The government haven’t said that they are going to close the courts, but the state Attorney General, Robert Clark, has indicated in interviews that he wants to ‘mainstream’ the justice system.

From the article:

Mr Clark acknowledged some of the courts had shown good results. But ”the problem with each of them is that they have achieved a patchwork system of justice [whereby] the way you are treated in the courts depends on where you live or where an offence is allegedly committed”.

I find it strange that people think the mainstream courts themselves don’t offer a patchwork system of justice. The moment the mainstream is the only thing offered, those who don’t fit the mainstream are disadvantaged. People rarely choose not to be part of the mainstream [the choice to opt out is a luxury]. The mainstream is not something you can opt into if you’re homeless, have a mental illness, are of Koori heritage… Justice may or may not be a fixed concept [philosophers will argue on that for centuries], but the just application of justice is absolutely dependent on context.

The research – anecdotal and scientific – indicates that the neighbourhood and Koori courts are having a significant impact on the lessening of crime and violence in the areas where they exist. To close them down would be an ideological decision, not a pragmatic one…

I figure Mr Clark was putting out a flag to gauge the public reaction. If you’d like to offer one, his email address is robert.clark@parliament.vic.gov.au

I mentioned this before but since the state election is coming up very soon it’s worth repeating again. The Synod Justice Unit have prepared some election resources around justice issues, which includes a response to the populist rhetoric of ‘law and order’. It can be downloaded here.

Someone handed this around today. It’s some comments made by Judge Dennis A. Challeen, a retired District Court Judge, from Wisconsin:

We want them to have self-worth, so we destroy their self-worth.
We want them to be responsible, so we take away all responsibilities.
We want them to be part of our community, so we isolate them from the community.
We want them to be positive and constructive, so we degrade them and make them useless.
We want them to be non-violent, so we put them where there is violence all around them.
We want them to be kind and loving people, so we subject them to hatred and cruelty.
We want them to quit being the tough guy, so we put them where the tough guy is respected.
We want them to quit hanging around losers, so we put all the losers in the state under one roof.
We want them to quit exploiting us, so we put them where they exploit each other.
We want them to take control of their own lives, own their own problems and quit being a parasite,
so we make them totally dependent on us.

This week is International Restorative Justice Week. Last week on Australian Story, Kerry Tucker told her story of restoration back into the community after being incarcerated for seven years. She’s currently finishing her PhD and lecturing at Swinburne University. It’s a remarkable story and she’s an inspirational woman. What I found particularly moving about her story was how much of a struggle she found re-entering the community post-imprisonment, even though she is a strong woman with exceptional communication skills, family support to fall back on and educational qualifications. She said herself, ‘After a few days out, I just wanted to go back to prison’.

I despair that the system is so stacked against rehabilitation that even someone like her found post-release treacherously difficult.

Back when we first started throwing around the idea of communal justice, we did a spider map of the issue – trying to work out what the trigger points were within the whole system of communal justice. If you want to shut down a prison, you need better rehabilitation; if you want better rehabilitation, you need to win over the Herald Sun newspaper so that they don’t sensationalise the ‘luxuries’ of prison life [like education, healthy food, constructive employment opportunities]; if you want to win over the Herald Sun, we have to become a community that doesn’t get sucked into one line answers and headlines that feed into our perceptions about the world; if want to become that kind of community, we need to change our thinking about politicians so that we reward those who don’t merely serve our own interests, but who instead advocate and speak on behalf of the ‘them’ I routinely forget to think about. The system is overwhelmingly complicated – and behind every vested interested is barely acknowledged repulsion and fear, fed by stereotypes and generalisations that even I find myself falling into over and over again, even though I spend my days trying to contradict them.

I watched Australian Story last week and remembered again that it’s all too hard. Where do you begin? There’s no point of impact where something – just one small thing – can change.

And then, of course, things sometimes happen – like Aung Sun Suu Kyi being released yesterday. I wonder if this is the only way that a systemically screwed system can be changed – that there needs to be a miracle, somewhere; a crack that opens up in a concrete wall; an opportunity that wasn’t there before. Without that moment everything else is futile. But the miracle itself is absolutely pointless if we’re not waiting or expecting for it to happen, ready to step in and use the opportunity for something bigger. We have to be ready, knowing what to do, and doing it already, just in case the concrete cracks.

It would just be so much better if it wasn’t so precarious. I’d really rather depend on pure hard work than a miracle.

Last Saturday I was in Traralgon for a day of workshops and a space. Traralgon is a rural community a few hours east of Melbourne. The workshop was for the presbytery – it was a fantastic turnout, and I found it a really interesting day. The difficulty with doing a day like that is that I’m aware that my very presence is a contradiction of what I’m talking about: that context is all-important when it comes to curating spaces and designing worship. I lob into town for a few hours having met maybe two of the 40 participants in the past, and have the audacity to think that a space i offer might make some connection…

Anyway, it’s the imperfection of the medium, and i’m probably the only one who angsts about the lack of integrity involved. And someone from Traralgon just rang and asked for instructions about a particular space i’d described, and told me they’d already talked about how to adapt it, both physically and theologically, for their context, so that’s a perfect outcome!

I’ll put the finished map stations up in the next post.

Tuesday I travelled to Ararat [a few hours in the other direction] where we were meeting with people from the local community in our next step to developing an organic, local approach to chaplaincy within the two local prisons. This is a really exciting move that I’ll talk about in more detail in a while. We’re trying to create new connections and relationships between the congregation and the prisons, to re-establish relationships that might be another step in recognising that ostracism and disconnection can often exacerbate problems of crime and violence, rather than restore life to broken communities and people. I’m watching conversations from around the world about developing missional leadership and communities – this is my current favourite example of what it can mean to do so. I like the complexity of this – it’s not just raised questions of capacity, training and mentoring; it’s also getting right into the heart of communal justice – dealing with the big questions of theology, restoration, human-ness, and just how much we can expect of people and a faith community.

