I lived in a penitentiary city for a time. When I am feeling particularly mischievous I will introduce this information to people with a feigned sense of discomfort, averting my eyes and speaking quietly and quickly. It’s my own little micro social experiment to see how people respond to the possibility that I spent some time in a correctional facility. Usually the results are similar: silence and then an uncomfortable and somewhat forced laugh when they realize I’ve been pulling their leg.
The experiment always leaves me feeling dissatisfied. Probably, in part, because I’d likely respond similarly. What exactly would an appropriate response to receiving knowledge like that be, anyways – “welcome back”?
Truthfully, I’ve had limited exposure to either prisons or inmates. I mean, other than knowing someone who has been in and out of jail a few times as well as someone who was personally invested with working with victims of violence (when he was a child, his mother was stabbed to death – by an ex-law enforcement officer). Because of my limited experience, when I think of prisons I generally think of their outsides more than their insides.
Maybe that’s why a 2002 episode of This American Life, entitled “Act V,” had such an effect on me: it took me past the stereotype of hardened prisoners and into a prison classroom where they were reading Hamlet. The show gave the inmates voice, both metaphorically and literally, and it changed me.
The episode ends with this question, but I think it’s a good place to start:
Why do we put people in jail? To rehabilitate them and restore them to our company, or to punish them, regardless of how much they might change?
At one point in the episode Jack Hitt, the host, asks the inmates why they agreed to do readings of the play and be bossed around by the play’s tiny but fierce director, Agnes Wilcox. The response of this individual stunned me:
She makes us feel human, man. She really does. When I go in there, I have to take my clothes off and get butt naked and bend over and spread my cheeks so some man can look up my butt, you know, all the dehuman-- the humiliating things that they do to us here. And when she comes in and does what she does, for that minute, them two and a half hours, all these guys with PhDs and can be doing other things, they come in, I at least can feel human in here.
It stunned me because it helped me realize that I had fallen prey to the deceitful nature of labels. I had allowed the label “convict” to supersede the description “human.” What was particularly challenging, for me, was that the episode does not sanitize their offences. Sometimes, in a well-intentioned attempt to convey a person’s dignity and humanity, we can tend to minimize or justify a person’s actions. Jack Hitt does not allow us this luxury. Three quarters into the episode, he confronts us with this:
Although I found myself playing a constant guessing game with all of them about [their crimes], they wouldn't discuss the past. That was then, they said. This is now. But I had to know. So one morning, instead of visiting, I went to downtown St. Louis, not far from the Arch, and sat in a records depository reading old case files.
It was more horrible than I thought. One guy I particularly liked shot a man in the head twice at point-blank range. Another of my new friends raped his pubescent daughter, impregnating her. Later, there was an abortion. Another friend grabbed a man getting out of a car, put a gun to his chest during a robbery, and pulled the trigger. Others had sodomized children-- younger children, the age of my own children.
What was I to do with this information? How could I reconcile my emerging appreciation of the convicts as “image bearer of God” with “murderer” or “abuser of children”?
That’s a tall order.
Hitt concludes the episode by informing us that 97% of incarcerated people will be released in the future. Many of the Hamlet readers, we learn, have served their time and found employment in their communities. Honestly, my response is mixed. I’ve gotten to know the Hamlet readers, yet I still struggle with their crimes. Am I supposed to celebrate that someone once capable of those actions will now be living in community?
And then I think of the gospel.
As the show ends, I am left to wonder how my vision as a believer in Christ’s message should impact my view of and interaction with people with a criminal history. It seems to me I often feel more “convicted” about my sins of commission than of omission. Whether pride or lust or anger, addictions, indulging in a bit of character decimation, or assuming bad intentions of others: these are things I am likely to repent of over the Lord’s supper. But what about my interactions with people who have been incarcerated? The Bible says that one of the ways believers demonstrate their belief is by visiting those in prison. Sadly, I wonder if I’ve interpreted this as applying more to people who have wrongfully been convicted, or better yet, Christians who have been incarcerated for their faith in different countries. That type of population seems much more approachable, much more deserving, doesn’t it? And then I am convicted about the degree to which I believe God is Love and loving and in the business of restoration – that is, reconciling people to Himself AND to each other.
If the gospel I adhere to ends where my comfort does, if my version of the gospel is only fit for people I can comfortability interact with, I fear my version of the gospel is not the real thing. “Act V” challenged me to see the humanity of incarcerated individuals, but the Bible challenges me to live out that vision – to be the Agnes Wilcox who reminds people of their humanity – of their importance to God and others— regardless of their history. How will I tangibly do this? Honestly, I’m not sure. I have a friend who has a pen-pal in jail. I know someone else in the performing arts who does performances with her team in local institutions. I know of artists who attempt to give voice to inmates who have often been silenced to the rest of society. I know of a church that enthusiastically opens its arms to people fresh from correctional institutions. Perhaps I might start enlarging my imagination by asking these people more questions about their experiences, because as my imagination expands, so does my capacity for caring involvement. Maybe my actual interactions with incarcerated individuals will always be limited, or perhaps it won’t. But being a conduit of Love, affirming that we all bear the image of God, that we all have dignity and access to God the Father, realizing that a rupture in the fabric of community affects all of us: these things are not optional if I call myself a follower of Christ.
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