Note: Can I Say This at Church is produced for audio listening. If able, I strongly encourage you to listen to the audio, which has inflection, emotion, sarcasm where applicable, and emphasis for points that may not come across well in written word. This transcript is generated using a combination of my ears and software, and may contain errors. Please check the episode for clarity before quoting in print.
Seth Intro 0:58
Hey, there, welcome to another episode of the Can I Say This At Church podcast, I am your host, Seth, to the handful of you that have gone on and rated the show on iTunes. Thank you so much, that helps more than you know, the Apple overlords have an algorithm and it likes ratings and reviews. So for those of you listening right now, just hit pause, take 20 seconds, go review this show, I will be forever grateful. I would also ask the same thing for those of you and thank those of you that have gone on to Patreon, the we are slowly but surely gaining steam there. And that will only ensure that the show is able to maintain the status quo and hopefully grow in the future. And I am grateful. For those of you that have taken the time to do that. I think you're going to like today's episode. So our presence and the system that we use to get people to prison. I think we can all agree needs to be reformed. And so there was a new book recently released. It's an Amazon bestseller, titled Rethinking Incarceration by Dominique Gilliard, and it is well worth your time it is well written, it is well researched. And so that's the topic of today's episode, I think that you will greatly enjoy it a look a bit about what the church's role is in incarceration and how we should be involved in that.
Seth 2:39
Dominique, thank you so much for coming on the Can I Say This At Church podcast, I am excited to talk to you today about the topic because it's not going away. And before we plug the book, I would like it, for those that are listening that are unfamiliar with you, if you could just bring us up to speed on what you would have us know about yourself, and then dovetail that in with how you got into writing your book. And the just the ministry that you're doing, how did you start getting on that path? And where's that taking you?
Dominique 3:10
Yeah, thank you for having me on the podcast. I'm super excited to join you today. And so my name is Dominique DuBois Gilliard. I am from the metro Atlanta area, I grew up in a family where my father worked for the Southern Christian Leadership Conference, which is an organization that Dr. King founded during the Civil Rights Movement. So I grew up in a household where we have photos of my father with Rosa Parks and civil rights leaders like Hosea Williams, and that was just a part of the culture in which I grew up in.
Growing up in Atlanta, I really grew up in the shadows of Dr. King, and this theology ended up being very influential for me and my life trajectory. My mom is a pastor, and I grew up as a “PK”, and really wrestling with these two, these two parts of my identity that were really passed down to me through my parents, this real passion for racial justice, and this passion for God. And my life, in a lot of respects was this way of discerning how God always intended those things to be mutually edifying passions, as opposed to isolated a rival passions existing in my life. And so I didn't really learn how to harness that until I was 25, really, after I finished my first master's degree, which was in US history with a focus on race, gender and class; studying and 18 to 21st century.
But that's kind of what kind of led me into the work that I do. But more specifically to writing the book. There was a case that happened that I opened Chapter one of the book with in 2006, I was a senior in undergrad at Georgia State University. And there was a case that happened 10 miles away from my college campus, where there was a community that was jurisdictively zoned as a “no knock warrant community”. And in no knock warrant communities, officers can invade the premise of the home without having to display a warrant or announce their presence as officers in a way that they will have to do literally in any other community does not dissolved as a no knock warrant communities. No knock warrant communities are disproportionately in impoverished communities of color that are stigmatized as drug trafficking communities.
And so the logic behind them is that an officer needs to be able to invade the premise so quickly, because people can flush drugs down the toilet and get rid of the paraphernalia as well. So in this case, one of the officers said that they had been staking out a house for three months (and) knew that it was epicenter for drug trafficking. The night of the invasion that officer and two other officers invaded a home with a 92 year old grandmother by the name of Katherine Johnston. They kicked in the doors without wearing uniforms and a shotgun is drawn ultimately ended up deploying 39 bullets and fatally struck Katherine Johnston five times in her living room.
After they killed her, they searched the house and found no drugs, no drug paraphernalia, they freaked out, figured out how do they cover up their transgressions, they decided to conspire and plant drugs throughout her house to make it look like she was actually involved in drug trafficking. The officers stuck to that story all the way throughout the trial until it was found out that they were caught red handed and they could do nothing. And then they confessed everything they had done.
Seth 6:57
Yeah.
Dominique 6:59
And when they were sentenced, they literally only got a fraction of the time that Katherine Johnston would have gotten if she actually was apprehended and was involved in drug trafficking. And so at that point, my African American Studies professors really implored me, and my fellow students, to get involved. They said we had an ethical and moral responsibility as concerned citizens to advocate for vulnerable people in communities like Katherine Johnston, and I was like…Yes, this is right, this is true, this is good.
But then I've had to take a step back, because my faith community wasn't calling me to the same level of engagement. And I said, if anything should be compelling me to stand up for the rights to the least of these into the pain and the humanity of vulnerable people. It should be my relationship with Jesus Christ, not my academic institution. And so that that really was the seed that ultimately prospered and sprouted into this book.
Seth 7:52
Yeah. I have a copy of your book. I very much enjoyed reading it. And I'm not the only one, correct me if I'm wrong, but it is currently a best seller on Amazon. Yes?
Dominique 8:06
Correct.
