah we get a lesson in the tangible and real power of prayer. Isaiah’s prayer is not one that calls for supernatural power, nor does he repeat the tired prayers that usually follow high school football games. The prayer of Isaiah is a political one. It is making change in real-time. It is a prayer about justice without mentioning justice. It is a prayer about compassion without asking for compassion. It is a prayer about community without calling for more community. That is why it is doubtful many there will forget that prayer. That, my friends, is the power of prayer. Calling upon God in real-time in the pursuit of justice, compassion, and community with our brothers and sisters.

- Grant

Sections cross-posted on DailyKos

Donne is referring to the common suffering of all humanity when an individual suffers. A more recent expression of the same idea is Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., “Injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere.” The theological reflection and Biblical support for this theme is too broad to cite here in a short blog post. There are many thoughts that flow from this reflection. I hope to write further on this topic, since I find it informs the life and work of the church, as we answer our call to be God’s chosen agents of reconciliation in this world.

For now I reflect upon the suffering of the local homeless and the hungry, AIDS orphans in Africa and victims of neglect or abuse, with the same sympathy – the same recognition that I share in their suffering and bear a responsibility to provide alleviation – when I consider human beings who suffer torture. Let us be quick to remember that it is not only the one being tortured, or those inflicting torture, but we too who experience and suffer the pain of each victim. Let us not shy from our responsibility to seek reconciliation, shalom, wholeness, as God’s agents.

A captured moment on the front page of the news aggregator site Reddit.com accidentally points out all that is wrong with our penal “justice” system.

UPDATE: If the above picture is all stretched and distorted, click on the image to get the full view.