It’s true private prisons tend to have more violence, less public oversight, and poorer outcomes in recidivism. And it’s true that money for building the burgeoning private prison industry was raised in taxes. Yes, even the facility here in Hardin, now back in government hands with more transparent regulations, began as a private investment for profit, on taxpayer money. Now even the Koch brothers’ stock options in private prisons for profit are losing (BuyUpSide: current percent return is -44.75%). It’s amazing, with all that cheap absentee-proof labor, we now have more Blacks in our nation than were freed by President Lincoln’s emancipation proclamation over a hundred years ago. President Biden is right to take this step.
But it’s a small step toward a fair, transparent, and far more cost effective criminal justice system. Let’s go on toward the evidence and wisdom of science, along with a few local elders who still know why the original nations of North America generally did not need or want a prison system.
Most of us born into the dominant culture still believe in consequences to control children from making wrong choices. I was raised in a family strongly believing that children (like me) need quick consequences early in life to learn to make right choices. We believe children will turn out good because we intervene with consequences, and punishment if necessary, for bad behavior. Some still don’t turn out good. Too many in America, especially in Big Horn County. That’s normal. Or is it?
Sciences of human behavior, child development, and of brain studies give evidence otherwise. Alternative paths are more effective in building the brain’s executive function, contributing to internal discipline valuing connection with trusted human beings, not from fear of separation from those we hope love us. We need light to shine on our false faith in fear of forced breakup of families. This is not a long-term effective motivation to behave appropriately in society. Here in Big Horn County that’s what many of us unkowningly think. How many elders still with us know otherwise by experience? We have them right here among us. These practices of science-based alternatives to punishment exist even in igloos.
At age 34, Jean Briggs traveled above the Arctic Circle and lived out on the tundra for 17 months, with a family of the Inuit nation. She chose to do this to understand the astounding discipline, even with young children, to control outrage and anger. In her time there, she was often chagrined with her own habits of expressing irritation, not uncommon in such close quarters in winter igloos. She wondered how children, from early years up, learned to hold disappointment and anger in check. Look up “Inuit parents teach kids control anger,” or check out her book, Never in Anger. After 17 months she was still left with a lingering question: How do Inuit parents instill this ability in their children? How do the Inuit take tantrum-prone toddlers and turn them into cool-headed adults? The answer came this way: She was walking on a stony beach in the Arctic when she saw a young mother playing with her toddler — a little boy about 2 years old. The child had been throwing rocks at the other children. The mom succeeded in distracting the child, taking the child to another area to play away from the others. There she picked up a rock, gave it to her son, and said, "'Hit me!” The child did, and Briggs noticed he had no remorse. She said “Go on. Hit me harder,'" Briggs remembered the child finally harming her mother, and she exclaimed, "Ooooww. That hurts!" After repetitions, the child stopped, and refused to keep throwing rocks. Mom asked the child why. The answer, as the child came close, into her arms, was “Mamma!”
Our national defiance of behavioral science reveals itself with a quick look. Here we are, the richest nation on earth, with arguably the strongest tradition of democracy. Yet we have one of the highest per capita incarceration rates. We are not the nation of law and order we think we are. A popular congressperson last week was publicly promoting the assassination of another congressperson. A gallows and noose were brought to the door of the Capitol to the death-threat chants of a lynch mob, dead set on breaking in and trashing our Capitol.
Such language spoken by supposedly patriotic leaders opens a possible charge of felony assault. But what happened? Representative Greene’s threats were reinforced with gifts from her constituency of $1.7 million. A federal government elected official came out west last week to recruit us to bring “Washington DC to its knees.” How can we have government officials shouting insurrection against the Capitol we the People of the United States occupy? it’s ours, not his personal possession. It cannot be brought to its knees without bringing us to our knees. That’s what a tyrant, a dictator does. It happened just last weekend in Myanmar. Recent tyrants success in Egypt, The Philipines, and Russia are entrenched. We don’t want that here again. That’s what our revolution repudiated, in 1776.
We’ll win again. Many around us, yes this writer included, looked into this mess attracted to the raucous humor then led by President Trump with great profit. But this has gotten out of hand in a murderous way. We are fortunate to have bipartisan strength in the Mountain West to just say no to this rampage of irresponsible outrage. Those of us who lived through the civil right struggle in the South in the 60’s know the danger of humoring of evil thinking. Those of us read our Bibles know Jesus knew this too. It’s a question of what’s true, righteous, and of good report. This unpatriotic thinking, regardless of the fun, has run its course.
We cannot simply stop the deeply entrenched retributive justice system we have in our nation. But we can start to relearn the more conservative, traditional, older ways of raising children with strong discipline. Here in Southern Montana we have heritages with better traditions of discipline. We also have one of the highest incarceration rates among folks who started to school in our rural counties. It takes an enormous amount of healing work, and needs the support of professionals to access strong evidence-based practices outside the current retributive justice framework. It also needs our legistators’ support to put taxpayer money into the cost-effective outcomes-based restorative justice framework. There are amazing studies of this in our state and around the world.
It’s a small step for America on a long journey to turn around the worldwide rise in authoritarianism and tyranny. It’s wise to stop our burgeoning private enterprise that has been hiding evidence of unlawful, abusive, and criminal practices against children and their families. Voices from those suffering abuse have filtered past the blocks of evidence of inhuman practices for profit. We are fortunate for this, and this small step toward transparency and human decency. It’s especially important here in Big Horn County, with a history of high incarceration rates among those who started school here. Our president made a wise choice to end the feeding of our taxpayer funds into incarceration for profit. Now we are on a path toward reducing taxpayer costs for incarceration, toward rebuilding our family relationships on our heritages and sciences of child upbringing, and toward a nation willing to address the real voices of despair in every outrage epidemic by isolating the truths emerging from the flood of misinformation and outright lies. We shall overcome. Black lives matter, along with all of our lives, especially those of our children.
Resources:
"The New American Slavery" MA thesis by David Liburd, cuny.edu
1. Many books by and about Dr. Martin Luther King, search with the words, “restorative Justice.”
2. Books by Jean Briggs, first one with the above story is from her book, Never in Anger. Also see NPR story, “How Inuit parents raise kids without yelling” March, 2019.
3. Returning to the Teachings, by Rupert Ross
4. The story of the Hollow Water community, the documentary on sexual abuse and incarceration, with a new on-line introduction to their community healing training regime: https://hiddenwatercircle.org/
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