Seth 8:07
And so to sell four or five more copies, people go by the book, it's called Rethinking Incarceration: Advocating for Justice that Restores. And so I didn't want to get too far in without mentioning the actual title, but and there'll be links to that in the show notes. I am curious. So do you find it hard growing up in the community and the faith, the training that you had, you know, being so involved from a young age the way that your parents were; do you find it hard when you speak to people that have, unknowingly…I know so many people that don't know what they don't know, until they're old enough to do something about it, and then they're usually in a position that it is going to affect their friendships or their family relationships or their job, and so they refuse to do anything about it? They're just frozen there. So do you find it hard knowing what you know, being in your ministry and telling people this? Is it hard?
Dominique 8:59
Yes, and no.
I'll say no, because the reality is that, because I grew up in this particular community, these kind of conversations were normative to me. But there are other conversations about our faith, in my faith maturation, that were not normal to me; that I didn't learn about until I was older. And I had to expect people to have grace and understanding and patience with me, as I learned and matured and developed in my faith in ways that they grew up in, where conversations were normal. And they're just like, how can they not get this? How does this not make sense? So I very much understand that process. And so I sympathize with people who this conversation is not a normative one, this was not part of their faith formation, or even their academic education.
And one of the things that really gives me patience with people is the fact that I understand that most people don't know these realities, because of systemic racism that is manifested within our educational system, particularly through history. Most people go to school, believing that the what they learn in history classes is actually the totality of US history. When we know that history that is disseminated in K-12, in particular, is not a history that is reflective of the contributions of women or people of color. And that continues to reperpetuate itself into graduate and undergraduate education as well. And so I think there is this way in which you can't fault people who actually go to school, truly try, and invest themselves in the education that is assigned to them. And then they walk away with these huge glaring blind spots, because it's not their fault is the system that is actually failed them.
And so one of the things I talked about when I talk about systemic racism, definitely, you know, systems and institutional those things can become buzzwords. But one of the most tangible ways is if you actually trace US history with what’s actually taught. Then once you get into a fuller understanding of what US history actually entails, you can see that there's clear decisions being made by people in the school boards about what's going to be included in textbooks and what's going to be excluded from textbooks. And given that reality, it's literally setting up people to have these blind spots. And so I have sympathy, because I understand why they exist.
Seth 11:32
Yeah, I spoke with some I spoke with Mark Charles, not so many weeks ago about that. And the more that I learn things that I should have already known, just the more angry I get, and it reminds me of…I bought an album not long ago, hopefully you're familiar with him as an artist called Propaganda, I can't see how he's everywhere. He's got a song, Andrew Mandela, where he says, you know, “they say you're a hero, and they run the schools” so basically making that same correlation of when I run the school, and I get to write the textbooks, the history is what I say it is. And you don't know any different because there aren’t any other books, these are the books that I wrote, and that's what it is. So exactly, how is that the role of the school to fix? Is that is that my job to fix as a parent? How do we fix that?
Dominique 12:21
I'd say 3 different entities have responsibilities. In this one, I say, it is the role of concerned parents to actually advocate for new curricula within our school boards that get disseminated through our educational system, our textbooks have to be more reflective of the totality of what encompasses US history. There's no way, for example, that something as prevalent as lynchings should not be mentioned within our school books. Where we know they're from 1877 to 1952, approximately 5500 African Americans were lynched in our nation, there is no way that something that was so prevalent, should be overlooked within our textbooks.
Another example for me was, I didn't learn about the Japanese internment camps until my master's program in US history, that is a shame for there to literally to be federal legislation that was passed down, that led to racial targeting, then the you know, basically blatant this injustice that ultimately the US White House ultimately had to apologize for and distribute reparations for, there's no way that that kind of thing should be excluded from textbooks.
Seth 13:43
I learned that just the other day, I was talking with a friend he was he's a black friend of mine. And he's like, we should do reparations. I was like, I don't understand how we can afford to do that. But fine.
He's like, well, “we did it for the Japanese”. And I was like, “No, we didn't”. And he's like, “Yeah”, and I researched. I'm like, man, why? Why do I keep not knowing these things? Some of these people are still alive?
Dominique 14:07
Well, I want to finish answering your question. I think it's a critical question.
So I think parents politically must mobilize and advocate for reform within our school system. Two: as a parent, you do have a responsibility, particularly as somebody like yourself, who's coming into a revelation of these things, to actually say, in the midst of us advocating, we still have to work with the system that we have. And so I have to speak truth into the blind spots that the system is reperpetuating, for my children and other children in this community.
And then lastly, I'll say the church has a moral and ethical responsibility. And so I think about the passage, that talks about how we are called to give sight to the blind. And I think literally a lot of people have it translated that by saying, you know, we're supposed to be going and, you know, laying hands on people and physically giving them fight like we see Jesus doing the text. And I'm not saying that that's not true. But I think another way that that passage is actually speaking to us is when we take a sober look at our society, and we see the ways in which is re perpetuating blindness. The church has a moral and ethical responsibility to actually start to speak truth into those sections of society, and actually bear witness to the truth in a way that allows us to actually exist and function in the world as more faithful ambassadors of reconciliation, and truth and justice.
And so in the midst of us knowing that our school systems are inherently racist, and what they're producing, as US history, and is actually not the full narrative, the church has an ethical and moral responsibility to actually educate our members on a more faithful telling of history. So they will we actually participate in the world we can participate as informed citizens who actually literally leveraging our access our social capital, and our platforms for justice in a way that makes racial reconciliation a much more tangible reality, as opposed to this abstract notion that we kind of leave up in the air and say, Well, you know, God will take care of it.
