Thank You, Bruce Peterson

I've mentioned the writing of Hennepin County judge Bruce Peterson once before, specifically how happy it made me to have someone like him making decisions that affect people's lives forever.

He's written in the Star Tribune once again, this time in the context of a case that's in our news headlines locally. Recently elected Hennepin County Attorney Mary Moriarty decided to charge two teenagers as juveniles in the killing of a woman because they were doing the work of an adult, the victim's boyfriend. The boyfriend is being charged as an adult with her murder, even though he did not directly pull the trigger.

Peterson discusses the book Until We Reckon by Danielle Sered. She has run a program in New York City for close to two decades that offers alternatives to incarceration for violent crimes:

Surprisingly to many of us, long prison sentences are not what victims need. Sered emphasizes that there is absolutely no evidence that connects the length of a defendant's prison sentence to the well-being of the victim....

Victims want to feel safe and for others to be safe. Those who are provided restorative encounters with perpetrators come to understand that they are not "super-predators," but flawed human beings capable of deep remorse who themselves have often been traumatized....

Nor do long prison sentences provide the safety and security they promise. Sered points out, I believe correctly, that the conditions that repeatedly generate violence are shame, exposure to violence, social isolation and inability to meet one's economic needs. What do we expect to happen to people who spend years of dehumanization in a harsh prison environment, isolated from friends and family, while losing their ability to support themselves and their families?

Sure enough, defendants who serve prison sentences are more, rather than less likely to commit future offenses. Nor do long sentences provide much deterrence — surveys have shown that most young people have no idea what criminal penalties are likely to be. Swiftness and certainty matter much more than severity.

Sered's program has been successful in reducing violence with long-term accountability work with perpetrators rather that long sentences. Is this just a "slap on the wrist"? Well, serving time requires no moral effort whatsoever — one day will follow another no matter what the person does.

But true accountability, having to confront a victim and hear their pain, having to explain seemingly senseless actions and acknowledge responsibility and decide what needs to be done about it, having to make the long struggle to become someone who does not commit harm, takes much more resolve and courage than doing time.

Sered tells the story of a hardened gang veteran who wanted to stay in her office after a long circle session with someone he had beaten and robbed. When she asked him why, he said his hands wouldn't stop shaking because, "This is the scariest shit I ever did."

I'm not going to read the comments on Peterson's op-ed because I'm sure it will be full of people calling him soft on crime and talking about the revolving door that puts thugs back on the streets, since those are the types of people who comment on newspaper stores. But this is my comment: Thank you, Bruce Peterson.

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Two earlier posts on this topic:

On prisons in Europe and, increasingly, North Dakota, which are based on at least some of the principles described here.

Going deeper into abolitionism.