Contemplating the CFSY Conference

Last week, I attended the annual convening of the Campaign for the Fair Sentencing of Youth, a political action group focused upon the abolition of sentences of life without the possibility of parole for juvenile offenders. Members of the organization are convinced that it is unjust to sentence children, no matter what they have done, to die in prison. Children, they argue, have great potential to change, are better than the worst thing they have done, and should not be given up on. We must always leave room for redemption. I was invited to participate based on my status as a "recovering prosecutor," as one attendee put it. I am always glad to share my story of how and why I abandoned my career as a cog in a retributive system in order to advocate for a restorative, as opposed to a purely punitive approach to criminal justice. The whole conference was excellent. I met many wonderful people who care deeply about incarcerated children. So much good work is being done. Many of the attendees had incarcerated children who had been serving time for decades. Others were parents of victims, people struggling to move forward in forgiveness. I learned a lot from those people who were so close to the issue. One moment at the conference was especially noteworthy. It occurred during a session on crafting your message to suit your specific audience. The communications lady who was leading the session, who was not part of CFSY, put up a slide depicting a devil, an angel, and a guy with a question mark over his head. She said that we don't need to spend our time talking to angels because they're already on our side. Conversely, we don't need to waste time trying to sway the devils because they're too antagonistic to our position and will never see things our way. Instead, we focus on people who haven't made up their minds. She then asked who the devils were, and the crowd responded, "prosecutors, judges, victims' rights advocates." I was a tad uncomfortable, as you might imagine, having served as an appellate prosecutor for several years. When I spoke at a later session, I remarked how natural it is for us to demonize people who don't see things our way, particularly when we are emotionally invested in a cause. The image of the devil with the red horns reinforced that natural tendency. But the temptation to demonize must be resisted. If we are unwilling to resist the temptation ourselves, why would we expect our adversaries to not demonize us or the people for whom we are advocating? Rather than labeling our adversaries as something less than human and writing them off, I contended that we should be especially concerned with reaching out to them. They are the ones with whom we most need to experience reconciliation. "They" are not the enemy. Unjust laws and an unjust system are the enemies. Martin Luther King, Jr. taught us this much. Prosecutors, in my experience, are generally not bad folks. They care about public safety. They want to protect victims. They want to do justice, although they may have a different concept of justice, which might be good conversation fodder. What is "justice?" How can we best achieve justice? What and whom are our current system neglecting? Might it be exacerbating some of the harm it seeks to prevent or remedy? It is too easy to slap a label on our adversaries and disregard them. The issue before us, however, is more subtle and sinister than a group of mean prosecutors. This is how the fallen principalities and powers tend to operate. Systems, institutions, and authorities thrive when people are labelled, dehumanized, stripped of their humanity. It is a convenient, efficient way of managing and even dismissing people. When we succumb to the temptation to label individuals and groups of people, we diminish their humanity and frustrate the holy work of reconciliation. To be sure, the law needs to be changed so that children are no longer sentenced to die in prison. But the way we work toward that goal is as important as the goal itself. In struggling to improve an unjust system, we must not unwittingly employ the same dehumanizing attitudes towards our adversaries as have been shown toward juvenile offenders. Instead, we must honor their humanity and extend to them love and understanding. Then we can bear faithful witness to grace triumphing over law.