Seth 16:18
Right. Well, that's the easy answer. That's the answer you hear on “thoughts and prayers” for whatever the problem is. So why should the church care about incarceration? Why should the church be involved in worrying about how people are in jail? Why should that matter?
Dominique 16:37
Yeah, there's a number of answers to that question.
I think, first that many Christians need to understand how inherently connected the Scriptures are to incarceration. Most people really have failed to grapple with the fact that four the books of our Bible were written in the midst of incarceration. And literally, we only have the book of Colosisans because one of Paul's disciples came back and forth and actually visited him while he's in prison consistently, where Paul was actually pastoring the church in Colossians into faithfulness. And because they were backsliding, and in the midst of their backsliding, Paul is actually writing letters back and forth to them pastoring the pastor's of the church, back into faithfulness back into orthodox understanding of who God was, and what it meant to bear witness to our faith in the world. So that's one reason.
But I think the other reason is that, if we take Scripture seriously, Matthew 25, is very blind, about the fact that Christians have an ethical and moral responsibility to be present behind bars. It says that we are supposed to visit the prisoner. And Jesus cares so much about that, that he says that when you do that you didn't just do it to the least of these, but you did it to me. And so I think, oftentimes, part of the reason why the church doesn't care and doesn't know some of the horrifying realities of mass incarceration is, we don't know because we don't go, we fail to go be present with Jesus behind bars. And because of that, our faith is impoverished. But it's not just Matthew 25. When you actually look at a text like Hebrews 13:3, he says that we are supposed to remember the incarcerated as if we ourselves were incarcerated. And so if we were to take Scripture more seriously, then I think we will understand the urgency of this call to be present behind bars and to care about the systemic injustice that's happening with mass incarceration.
But the very last point I'll close on is, the blunt reality is literally, if it were not for criminals, we would not have a Bible. There literally would be no Gospel to possess and to pass on. I mean, literally, if you take everybody in Scripture who is a criminal out of the text, there is no Bible. So you know, Jesus the author and perfecter of our faith. John the Baptist, Paul, who wrote the majority of the New Testament, Samson, Joseph, Malachi, Stephen Jeremiah, Peter, Shadrack, Meshach, Abednego, Silas (etc.) like there literally is no Bible without criminals.
And so I think if we were to press into this reality, and understand the inherent connections between incarceration and Scripture, then I think we would understand in deeper ways why we are called to care about this. But then lastly, you know, Scripture consistently tells us to care about the least of these, societies most vulnerable, and when you actually drill down and ask hard questions about who is incarcerated, you see that today who is incarcerated in our nation is society's most vulnerable.
Seth 19:55
What do you mean? So when you say that, and I've read that often in your book, and so you and everyone throws around the word or you'll see it on CNN or Fox or anywhere else. So when you say mass incarceration and and that those that are being affected? What specifically do you mean by mass incarceration? And then what do you mean by the people that are being targeted, are the most vulnerable? Specifically where are you getting that?
Dominique 20:20
I'll use partially Michelle Alexander's definition for this. She says
Mmass incarceration is a massive system of racial and social control. It is the process by which people are swept into the criminal justice system, branded criminals and felons, locked up for longer periods of time than most other countries in the world who incarcerate people, who have been convicted of crimes; and then released into the permanent second class. That is, in which they are stripped of basic civil and human rights like the right to vote, the right to serve on juries and the right to be free of legal discrimination and employment, housing and access to public benefits.”
But I would also add on to that mass incarceration has evolved into a lucrative industry, where people who are incarcerated are being exploited for their labor due to the loophole in the 13th Amendment, which abolish slavery except for as a punishment for crime. And in that loophole, we are seeing people being exploited for their labor in ways that are becoming extremely lucrative for companies, industries and investors. Most people don't realize that private prisons are one of the most bought and sold stocks on Wall Street. And after the new administration was appointed, one of the executive leaders of Southern Trust Bank said that “without question, private prisons will be one of the top five most lucrative investments that people can make on Wall Street within the next four years”.
And so what Michelle Alexander says plus the exploitative nature of commerce that happens and transpires behind bars is what I am talking about when I talk about mass incarceration. And to give you a very quick example of this, a lot of people are familiar with the California wildfires, that happen basically every summer. And when the wildfires take place, to actually pay a trained professional, who has been trained to put out wildfires, it costs $27 an hour for their labor. What most people don't know is that there are thousands of incarcerated people who are taken out of prison and actually forced to fight wildfires, and they get a total of $2 a day for their labor. And so people are cutting corners to actually generate massive economic benefits for the ways that they're using and exploiting prisoners for their labor.
Seth 22:55
We will add that to the things that I'm now angry about that I didn't know about 20 minutes ago. A lot of the pushback I get on this show is if people don't like what's being said, I hear that I don't…I don't provide concrete examples. And so if I was to Google that-that would be something that I can that I can easily find or is it shelved? Is it something you have to know where to look to find stories like that?
Dominique 23:19
If you Google prison labor, it's easily Google(able). Google that particular story, if you Google, California wildfires, prisoners fighting California wildfires, it'll pop up.
Seth 23:36
Man, I'm gonna…I'm gonna do that. And, and as soon as we're done recording this, so because I, I need to know more about that. Just because I feel like I do. So you're saying then that, that America's prison system may as well be the S&P 500. But people are the commodities as opposed to Coca Cola, or I don't know, bread.
