How Radical Hospitality Can Change the Lives of the Formerly Incarcerated | Reuben Jonathan Miller

Transcriber:

There are few things we know about mass incarceration in our country.

We know, for example, that we're the world's leading jailer.

With five percent of the world's population,

we incarcerate 20 percent of its prisoners.

And we know that we punish our poor, our own.

Half of the [imprisoned] --

in fact, well over half -- live below the poverty line.

This is nothing to say

about the egregious racial disparities in how we administer justice

and how we choose to punish.

Black Americans are five times more likely to be incarcerated than white Americans.

And they do lengthier sentences, even for the same crimes.

This is punishment in the United States.

But what is punishment for?

When does punishment end?

Why do we punish in this way?

In the 1970s,

we said that punishment was for the purpose of rehabilitation.

But on the heels of the civil rights movement

and a predictable, because it was cyclical, crime wave,

we decided that rehabilitation no longer worked.

In fact, our policymakers said

that nothing worked for people like them.

That is to say, the people that we lock away

in our American jails and prisons,

the kinds of people that we put in a cage.

We made a political decision in that moment

that what we would do

is we would sentence people to longer terms in prison

and that we would make sure that the punishments were more harsh.

But my research shows

that punishment doesn't end when the sentence ends.

I'm a sociologist.

I began this work as a volunteer chaplain

at the Cook County Jail in Chicago,

and it was there that I was confronted with the realities of mass incarceration.

It was there that I was greeted by a sea of faces that look like mine,

from neighborhoods that look like mine

because I was born poor and Black after 1972.

This is the year that mass incarceration began in earnest.

And I was confronted by the reality

that the people I spent time with were not just my neighbors,

they were certainly more than just criminals.

These are people who had families,

who loved people and who were loved by people.

These were people who contributed to their homes

and to their sense of community.

So I had to know what happened when they went home.

I had to know what brought them there in the first place.

So I began to study mass incarceration.

I spent two decades following people that we've learned to be afraid of.

A man I call Jimmy Caldwell was one of those people.

He spent two decades on and off in Michigan jails and prisons.

He was diagnosed with bipolar disorder

but didn't get access to medical care

or the medication that he needed.

I met him on the day of his release.

He was handed a sheet of paper.

This is known as the conditions of release,

and they list things that you may not do.

You may not cross state lines;

you may not own a weapon;

you may not drink even if you’re of age;

you may not use substances, including marijuana,

even in states where it’s legal;

you may not associate with so-called known offenders.

This is an impossibility in a city like Detroit,

where crime and incarceration, by the way,

is concentrated in so few neighborhoods.

It’s also an impossibility in cities like Chicago or LA or New York,

or any of the major places where people live.

I wanted to know how he met these restrictions.

But more than the things that he couldn't do,

he was given a new set of responsibilities.

You must report to a probation officer once a week at least.

You must submit to and pay for a urinalysis.

You must attend Narcotics Anonymous.

You must do this multiple times each week.

You must also go to a workforce development program.

You must get a job.

You must do all of this before 3pm each day,

because that’s your curfew.

And you must wear an ankle bracelet so we can monitor your movement.

Violation of any of these rules can cost you your freedom.

How did Jimmy make these appointments?

He was effectively homeless.

He had no money for transportation.

How did he reconnect with his family,

the people whom he loved and who loved him?

So I decided to follow Jimmy,

as I followed people like him for so many years before.

We met at the Rosa Parks Transit Center in Detroit,

this is a bus depot near midtown.

This was one of the coldest days of the year.

It was February of 2015, and Jimmy was unprepared.

He didn't have a coat.

He wore a Detroit Tigers baseball jacket.

And he didn't have a winter hat,

not a full one, he had a thin worn skullcap that he wore.

This is one of those days where your teeth chatter.

It's one of those days where you can see your breath.

And here's Jimmy.

No scarf, no gloves.

And here's where we have to go to a workforce development center

that's at least a half-hour walk

from where the last bus could drop him off.

So here we are, walking to the center.

It's very cold.

And during this walk,

Jimmy does his best to make me feel comfortable.

He tells me no fewer than five times,

"Man, I appreciate spending time with a brother like you."

This is what he says.

He says, "I'm glad to be doing something positive."

This is what he tells me.

