Understanding that, if the determinants were different the convicted person could be us or someone we love, we could declare that no one should be considered undeserving of humane and compassionate treatment – even those who wind up harming others and/or themselves. Committing to no one being outside of society’s protection does not expose society to harm. We could deploy non-retributive solutions ranging from the relatively minimal, such as therapy sessions to, requiring full time habitation in a guarded facility. In such cases, we could create facilities that were absent of vindictiveness and violence.
Throughout the developed world numerous progressive and more humane approaches in response to crime, drug use, and mental health problems result in better outcomes for offenders, for patients, for their families and communities, and for the safety and the financial health of the general public.
The prison system in Norway is a prime example.
Originally a retributive prison system with a 60 to 70% five year rate of recidivism when Norway prisons became focused on humane treatment and rehabilitation the recidivism rate dropped to 25% after five years. In a 2019 interview with the BBC Norwegian prison officer Are Hoidal said:
“In Norway, the punishment is just to take away someone’s liberty. The other rights stay. Prisoners can vote, they can have access to school, to health care; they have the same rights as any Norwegian citizen. Because inmates are human beings.” [1]
A progressive program in the US involves prisoners learning to train dogs. There are currently 290 facilities offering such programs, each with a very small number of participants. For example the Massachusetts Correctional Institution in Framingham has 8-10 participants at any given time. These programs seem to bestow numerous benefits to the prisoners, providing a valuable service to the community, and even lowering recidivism by 10 to 12%. More programs like prison dog training involving many more participants are greatly needed, however, prison dog training is difficult to scale up since ensuring the safety of the dogs requires involvement of only those who are considered “model prisoners.”
In recent decades some promising alternatives to our retributive system of criminal justice have emerged.
One alternative Restorative Justice[2] seeks to repair harm in both the person that was harmed and in the person who did the harm. By being concerned with the progress of the person doing the harm restorative justice also helps to protect the community from further harm down the line. The restorative justice approach offers empathy to the person(s) harmed but it also has empathy for the offender, recognizing that their behavior is highly likely to be connected to harm that was done to them.
The restorative justice process provides an opportunity for the person who has harmed to begin to recognize the impact of their actions and to engage in a process of attempting to compensate to the person(s) harmed in whatever way is possible. The mechanics of the process can involve a meeting or series of meetings between the person harmed and the offender, but only if all parties agree. Community members are also involved to provide support and can facilitate the process.
Additionally a related approach to dealing with people who have harmed others is Transformative Justice seeking not only the restoration of the victim to whatever extent is possible, but also seeking to transform the life of the person who has been harmed; the person who had done harm; and the community- resulting in an improvement to the condition of all involved. Transformative Justice seeks “Transformation of the social conditions that perpetuate violence- systems of oppression and exploitation, domination, and state violence” A transformative justice “tool kit.”[3] is offered by the advocacy organization Creative Interventions.
Detailed arguments for completely re-envisioning our system of criminal justice can be found in a variety of books, essays, lectures, podcasts, and videos.[4] A restorative justice or transformative justice approach doesn’t eliminate the need for some individuals to be held in some form of custody. Inevitably, there will be individuals who are believed to pose too great a risk of harming others to not limit their freedom. As other criminal justice systems such as Norway’s system demonstrate, there is no reason that such custody needs to be cruel and damaging.
Key issues to consider when imagining what a humane approach to criminal justice might look like can be found in the discussion between feminists who believe the threat of incarceration to be an effective approach to protecting women from sexual and gender-based violence, sometimes referred to as carceral feminists, and the feminists who oppose them – abolition feminists. These positions are explored in the book Abolition Feminism Now, authored by four American feminists- Angela Davis, Gina Dent, Erica R. Meiners, and Beth E. Richie. The erroneous belief that a violent institutional response to offenders can keep anyone safe is also explored from numerous relevant perspectives in the essay Against Carceral Feminism by author Victoria Law[5] and in the essay Dismantling Prisons: Abolitionist Feminism, Women, Incarceration and #MeToo by Philippa Greer[6].
With a variety of available alternatives that are both more humane, and more effective including better resolution for victims, how can our damaging and ineffectual system continue to be rationalized? The answer is that there is no rational justification- support of our criminal justice policy is primarily driven by strong emotions including – fear, anger, and moral outrage.
While these emotions may sometimes help to protect us in our everyday lives, they are poorly suited to be the basis of public policy in modern society. When it comes to instituting an effective response to crime we should not behave as if we were in a street fight. By deploying the numerous tools of modern social science, and psychopharmacology, in combination with a wide range of state-of-the-art monitoring options, we could respond to offenders without cruelty and in ways that don’t exacerbate their problems while doing a better job of protecting us as well.
Naturalistic Humanism provides tools and ideas that can help keep fear, anger, and moral outrage from clouding our thinking and undermining our response to those who harm others.
[1] A fuller description of the Norwegian system can be found here- https://www.bbc.com/news/stories-48885846
[2] See this article in Vox https://www.vox.com/first-person/2018/10/10/17953016/what-is-restorative-justice-definition-questions-circle
[3] https://www.creative-interventions.org/toolkit/ also see https://supportny.org/transformative-justice/curriculum/
[4] For example see https://www.prisonpolicy.org/factsheets.html and https://www.vera.org/downloads/publications/for-the-record-prison-paradox_02.pdf and https://www.sentencingproject.org/ and https://www.vera.org/ and https://restorativejustice.org/resources/ and https://www.vox.com/first-person/2018/10/10/17953016/what-is-restorative-justice-definition-questions-circle
[5] https://transformharm.org/against-carceral-feminism
[6] https://blogs.lse.ac.uk/gender/2021/02/15/dismantling-prisons-abolitionist-feminism-women-incarceration-and-metoo