Dominique 23:58
Yeah. And it says part of what really distinguishes my book from Michelle Alexander’s and even Bryan Stevenson’s, which is a great book Just Mercy, is that they really talked about mass incarceration being funneled and sustained through the war on drugs. And yes, the war on drugs is a major conduit that is pumping people into our system. But I actually say that there are four other candidates that are pumping people into incarceration.
So the four other ones are:
The school to prison pipeline, which number of people are a little bit of familiar with, but I really talk about the school to prison pipeline, as something that traces the well worn path to predominantly impoverished urban youth of color from decrepit, underfunded, antiquated schools to luxurious earmark state of the art prisons.
The school to prison pipeline, illuminates the detrimental impact of “zero tolerance policies” and highlights how these policies are exacerbated by a disproportionate way in which they're enforced based off racial and economic lines. And so within the school to prison pipeline, we see that disproportionately students of color and students who have endured trauma, or students who are impoverished like homeless youth, youth who come out of the foster care system, disproportionately get caught up in a system where historically juvenile mischief that happens in school would have been handled in-house through in-house suspension or in school discipline. Those disciplines have been increasingly outsourced, and are now being controlled by law enforcement officers who function as school resource officers. And they're leading to a disproportionate number of students getting caught up in the system. And disproportionately, we see that black, brown and Native American students are receiving the harshest disciplines.
The three other pipelines I talked about are the most overlooked ones.
We have the the institutionalization of mental health facilities that is lead to mental health being a fundamental pipeline, that it's funneling people into incarceration. To the point that right now, we have 44 states plus the District of Columbia, who have more people with severely diagnosed mental illnesses who are incarcerated, then who are receiving treatment in the State’s largest facility. To the point that, right now we have 90,000 people every single year who are legally designated as incompetent to stand trial, which means they literally can't comprehend why they're being arrested. But yet, they're still being arrested. This has become such a problem within our nation. The medical professionals in this field have bluntly said that prisons are the new asylum in our nation. So literally, this is where we're warehousing people with severely diagnosed mental illnesses.
The other pipeline, is the privatization of prisons. Most people understand that private prisons are really just a new reality that came on the scene in 1984. And they literally only exist because we ran out of space within our state and federal facilities to incarcerate people, we came into an awareness around 1980, that this was going to be a problem. And at that point, we had the chance to embrace diversion programs, or look at re sentencing, and particularly look at how we can minimize some of the exacerbated sentences for drug crimes, nonviolent drug crimes, but instead of doing that, we decided to outsource the building of prisons to a third party entity. And since then, we seen the growth of private prisons to the point that right now in our nation, we have more prisons, jails, and detention centers in our nation that we do degree granting institutions.
Seth 28:07
And there's a lot of colleges!
Dominique 28:10
And because of that, in many states, there are more people who are living behind bars than are living on college campuses.
And then the final pipeline is the pipeline that I say really parallel the war on drugs. And it is the war on immigration, we’ve just yet to coin that phrase. We don't call it a war yet. But we know this from 1998 to 2011, there was 145% increase in the number of immigration arrests. And so we see that this is evolved into this pipeline, and that pipeline is directly connected to the private prison pipeline, because 90% of people who are arrested on immigration offenses are detained within private facilities.
Most people will be shocked to realize that in 2010, there was an immigration bed mandate that was introduced by a Democrat, and I think that's important because sometimes we can fall into these partisan politics. And say, “Oh, the Republicans are the problems for this”.
Mass incarceration is a bipartisan agenda.
It is something that both parties have used for political expediency. And both parties have used “get tough on crime” law and order rhetoric to really further their own personal agendas. But in this, we see that Robert Byrd, a Democrat in 2010, introduced the bed mandate that said, ICE must keep on average of 34,000 people detained every night for immigration offenses.
Seth 29:47
And so if I don't have 34,000, what happens I just gotta go find somebody?
Dominique 29:52
That's what it would lead you to believe in that way. But I think more specifically than that national, what the way that what you just said plays out is on the local level. So when private prisons come into the community, most people don't understand how private prisons function. Private prisons really function like hotels.
So if you own a hotel, literally every night that you have a room open, you lose money for that room. Private prisons function the same way, in the every night, that there is a cell open, they actually lose money as a business. And so what private prisons do is when they come into a community, which are usually sparsely populated rural communities that are socially economically deprived, and they need jobs, they come in promising job security and economic investment.
But within that promise, they make the community sign up for a 10 year contract. And within that contract, there's a bed occupancy rate that is required every night. And so the rate for contracts and private prison ranges from 70% occupancy to 100% occupancy. So the state of Arizona is the most grievous offender in this regard. They have three private prisons in the state of Arizona, that require 100% bed occupancy rates every single night. So if every single night, those beds are not 100% full the private prison can literally sue the community. And I my book actually talks about an instance where private prisons sued the community and the community, because they didn't keep the bed occupancy rates at what they signed up for, had to pay the private prison.
Seth 32:31
Alright, so I have a friend that is prosecutor. And so I asked him a few questions. And I don't want to say his name just because you never know who's listening. So I called him actually yesterday, I was like, “Hey, I'm going to talk to a gentleman that is well educated as a minister, and the history of incarceration and everything else. So as a Christian, what do you struggle with?” And so these are some of his questions. He said, every time he goes to a prison, there is no shortage of Christians trying to get into the prison to minister and I imagine that's because it sounds like that's where the people are if they're full, and they're having to be full to make money.
