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Hospitality to the Imprisoned ˜ 145
The day of the Lord will bring darkness and not light; it will be
a day of gloom, without any brightness. ...
“I hate, I despise your feasts, and I take no delight in your
solemn assemblies. Even though you offer me your burnt offerings
and cereal offerings, I will not accept them, and the peace
offerings of your fatted beasts I will not look upon. Take away
from me the noise of your songs; to the melody of your harps I
will not listen. But let justice roll down like waters, and righteousness
like an ever-flowing stream.”
—Amos 5:6–15, 18–24
As the Georgia state legislature convenes, Atlanta begins to hear from a new
mayor, the U.S. Congress goes about its business, and we are being treated to increasingly
strident truckloads of political rhetoric that suggest police and punishment
are the simple answers to the deepening darkness of our social disintegration.
What does Atlanta, Georgia, one of the poorest cities in the United States,
need “More police,” says Mayor Bill Campbell. What does Georgia—the state
whose children are the hungriest, most illiterate, sickest of any in the country—
what does Georgia need according to our leaders More prisons, more mandatory
sentencing, more occasions to use the death penalty, and automatic life in
prison for those convicted of a second violent offense.
What does our country need Our country where the guns proliferate, the
violence is overwhelming, the schools are broken, the libraries are closing, the
community centers cutting their hours, and we are all scared to death of each
other—what do we need according to our “leaders” Police. Prisons. Harsh sentences.
Death as punishment. Provisions that allow us to try thirteen-year-old
children as adult criminals.
The Sentencing Project has figured that the crime bill already passed by the
U.S. Senate would cost $6.5 billion for construction of new prisons and an additional
$1.3 billion per year to operate them. That’s on top of the sixteen billion
dollars per year we’re already spending. If an ever expanding criminal-control
system were the answer, the United States would be the safest place on earth. No
other country even approaches our out-of-control use of prisons to respond to
every problem. But we doggedly ignore the facts while the political boondoggle
further rips at the very fabric of our society. Few of the politicians who spout the
get-tough rhetoric believe what they’re saying. But the thinly veiled racism and
call to class hatred fuels the hell-bent machinery, and we’re selling our children’s
future to keep it going.
Dan Berrigan said some years ago that trying to tell people the truth about
prison is like trying to hand them a bag of snakes. Nobody wants it, and it seems
like a tacky thing to do to nice people—especially people you like. It’s simply no