And he begins to compliment me until I feel uncomfortable.

I think he’s trying to butter me up for something;

I think he's prepared me for the ask, I'm not very comfortable with compliments.

This isn't my thing.

But when I got to the center with Jimmy,

I understood in a much deeper way why he went through those motions.

The entire building was closed.

There was a loose leaf sheet of paper taped to the front window

that had the address to hopefully open centers

that he might be able to go to.

There was no phone number on that paper,

so we couldn’t call ahead to make sure it was open,

and it didn't matter if there was a phone number.

Jimmy's phone had run out of minutes long before,

he couldn't have called if he wanted to.

I wish I could tell you that I gave Jimmy a ride to that center

because I'm a good guy

and I thought he was a good guy in a bad situation.

I wish I could say that;

I think I'd earn points on humanitarian grounds.

But the truth of the matter is I gave Jimmy a ride because I was cold.

I didn't feel like walking nine miles.

I didn't feel like getting on the bus.

So we hopped in my car and we made our way.

Miles through the Detroit traffic.

But it didn't matter.

When we got to the new center,

the one that was nine miles away,

a center that was ironically close to the place where Jimmy slept at night --

By the way, he was doing off-the-books demolition work for his old dope dealer;

the dope dealer started buying and selling real estate;

in exchange for Jimmy’s work, he allowed him to sleep there.

We get to this place that's so close to his home,

but that he was made to travel so far away

because he was ordered to go to somewhere else.

And by the time we get there, the training classes were full.

There was no space for Jimmy.

They tell him to come back the next week

in case another person on probation failed to show up.

We grab brochures on the way out the door,

and we headed to Coney Island, this is a Detroit diner chain,

so that Jimmy and I could debrief about the day's activities.

Jimmy thanked me profusely

for the seven-dollar lunch that I bought him,

for the bus card that I gave him in exchange

for the interview that took place,

and for being there for him.

For being there.

What did I do?

Jimmy's life moved from one rejection to another.

The prison refused him psychiatric care.

The social service agency shuttered its doors.

Without me, he wouldn't have made it to his appointment.

And with me, it just didn't matter,

he was turned away anyway.

He wouldn't even have a place to stay without his dope dealer.

And homelessness, by the way, is a violation of parole.

All of this would have to be explained to his probation officer,

who may not believe him.

And this is a fantastic story.

Jimmy lived at the mercy

and the kindness of others.

He needed them for food, for clothing, for shelter, for transportation,

to maintain his freedom, his very freedom.

This is all a matter of public policy.

Jimmy, like 19.6 million Americans in our country,

20 million people,

a population that's ten times the size of the jail and prison census,

those people live with felony records.

They live in an alternate legal reality.

What I write about as a "supervised society."

In the supervised society, 44,000 laws,

policies and administrative sanctions

dictate where they may go,

with whom they might live and how they spend their time.

If you've got a criminal record,

even if that record was from a lifetime ago,

even if you've changed your ways

in ways that only your family might hope that you would,

it's nearly impossible to get work.

19,000 labor market restrictions ensure that.

It's nearly impossible to rent an apartment without help.

Over a thousand housing regulations ensure that.

Four thousand regulations on civic engagement,

1,000 regulations on family and domestic rights,

almost ensuring that if you've got a criminal record

that you can't live with the people that you want to live with most.

How did we get here?

How did we get to this supervised society?

The roots run deep, at least as deep as our country.

But the legal infrastructure for a supervised society

began in the 1980s.

It starts in housing policy.

Congress passed legislation that made it so

that landlords would reject applicants with criminal records,

and people in public housing had the power to evict tenants

who allow people with criminal records

who even so much as visited their home.

Overnight, grandmothers were being evicted

for the crime of letting their loved ones sleep on a couch.

This is the supervised society.

This is the world that we've made.

I caught up with Jimmy a few months later.

I wanted to know how he was doing.

But mostly, I want to know about his relationship with his mother.

His mother was a fantastic woman.

I talked to her on the phone a couple of times,

and I knew she adored Jimmy.

This made sense because Jimmy was her baby.

He was the youngest of her five children

and the only boy in that house.

She certainly would have helped Jimmy if he turned to her,

and she did often.

But Jimmy told me that her landlord started asking questions.