So what am I trying to do when I get in there? Because from what I understand from him, racism is quasi I talked about, quote, unquote, you know, in the workplace, at school, in our communities, but he's like, when you get on the inside, “you don't hang out with black people if you're not black, or you're going to have a problem”. And if you're integrating in a different way, then you were looked at as the as the female or you know, the outcast of that group. And so, when Christians go into a prison, and they want to minister to those that are there, for whatever reason, they're there, they just have the wrong amount of weed. And now we're here for 15 years. What should be our role? What are we trying to achieve when we're there?
Dominique 33:52
So I would say that, that his experience is true in certain prisons, but there are other prisons/jails, where there are not Christians beating down the doors to get in. There are definitely and I've worked in…ministered in some of these prisons, where there are actually some organizations that have actually documented that there are a number of facilities that have absolutely no Christian presence in them, particularly our juvenile justice facilities. And so there are some organizations actually, literally mapping out where those facilities are, and they're actually trying to recruit Christians to come and bear witness in those spaces. So that would be the first thing I'd say.
The second thing I would say, is that when we are there, what we're actually trying to do is we're trying to do holistic ministry. And so as an evangelical, I would say one of the historic failures for evangelical prison ministry is that we've gone in and what we've been trying to do is make conversions. And after a person converts, we literally move on to the next person, and try to get another convert. And so we actually have seen jails and prisons as evangelistic opportunities for us to just increase the number of people who proclaim Christ, but we have not done discipleship with those people. And so I can't tell you the number of people who I have encountered who talked about all Christians were so eager to come here and actually share about Jesus. And as soon as I gave my life to Christ, I barely saw them anymore, because they were so busy going on to the next heathen who needed to come to know God.
And then they say, the other thing that happens is, even if they did continue to come and see me, they said, as soon as I was released from jail, they were nowhere to be found. And he said, you had all these people were so eager, they’d come every Wednesday night, they'd be faithful people. But as soon as you're released, there's no one who's willing to walk alongside of you take you in and actually do life with you and love you authentic ways, and not just try to love you from a distance.
And so part of what I think has been the problem is that for far too many Christians, we see prisons and jails as the spaces where God is not, and that we're coming to bring that to those places. But the reality is the God is already present behind the prisons and behind jail walls, and we're just joining with what God is already doing. But I think that's critical, because it changes our entire posture of how we go in and what we are intending to achieve when we go in.
But I think the other thing I just say is going back to the holistic ministry, if we're really trying to learn how to do discipleship with people who are incarcerated, it requires us actually understanding some of the systemic institutional things that lead them into incarceration, and also some of the scarring, the trauma, that people would have endured both before they were incarcerated, and in the midst of their frustration. So we're going to be faithful witnesses but we're also going to learn about the circumstances about what's going on behind bars so we can come out in the world and actually bear witness to it, to help our brothers and sisters who are present behind bars that understand the dehumanization, that is happening on an everyday basis behind bars. And so for example of that, I like to talk about solitary confinement, most people don't understand, within solitary confinement, people are oftentimes locked in a cell, that can be either a 5X7 or 7X12 and they're literally locked into a cell in darkness for 23 of the 24 hours of the day. Given access to human contact and satellite for one hour a day. And that is not incarceration, that is torture, particularly when solitary confinement can last anywhere from a week to some people are in there for years. And when you're in there for more than three months, neuroscientists that have actually said that that starts to literally dehumanize you in a way cognitively, that has irreversible impacts. But we continue to practice that as a form of incarceration and our nation. We need more Christians who knows that who sees who can come and actually raise awareness around those kind of civil rights violations that are happening behind bars, so that the church can understand its role in his witness in this critical moment of mass incarceration today.
Seth 38:32
Yeah. Well that is actually my next question. So how do we honor the law, the rules that we all are supposed to follow, but at the same time as a church, or as Christians challenge injustice in sentencing, you know, be that mandatory minimums or solitary confinement? Or my friend said that basically, a lot of people that go to jail, do it because they don't think about their decisions five minutes past right now. That I just needed that. I don't know, why did it, it was a momentary lapse, but now I've got to pay this punishment. And so how should the church stand against injustice, but at the same time, live under the law?
Dominique 39:13
Yeah. So I think, first, we have to understand the depth of the injustice that is present within our prison system. So for example, most Christians will be shocked to find out that one in 25, people who are sentenced to the death penalty in our nation are actually innocent. And in spite of knowing that we continue to cling to the death penalty is this archaic manifestation of justice, when in particular as Christians, you would think that as people who stay for revolves around the person of Jesus Christ, who himself was incarcerated and put to death by the state, that we think differently about capital punishment than we do but the statistics actually show that we don't.
But that's one thing. But I think also understanding things like the historic discrepancy between sentencing for crack and powder cocaine. And so before 2010, for the exact same amount of powder and the exact same amount of crack. The person who had crack cocaine will receive 100 times more severe punishment and sentencing than the person who had powder.
Historically, we know that crack cocaine is used by black and brown people and powder cocaine is disproportionately used by Caucasians in so in 2010, they finally said, Okay, this is a gross injustice, we're actually going to systemically change the law. And so they they said they changed the law and did justice, quote, unquote, by reducing this discrepancy from 101 to 18 to one, but it's still a huge disparity, even though crack and powder have the exact same impacts on us. So it just leads to these racial disparities that we see in our system. So right now, we know that black men represent 6.5% of the US population, but they represent 40.2% of our incarcerated population.
