When deciding how to structure and operate our prisons, suggests Rabbi Yitzchok Adlerstein, we should treat them less like holding cells and more like rehabilitation centers. This model, he says, is actually based on the Torah and has been greatly successful in Israel. He describes one of these Israeli prisons:
The relationship between inmates and officers was cordial, rather than adversarial; prisoners called officers by their first names. The episode showed prisoners with a good deal of freedom to roam, whole families living together in communal areas with their own kitchens and bathrooms, and a rich variety of educational offerings, including vocational training and degree-granting programs, leading even to a doctorate.
This prison model is the reason, Rabbi Adlerstein believes, that “recidivism is about 20 percent less in Israel than in the West.” Isreali Supreme Court head Aharon Barak says, “The prison walls must not come between the prisoner and human dignity.”
Rabbi Adlerstein was deeply moved when he heard Rabbi Yaakov Galinsky address the inmates of Israel’s largest prison some years ago. He pointed out that “the sections on criminal behavior [in the Torah] make no mention of prisons. The Torah does, however, speak of how to deal with a thief.”:
According to the Talmud’s interpretation—and that is the only one that has legal teeth—a convicted thief can be ordered into a program of contractual servitude to pay off what he has stolen. For six years, he lives with a family. The law specifies that he must be treated as an equal. He must be given the same food, the same clothes, as his boss. If the two are travelling and find a room with only one bed, the servant gets the bad, and the master must sleep on the floor, because to do the opposite would be against the law. For six years, he is treated with dignity—perhaps for the first time in his life. People say ‘thank you’ to him when he helps. He picks up skills on the job. When he leaves, he is armed with self-respect and a resume. Who do you think is better off? According to our way, the criminal is not treated with a slap on the wrist either. For six years, he loses his freedom, which is punishment enough. And society gets back a whole person.
Aharon Barak concludes by reminding us: “An enlightened society is judged by the treatment of its prisoners.” How much are we, as a society, willing to uphold forgiveness as more than just a private value?
October 26th, 2012 | 3:20 pm
I think there is a very strong American tendency to believe that anyone who breaks the law must be put in prison, that life in prison must extremely unpleasant, and that even if this costs a fortune and turns offenders into worse offenders who return to a life of crime once they are released, it is preferable to rehabilitation. We have the highest incarceration rate in the world by far.
When Jesus says, “Amen, I say to you, what you did not do for one of these least ones, you did not do for me,” one of the things he is referring to is visiting prisoners. It is an interesting question that I hope to research some day as to whether the kind of prisoners Jesus was referring to would be equivalent to our prison inmates of today. In any case, the crucifixion account in Luke depicts one of the criminals crucified next to Jesus as one of the more remarkable characters in the Gospel, and he appears to be a common criminal. So it appears to me that the way America treats its criminals is not in line with the Gospels or the Torah.
October 26th, 2012 | 3:39 pm
There should probably be a link to this recent First Thoughts article.
October 26th, 2012 | 6:55 pm
I suppose this is a reasonable line of thinking. The problem though is how do we actually accomplish it? Israel (I’ve read that Scandinavian countries have similar systems) can apparently afford it and have worked out some way to deal with violence among inmates. These countries though has a very different society, smaller, more homogenous, with less crime. Scandinavia has a generous welfare system that would difficult, to say the least, to implement in the US, that likely does much to reduce crime.
October 27th, 2012 | 12:00 am
“Scandinavia has a generous welfare system that would difficult, to say the least, to implement in the US, that likely does much to reduce crime.”
Explain this.
October 27th, 2012 | 12:16 am
I am all in favor of a more humane treatment of prisoners, and how this would lead to greater reformation, rather than recidivism.
My big question is, what of the gangs? With the size, scope, and sophistication in the US, where gangs can be run from the inside, how do we allow greater freedom, without facilitating gang activity? This is where I see a more open campus as problematic.
October 27th, 2012 | 5:54 pm
Adam, I haven’t actually studied it, but I would think that if people had most of their needs met by welfare, they would be less likely to turn to crime. Poverty and crime usually go hand in hand, no? I’m not saying that is necessary a good idea, since it sort of amounts to a bribe.
October 29th, 2012 | 5:21 am
Under what circumstances would you think that? Far fewer people turned to crime during the Great Depression than today or during the 1990s boom years with their much lower unemployment rates. There’s hardly a social pathology that was worse during the Great Depression than during the Clintopia.
October 29th, 2012 | 2:10 pm
The presumption that poverty is the cause of violence must imply that peasants are more likely to be violent then aristocrats. Is that in fact the case?
October 30th, 2012 | 8:34 am
Micha Elyi –
Racism and sexism?
In any case, while unemployment by itself doesn’t predict crime rates, there’s some evidence that some types of government support do reduce crime.
In any case, the current economic situation hasn’t led to a crime wave. There are a lot of influences, though, so it’s hard to say exactly why.
October 30th, 2012 | 8:22 pm
[...] The Torah’s Call for Cushy Prisons – Katherine Infantine, First Thoughts [...]
October 31st, 2012 | 12:08 pm
A relevant article: http://www.thenation.com/article/170815/how-mandatory-minimums-forced-me-send-more-1000-nonviolent-drug-offenders-federal-pri#
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