He saw Jimmy making his way around the building

and he didn't want any trouble.

Thousands of families have been evicted from their homes

for the crime of letting a loved one sleep on the couch.

Thousands more live under the threat of eviction

for simply allowing someone with a criminal record

to stay there for a few days.

Jimmy certainly needed his mother.

She certainly would have responded to his need.

But he told me, "I don't come around like that no more.

I don't want to put her in that position."

Jimmy avoided his mother,

the one person who would have helped him,

because she wanted to help.

He avoided her to protect her.

Americans say, "We believe in rehabilitation," it's what we say.

How do we explain Jimmy's life?

We say we believe in a second chance,

but how do we explain this perpetual punishment that lasts a lifetime?

This is the fact of mass incarceration,

and it is indeed a fact.

I know this, I know it from my flesh.

My brother was incarcerated

while I did the research I'm telling you about today.

And I could tell you stories about the trouble that he had

when he tried to find a job or get an apartment.

I could tell you how hard it was for him to find his place in the world,

but I'd rather tell you a different story.

I'd rather tell you a story about a man who helped us find our way out.

Ronald Simpson Bay

was handed a 50-year sentence for a crime he didn't commit.

He's a remarkable man.

He fought that case for 27 years,

one of the few jailhouse lawyers who managed to get himself out.

He helped many people while he was inside,

he's helped even more today, now that he's home.

He's one of the nation's leading advocates for criminal justice reform.

But it wasn't always good for Ronald, obviously.

About 10 years into his sentence,

Ronald's only son,

a boy who holds his name,

was murdered by a 14-year-old boy.

I don't know what I would have done.

I can only tell you what Ronald did.

Ronald went to the judge and to the prosecutor,

and he advocated for that boy,

that he be tried as a juvenile instead of as an adult.

This boy who took so much from him.

He made sure that he would have a second chance at life.

"How did you do it, Ronald?"

"Why did you do it, Ronald, I would have hated that child."

"What were you thinking at the time?"

Ronald said to me,

"I advocated for that boy because it was the right thing to do.

I thought it would be an example for others

who needed to move on with their life."

Ronald did not love his son's murderer, how could he?

But Ronald made an ethical commitment,

and he did with those ethics required.

Ronald practices a radical politics of hospitality.

One where we make a place in the world

for people who even cause us harm.

And he invites us to practice these politics.

Because this politic of hospitality,

this radical commitment to belonging

will take us so far beyond the politics of fear

that govern our lives today.

Out of fear

we've written 44,000 laws to prevent people from harming us.

But the laws that we've written have done the opposite.

Any criminologists worth their salt will tell you this.

They'll tell you that unemployment, that family separation,

that housing instability,

that all of these things lead to more crime, not less.

They make our world more violent, not less.

But we do it because it made us feel good,

and we did this despite what we know.

So how do we find our way out?

How do we end this permanent punishment

that we've decided to enact?

How do we get out of the supervised society

that we've decided to legislate?

Well, first, we can get to know people with criminal records.

The statistics are grim,

but it's in these grim statistics that I find hope.

One in two Americans has a formerly incarcerated loved one.

This means that most of us can start right at home.

We can get to know the people in our closest circles

because if we ask the question, if we try to see,

then we'll notice that people are closer to us than we imagined.

And we can, of course,

ask our elected officials to do something different.

All politics are local,

and the politics of mass incarceration are hyperlocal.

Mass incarceration was the result of a thousand policy decisions,

so we can ask more of our judges, our district attorneys,

more of the people that we elect to the mayor's and governor's office.

More to our local politicians who help govern our wards and our cities

and our towns.

We can ask them to help us imagine a new world.

We can even ask this of our employers

and of the people in leadership in our houses of worship.

They can help us find a new world,

or we can find new people who will.

But above all,

Ronald calls us to practice this radical politics of hospitality.

And this is what I think is the real measure of our ethics.

It's what did you do when things are hard.

It's easy to love the lovable.

But Ronald calls to us to practice a politic of hospitality,

to make a world where we can imagine a place for everyone so that all belong.

And he asked us to imagine this world, even for people who've caused harm.

And he asked us to imagine it,

even for people who've harmed us.

And from there, I take great hope.

Thank you.

(Applause)