Seth 41:11
There's a part of me, the banker, part of me that thinks why even bother and we just make the math easy. So if I as using powder, get one year, and my brother as using the rocks, gets 100 years, what does it matter? If he instead gets 18 years? And I still just get one you like, if you're not going to actually fix it…Why even exactly why even do it? 18 or 100, either way, my kids have gotten married, and I missed it, or my parents have died or, you know, there's been four presidents or there's so much that changes, but I don't know what the difference when 18 to 100 years is I mean, that's still a long time.
Dominique 41:48
Yeah and I think we just have to also listen to medical professionals. And for medical professionals, and a number of police chiefs have come out and blatantly said that the war on drugs was a massive failure. And we cannot incarcerate ourselves at this problem. We are incarcerating people who have chemical dependencies who need medical interventions and not incarceration. And so one of the ways, one of the most tangible ways, that the church can actually advocate for reform within the system, while abiding by the law, is actually taking a sober look at who's incarcerated and what they're incarcerated for. Whenever we hear a lot of the law and order rhetoric, and we hear get tough on crime. And we hear policies like three strikes, you're out and zero tolerance. The politicians are really propagating this fear about the incarcerated, but they're doing it in connection to violent crimes. But disproportionately the vast majority of people who are incarcerated in our nation are incarcerated for nonviolent offenses.
And so I think we need that force our politicians to have a more honest conversation about who is actually incarcerated and what that rhetoric of fear is actually leading us to support legislatively. And as Christians in particular, I think we have to ask real questions about what is justice? Because right now, our criminal justice system says that justice has been manifested once the punishment has been distributed. But when we actually look at Scripture, that's not how justice is defined. Justice is not about the distribution of punishment. And so we need to ask better questions about what justice is from Biblical perspective. And I think the Bible constantly reveals that restoration, not punitiveness is at the heart of God's justice. Divine Justice is restorative and reconciling not retributive and isolating. The restorative nature of God's justice is woven woven throughout Scripture. And biblically we see the guide works amid brokenness, restoring victims, communities and defenders.
And so a big part of what I'm advocating for is a divorce from punitive understandings of justice and actually rerooting ourselves on the Biblical text, where we will see that restorative justice is actually a more accurate manifestation of justice that we see throughout the Scriptures. And we see that inherent within God's justice is a plan for the reconciliation of the victim and the offender, and ultimately, relationships looked at through accountability, those who've gone astray-who violated the confines of Covenant community, or actually walk through a plan of accountability where they ultimately reoriented into society. And so instead of supporting the system, they merely punishes Christians and some must pursue a justice system that rebuilds community affirms human dignity and seeks God’s shalom.
The church has the power to help transform our criminal justice system but if reconciled communities are ever to become the true aim of our justice system, the Church must lead the way in advocating for system that gives opportunities for authentic rehabilitation, lasting transformation and healthy reintegration. I always say that we are not all called to the same thing, but we are all called to something-every congregation has a role to play.
Seth 45:18
Yeah. And is that what you're getting at in your book when you talk about reparative justice?
Dominique 45:23
Yeah, well, the whole reparative justice, I'm trying to help people understand that there are the different ways in which we need to nuance this conversation about justice. And ultimately, breaking it down into reparative justice helps us to understand Biblically how restorative justice is such a consistent theme throughout the Scriptures. And I actually walk people through about four different cases where we actually see Christians have opportunity are followers of Christ, because somebody tried to critique me for using the word Christian—because they say, Christian is not in the Bible, for followers of Christ
Seth 46:04
they will critique you with semantics that those always that always goes well.
Dominique 46:09
Yeah, exactly. So followers of Christ throughout Scripture, we see that there's opportunities where the Scriptures actually depict a situation where they can embrace a punitive notion of justice, or they can follow Christ and embrace a restorative manifestation of justice. And so a perfect example of this I like to talk about is in the Scriptures where we see Jesus brought in in the situation with the adulterous woman. And in that passage, literally, the law requires bloodshed, the law required her to be stoned to death. That's what the law says. But in the face of that law, when Jesus is brough in, Jesus actually offers her grace where the law said that it was required. Jesus says that anybody who is sinless should actually cast the first battle, I think, would be Jesus, who's getting at here is this deeper question of as Christians, we must understand that we are only Christians through grace.
Scripture tells us that while we were yet sinners, Jesus died on the cross for us. And that while we were enemies of God, Jesus died for us. And so Jesus didn't wait for us to get our act together for us to get personal responsibility, right? Jesus intervened for us, in the midst of our sinfulness, in the midst of us actually violating God's law. And so I make the argument that as Christians, when we don't extend that grace to others that was first extended to us we forget who we are and whose we are. And when we do that, we are more likely to embrace punitive responses to justice, law and order, get tough on crime rhetoric. It moves us politically to support policies, they've really become a hindrance for people who have gone to jail, who served their time who've learned their lessons that we're trying to come out and actually have a second chance at life, the policies that we support and embrace actually become stumbling blocks for our brothers and sisters who come to know God behind bars.
Seth 48:18
And I want to end on this question, but it is a tough question, or at least it seems tough to me. It may be it may be an easy question, we'll find out. So I firmly believe that that evil obviously does exist. And then I'll read you a little bit from your book. And then I'll dovetail the question off that. So you say towards the tail end that
God's justice is not soft on crime, but it's also not marginalizing, dehumanizing, or retaliatory.
