Last year, a colleague and I decided to ask our students to write Hanukkah cards to Jewish prison inmates. In the Jewish day school where we teach middle school, the values of empathy, community and compassion fill our curriculum, so I was shocked when several students expressed discomfort and anger at being asked to extend compassion to incarcerated men and women. They seemed to see inmates as people who should be ignored and forgotten, instead of as people who may have made terrible choices but are still deserving of basic human connections.
Unfortunately, many people feel that way. Our nation’s policies have created a system overflowing with injustice, resulting in widespread devastating impacts on low-income communities and communities of color.
There are more African American men in prison today than were enslaved in America in 1850. African Americans make up around 14 percent of the American population, but they make up around 40 percent of the American prison population. Civil rights lawyer and author Michelle Alexander has called this system of mass incarceration “the new Jim Crow,” and we can see its far-reaching effects in communities where it is common for children to have incarcerated relatives. Mass incarceration also drains public resources. Since the 1980s, California has built 22 new prisons, but just one new U.C. campus. We spend $62,300 per year on each inmate in state prisons, but just $9,100 per year on each student in our public schools.
Jewish tradition can help us see a way to fix the damage of mass incarceration through the concept of teshuvah (repentance). Teshuvah, which literally means “turning” back to the ethical path, enables people to own up to the wrong turns made in their lives, admit their mistakes, receive an opportunity to rejoin the community and make new choices.
Our criminal justice system, as it stands now, has lost its ability to facilitate individual restoration, to administer fair and equitable justice, and to provide formerly incarcerated felons with legitimate options for housing, employment and education. In short, we do not allow for the possibility of teshuvah. In order to extend this possibility to all inmates, we must reform our criminal justice system, making sentencing more proportional and less discretionary, more about discipline and less about punishment.
Over the past six months, while working on Bend the Arc’s Criminal Justice Reform campaign team, I have come to see that we — Californians and Jews — have an opportunity to bring greater teshuvah to our statewide justice system this November by passing Proposition 47: The Safe Neighborhoods and Schools Act.
Prop. 47 would reclassify six nonviolent, minor crimes (including fraud, shoplifting, petty theft under $950 and simple drug possession) to misdemeanors. The measure would apply retroactively to 500,000 Californians living with the stigma of a felony conviction for these nonviolent mistakes. It would allow them to petition a judge to change their record, remove the mark of a felony and provide an opportunity for employment and self-sufficiency. Prop. 47 would also reallocate the approximately $250 million saved each year to reinvest in K-12 schools, mental health and substance abuse treatment, and victim services.
Teshuvah can be an immensely transformative experience, but only if society allows those who erred to be transformed. The Sifre, a commentary on Deuteronomy, says that “[U]ntil the moment of punishment, a person may be referred to as ‘wicked.’ But after punishment, he once again becomes our ‘brother.’ ” However, in our current system, a felony conviction for nonviolent, petty crimes is a severe punishment that can last a lifetime. And disparities in law enforcement and sentencing are saddling thousands to a lifetime of unjust punishment and disenfranchisement.
Before my students wrote and sent those holiday cards to Jewish inmates, we engaged in lengthy conversation about the importance of teshuvah in their lives and its importance in healing the world. The text that swayed them came from the Talmud: Rabbi Akiba said “that if those liable for divine punishment should resort to repentance, the Heavenly Court would grant them remission [even in the absence of punishment].” If God can forgive those who have committed dire crimes against heaven and have made teshuvah, why can’t we support proportional punishment for nonviolent, petty crimes? Why can’t we change sentencing laws to support community members in making new choices?
It is essential that the Jewish community take a moral stand to reform our criminal justice system to allow all Californians to “turn” toward a more just future.
To learn more, visit www.tinyurl.com/bendthearc-justice-reform and join the Pursuing Justice Party, 6 to 9 p.m. Wednesday, Oct. 22 at 111 Minna St., S.F..
Joel Abramovitz teaches at the Ronald C. Wornick Jewish Day School in Foster City and is on the regional council of Bend the Arc: A Jewish Partnership for Justice.