Looking in the mirror: retribution vs. second chances
By: Robert Barton
Tags: Justice, Equality, BlackLivesMatter, Psychology, Prison

This post was co-written with More Than Our Crimes collaborator Pam Bailey.

I recently read a first-person perspective in the New York Times Magazine by Reginald Dwayne Betts, who was incarcerated for nine years and then became a lawyer to win freedom for his friends still behind bars. Titled “Kamala Harris, Mass Incarceration and Me,” it opens with this observation: “Many progressives mistrust [Harris] for her past as a prosecutor. As an ex-convict — and also the son of a crime victim — I can tell you it’s not that simple.”

I am one of those people who has deep reservations about Harris due to the bias in favor of incarceration that is built into the role of prosecutor in this country. However, Betts’ reflections on his instinctual desire for revenge for his mother’s rape also provoked some deep self-reflection. He is quite correct: Even people like us, who believe in second chances and understand so personally the inherent injustice and corrosive impact of the American carceral system, have an opposing, almost primal response when a crime is committed against a loved one.

Facts vs. emotions

That tension demands scrutiny by all of us who say we are truly committed to ending mass incarceration. The fact is that — contrary to what policymakers and many media pundits would have us believe — mass incarceration cannot be reversed by omitting individuals convicted of violent offenses from conversations about reform. We account for 55% of people warehoused in state prisons, where 87% of inmates are held. (The only reason D.C. residents like me are not in a state system is that the District does not have its own prison and contracts with the federal Bureau of Prisons instead.)

It’s also true that people convicted of violent offenses are less likely to be rearrested in the years after release than those convicted of property, drug or public-order offenses. (A major reason: Age is one of the main predictors of violence. The risk of committing violence peaks in adolescence and early adulthood, then declines with age. Yet we incarcerate people long after their risk has become minimal.)

Public opinion continues to run counter to these facts. A case in point: A poll conducted by Morning Consult for Vox in 2016 found that nearly eight in 10 U.S. voters said they support reducing prison sentences for people who committed nonviolent crimes. But fewer than three in 10 indicated any support for shorter prison sentences for people convicted of violent offenses.

Betts’ essay is so important because he confronts, with compassion and insight, both sides of this very emotional divide. He was incarcerated as a teen for wielding a pistol as he carjacked a man and tried to rob two women. His mother, however, saw the potential for goodness within him and fought tirelessly for his release: “My mother attended a series of court dates involving me, dressed in her best work clothes to remind the prosecutor and judge and those in the courtroom that the child facing a life sentence had a mother who loved him,” Betts writes.

During his court proceedings, Betts’ mother was raped at gunpoint. The chances are quite likely that the perpetrator also possesses the potential to change positively in the future. And the chances are good that he has a mother who hopes desperately that others will see that potential. “But on the last day of the trial of the man who raped her, my mother told me, she remembers only that he didn’t get enough time. When I asked her what she would have wanted to happen to her attacker, she replied, ‘That I’d taken the deputy’s gun and shot him.’”

Betts goes on to examine his own feelings: “I am inconsistent. I want my friends out, but I know there is no one who can convince me that this man shouldn’t spend the rest of his life in prison.”

I get that. If my mother was raped or killed, I would feel the same way. And if we are all honest with ourselves, that visceral thinking is driven by a desire for retribution, not a belief that offenders can’t change for the good. If, however, we come to know the offenders once they have traveled the path of rehabilitation, that changes.

In Betts’ case, he writes of two men with whom he was incarcerated. One was sentenced to 33 years for murdering a man when he was 17. “We came into those cells with trauma, having witnessed or experienced brutality before committing our own,” he writes. “Prison, a factory of violence and despair, introduced us to more of the same.” But they struggled and changed together, often discussing great thinkers like Malcolm X and searching for other mentors. When Betts got out early, he went to law school because he believed he owed it to him and others to help them get out.

I have one particular friend who was convicted of killing a police officer 30 years ago, and is now serving life without parole — what many have called the new death penalty. I know that police officer has a family who hurt in a deep way like I would if my mother was the victim. But I also know Donnie, and the man he is today is one of the finest, most honorable individuals I have ever known. I will spend the rest of my life, if I am released, advocating for reforms that would give him a second chance.

Role of prosecutors

Betts writes about interviewing Kamala Harris when she was still running for president and hearing her tell stories about Black women coming into her office when she was the district attorney for San Francisco, seeking justice when their children had been victimized. I get that too. Blacks have often joined the call for harsh law-and-order policies. That is, in part, the point of this essay: It’s universal.

But ultimately, that does not change my skepticism and concern about Harris. We have a right to expect more of our public officials, including the ability to rely on evidence rather than emotions. As a state official, Harris argued that a 60-year sentence for a person who committed a series of restaurant armed robberies “should tell anyone considering viciously preying on citizens and businesses that they will be caught, convicted and sent to prison — for a very long time.” And yet our own National Institute of Justice has concluded that “research shows clearly that the chance of being caught is a vastly more effective deterrent than draconian sentences.” It goes on to say: “Prisons are good for punishing criminals and keeping them off the street, but prison sentences (particularly long sentences) are unlikely to deter future crime. Prisons actually may have the opposite effect: Inmates learn more effective crime strategies from each other, and time spent in prison may desensitize many to the threat of future imprisonment.”

I share with Betts the wish that these issues will become the basis for “a national conversation about our contradictory impulses around crime and punishment.” That is why I am co-founding a nonprofit project called More Than Our Crimes. We will never be able to have that type of conversation until each of us seriously examines our own inconsistent values and our seemingly instinctual craving for retribution and vengeance. (In Marc Howard’s book “Unusual Punishment,” he points out that this is somewhat an American phenomenon. The Western European countries he examined do not impose the crazy-long sentences so common in the United States. And yet their crime is not soaring out of control.)

Self-insight can only go so far, however. Betts’ admitted inability to be consistent in the application of his values, and my realization that I am the same, points to a simple truth: It’s human nature to revert to primal instincts when people we love are harmed. This to me says we must not expect people to be “super-human.” Instead, we need to alter the system. Family members of victims should not be part of the process of deciding whether to grant parole or other types of early release years after the original conviction. Those decisions should be made by a person (or, ideally, people) trained in psychology and based on a multitude of factors — but not the nature of the original crime.

“An eye for an eye, and the whole world would be blind.” ― Kahlil Gibran