And so how do we deal then thinking of God's justice that way, and the way our penal system is set up with people that are just inherently bad, and I don't have any people outside of like, you know, the Jeffrey Dahmer’s-people that just do bad things and seem to relish in it. And I've talked with attorneys who say, you know, you can smell it in the air, like they are excited that they did it, and they have no remorse, don't even care that they did it. It's like that's what they were born to do. So how do we deal with that kind of evil as a Christian? And hope for justice? Like how do we how do we deal with it? And when we when we do sentencing? How? I don't even know? I don't? It's just a big question.
Dominique 49:27
Yeah. Well, I think circumstances like that, which are more of the rarity than the norm. I think that's important to note. I think, questions like that, and instances like that really press us as Christians to really wrestle with what we truly believe. So every week at church, we sing songs, pray prayers, and read Scriptures that bear witness to the fact that we say we believe that no one is beyond redemption. That no one is so far away from God that they can't actually be reconciled to God. And so I think it really presses us to believe…do we really believe that no crime actually separates people so far from God, that they can't be reconciled? That no person is actually irredeemable. And if we do in fact, believe that, then I think it forces us to even have a humane way in which we respond to the most grotesque violations.
And so one of the things I say is, I think we need to have a real, honest conversation about the fact that we need to start having nuanced conversations about offenses, to the point that we talk about non violent offenses and violent offenses in very different ways. But I think in the midst of separating them in those ways restorative justice still provides an avenue and a framework to think about incarceration in more humane ways.
So restorative justice says that a crime and never a violation that just against just an individual crime always has communal impacts. And so because of that, right now, our prison, our criminal justice system, literally mutes the victim. So the victim has no say, in what punishment should look like about what reintegration or restoration or reconciliation should look like. So restorative justice says that that system in and of itself is incapable of producing justice or reconciliation. And because of that, restorative justice says that any real accounting for, or any real engagement of, justice in our world where there is a situation where there is a victim and offender, there must be a safe enough space that's created where the victim, ultimately gets to help in this place where they are willing and desire to confront the offender, and they actually get to speak directly to the offender and actually help them understand the magnitude of their sin, and the magnitude of their debt.
And in that we've actually seen that restorative justice is not just some philosophy, but it's been tried and true internationally, and been proven to actually manifest reconciliation in a more appropriate way and more likely way than our prison system does.
And so restorative justice was used in South Africa after the genocide. And it was played a huge part in the Truth and Reconciliation series restorative justice has been tried and true, and these kind of grotesque situations that you're talking about where there have been grievous harms. And in those instances, the ability for the victim to actually speak directly to the vendor and help the defender to understand the depth of their crime and how it has impacted not only their lives, but the lives that the community has been proven to have some kind of transformative power that is unique to this philosophy and this kind of way of responding to injustice.
And so is it going to save everybody know, there are certain people who are just lost certain people who don't find their way back from the darkness. But restorative justice and disability for the victim to speak directly to the offender has been proven to be a way to soften hearts in a way that people that we thought were irredeemable, actually, were able to hear something that resonated that pierced their soul and softened their hearts and open them up to transformation. And if our criminal justice system really is about healthy reintegration, and rehabilitation, we have to do everything that we can to provide a true opportunity for regular radiation to take place.
Seth 54:02
I agree. So we…I have more any more questions, and we have no more time. And so I want to give you the final word. So where would you point people to get engaged, to support this kind of ministry and to honestly wrestle with our own pride and our own fear of things that disgust us, or that we hold contemptuous, a lot of what you said resonates with a book that I read earlier in the year with Richard Beck called Stranger God where you just have to wrestle with things that make you uncomfortable. But it goes with Matthew 25 quite well.
So what would be a final, a final word for those that are listening that hear this and they they feel like they want to try to do something as opposed to sitting there doing exactly the same thing they did yesterday?
Dominique 54:51
Yeah, I would say that one of the things that we really have to wrestle with this notion of meritocracy, this worldview that we are really brought into in this nation, that you get what you deserve. As Christians, if anybody should understand the flaws in that worldview, it should be us. Because we all know that we're sinners who have fallen short of the glory of God. And if we were really to get what we deserve, it will be eternal separation from God because of our sinfulness. And so if we can't embrace a meritocratic worldview, then what are we to embrace. And I have a whole chapter that really breaks this down. But I think one of the things that we need to understand is meritocracy really leads us into this, this very, very unhealthy way of seeing the world in “us and them” circumstances in regards to this conversation. And so we start to think of criminals as people that we must over there quarantined away from us and our community, these are children to keep them safe.
And in that, it starts to lead us into embracing things that would always be okay for them, but never be okay for us. And it is this real, unbiblical way of interacting in the world that leads us astray. And so what I would first say, the last chapter of my book is all about places and organizations and entities that are doing it the right way. And so I don't want people to think that I just leave you hopeless. I point out a lot of places that are doing it, right, and I'll end with one that I'm a part of.
And so there are a number of seminaries who are actually realizing the grotesque injustices that are happening and behind bars, and they're actually looking at and embracing higher education as a form of reparations for people who have been wronged and dehumanised and stripped of civil liberties behind bars, and who, in oftentimes, particularly, who've been charged with felonies, will have to bear The Scarlet Letter of incarceration for the rest of their lives, which will forever prohibit them from receiving any kind of governmental aid and subsidies.
So they can't get scholarships to go to college. They can't get on food stamps, they can't live in governmentally subsidized housing, any of those kinds of things. And so there's a number of seminaries who actually decided that they're going to go behind bars, and they're going to actually offer seminary level education for the incarcerated. And what they found is that this kind of education has been very transformative for these men, mostly men, but sometimes men and women. But most of these programs are in male facilities, particularly the one I'm a part of through North Park Theological Seminary.
So we go into seminary called Stateville Prison, and we actually cultivate classrooms were half of the classroom is incarcerated men who have life sentences, and half a classroom are seminarians, and we do life together. And through doing life together and doing education together, people are forced to acknowledge and confront some of their presuppositions about the other. And they're forced to ask themselves really hard questions about “how did I start to think about the incarcerated in this way“? “How have I suddenly but surely dehumanize them, and actually seen them as these people who are irredeemable, these people who are so other than me”, and they really come to learn that most of these people are just like you and me. Most of these people are people who just had a bad break in life, were subjected to trauma or some kind of violent situation where they believe lead them to make bad choices. And they just weren't raised in a loving atmosphere that helped them realize that there were other options.
And I think one of the most restorative pieces about it is that it's also helped a lot of people realize that, if we want to be honest, most of us have broken the law at some point in our lifetime. Even if, as adults, through traffic violations, or be or whatever, when we're younger, in our youth, a lot of people experimented with drugs, a lot of people did all these other things. And it was just by the grace of God that we weren't caught. And we weren't caught up in this system and incarcerated. And so I think it's been really humbling to actually have a lot of these people, these seminarians hear, face to face from the men and why they were incarcerated, and then be able to look back on their lives and the sober way and say, You know what, I actually did the exact same thing. I just wasn’t caught. I just wasn't living in a community that was targeted in the same way as yours was. And so I was more likely to get away with my law breaking than you are. And so those kind of things.
And so I think one of the cool things about our program is anybody who's interested in they can apply. And this is a certificate program, is a two year program, where you can come and you take one course of semester over the course of two years and you can come and you can be transformed by doing life together and communing with scandalize people. People that you're taught to never want to be with. But I think it's so powerful that throughout the Scriptures, we actually see that form of illicit communion that's the form of scandalize communion is oftentimes the communion the God uses to help us to have a deeper revelation of what the gospel is actually about.
It helps us to have a fuller understanding of how God is at work in the world and then place it spaces that we would never think that the gospel is exploding and flourishing and bearing fruit we would actually see how God is at work in that way. And so to close with this story, one of the things that close in the final chapter is I talked about how often we think of the incarcerated as these people were so far away from God, but the actual opposite is so true. In so many instances, I actually talked about how there are so many people who are behind bars who are actually come to know Christ, and they're actively people behind bars, who are disciples who are making other disciples, people who are bringing people to Christ behind bars, people who are actually serving as prison chap, prison ministers, and pastors to the point that some of them are growing so steadfast in their faith, that they're literally being transported from one prison to another prison, as a prison missionary, to do church plants and other prisons that don't have churches. And you know, most Christians would lie would like I've never, I couldn't even fathom something like that, because I just think it just bears witness to how good God is how true God is, and how often God is flourishing is showing up in spaces that we would never expect God to be at work in.
Seth 1:02:19
Yeah, yeah. For those listening, go, go and buy the book. It's not an accident that it's a best seller. It's a good book and I will say this, I've never had someone come on and tell me about the last chapter. I almost never try to talk about it on purpose. So I will say the last chapter, there is quite a few places that you can get involved in. And my hope is that after you hear this, and after you wrestle with this, and I will tell you it it personally is a struggle to wrestle with this as a middle class American that believes that I have to be right. Part of that, just because I want to be did to deal with this. And so I Dominique, I appreciate what you're doing. And I am very much appreciate you coming on the show today to talk about it. I look forward to speaking with you another time on a and just as an important topic, but hopefully not one as a sad.
Dominique 1:03:10
Well, thanks for having me. And they are very tangible ways that people can get involved in their local communities. Look up people who are doing this work. There are organizations like Pico people, improving communities through organizing their local organizations like the Ella Baker foundation out in the Bay Area. There are orgs all across the board who are working to over turn this grievous injustice in our nation, and the church has to become part of the freedom caravan.
Seth 1:03:46
Amen. Well, thank you again, Dominique. I appreciate it.
Dominique 1:03:48
Yeah, thank you.
Seth Outro 1:04:13
Man that was a lot. If you're like me, you hear that you see so many things that we could do better. So much education that we could do with our kids, so much of a responsibility that is transferred from the schools to us as parents to us as ministers, and to us as citizens of America. I am challenged hearing Dominic speak in ways that I can be more involved and in ways that I can get out of my comfort zone to quite literally do the work of reconciliation and what better work could we do? I mean, if if we're being honest with each other. Thank you so much for listening today. If you didn't at the beginning, please go now rate the show on iTunes, become a supporter on Patreon. More importantly, to continue to grow the show, share this with your friends and family put it on Facebook. I think the conversations that we are all involved in matter more than we know. And that the way that we approach our faith matters more for the world and for us than we could ever know. The music that you heard today is from a new liturgy. A new liturgy is a project from Aaron Niequist and his friends that is designed to create a movable and Sonic sanctuary. I can't tell you how much I have enjoyed listening to their music, especially recently. It is it is spoken to my soul and to me music has a way to do that. And their albums have done that you'll find links to the songs in the show notes. And as always, all the songs used in today's episode will be on the Can I Say This At Church Spotify playlist. Thank you again for listening. We'll talk to you next week.