Yesterday I went to Queenscliff, which is a couple of hours in yet another direction to speak at a workshop and curate a space. This was just as lovely – and completely different – to the Traralgon workshop. Whereas many of Traralgon group probably thought I went too far in stretching the definitions of worship, Queenscliff didn’t think I went far enough… I do love diversity.

It’s been a big week, and there’s much going around my head. i’ll keep putting stuff up from the week as it finds form and words. And I must remember to write about hearing Bill Viola last week too…

The issues explored in the resource are prisons, alcohol reform, indigenous rights, mental health, water management, climate change and gambling reform. Each addressed issue has fast facts, current policy, the positions of the major parties, and questions to ask your local MP. The full resource can be downloaded here. It’s a great resource.

I really like that they’ve addressed some of the current rhetoric around prison sentencing. As the resource says,
• When people are provided with more information on a particular case — similar to the information a judge would have — they impose a very similar sentence to a judge.
• Suspended sentences are as effective as prison terms in reducing repeat offending rates (slightly more effective for people who have previously served prison time).

There were two big areas of conversation with the members of one rural community yesterday: the first was on what difference faith can make in the prison. Chaplains are not allowed to proselytise – the potential for manipulation is too high. Prisoners are surrounded by psychologist and self-improvement programs. What is it that those representing faith can do? And, as importantly, what is the promise that faith can make and then deliver?

‘These Christians,’ said Alex, on my second visit into the prison, ‘They promise the world and then they give you an atlas’.

As I drove home from the meeting last night, I caught the end of a radio interview. I have no idea what the program was [i was waiting for the news about leadership spills!], or who was being interviewed, but the I heard him say that the primary question for his faith was not ‘what do you believe in?’, but ‘in what do you invest your life?’. He said he could no longer invest his life in ideas about God, but that didn’t mean he’d lost faith. His primary investment now was in justice and love; they were the things worth living for, even if they came to no end. That was the other big area of conversation yesterday – how much working in the prison changes your life. It becomes your investment.

I’ve learnt that someone has the potential to be a good chaplain when they talk about how they will change in the process, and how they don’t think they have what it takes to do this well. It seems that those who think they are cut out for it find it hard to recognise the holy ground they’re walking on…

The cliche about prison life is that I am actually integrated into it, ruined by it, when my accommodation to it is so overwhelming that I can no longer stand or even imagine freedom, life outside prison, so that my release brings about a total psychic breakdown, or at least gives rise to a longing for the lost safety of prison life. The actual dialectic of prison life, however, is somewhat more refined. Prison in effect destroys me, attains a total hold over me, precisely when I do not fully consent to the fact that I am in prison but maintain a kind of inner distance towards it, stick to the illusion that ‘real life is elsewhere’ and indulge all the time in daydreaming about life outside, about nice things that are waiting for me after my release or escape. I thereby get caught in the vicious cycle of fantasy, so that when, eventually, I am released, the grotesque discord between fantasy and reality breaks me down. The only true solution is therefore fully to accept the rules of prison life and then, within the universe governed by these rules, to work out a way to beat them. In short, inner distance and daydreaming about Life Elsewhere in effect enchain me to prison, whereas full acceptance of the fact that I am really there, bound by prison rules, opens up a space for true hope.

Slavo Zizek, The Fragile Absolute

*It’s times like this where i love being part of a denomination. I know many people are saying that the religious institutions have passed their time, and are no longer places for innovation and experiment, but i’d be devastated if denominations were to end. So much of what we do in the prison and broader community is possible only because we are a denomination. The major decision making and policy implementing bodies within our community are constructed in a way that relies on communication with institutions – I’m not prepared to let our institution go until that reality changes. Denominations are trusted with this because we have a history that lasts beyond any one person or generation; we have the depth of resources and breadth of wisdom that means we are worth listening to. We have proven that we carry through on promises and can [to a large part] be trusted with people’s vulnerabilities.

That doesn’t mean to say that I think everyone has to be part of a denomination, that i don’t think there are some fundamentally sick things about institutions, or that i don’t want denominations to change – but i get disheartened by those who refuse to acknowledge what it is that would be lost if the institution were to fold, and who define institutions by rigidity and lack of imagination. Of course, if you think the stuff of the church is simply local then none of that matters. But if you think the church has a broader role to play within the community and world, then we need to stay faithful to those collections of people and communities that together have a chance of making that happen.

Last night I had long conversations with a couple of the men, both of which i’ve been contemplating since. One brought home to me again the complexity of life, and the impossibility of redemption: he’s an older guy, in his early fifties, been in and out of prison for his adult life – the longest stretch out is 2 years 3 months, and this 12 year sentence is his longest stretch in. He’s due for release in a year or so. He’s one of the people I meet in prison who would scare me on the outside – but inside, I’ve had the chance to learn to like him. He sat next to me and we watched the tv for a while. We talked a bit about the week, and after a while he said, It’s killing me in here. It’s doing my head in. I asked what it was that did that – it’s the grind of the every day, he said. It’s the same, for the whole of my life. I can’t wait to be out of here. I asked him what he planned to do when he got out, and he talked about the bender he was planning to go on, and then about the safe he was going to rob. He caught my look, and answered it: crime’s the only thing I know how to do, he said. To which I replied with the obvious truth: but you’re no good at crime, you keep getting caught. And as I said it, i realised the deeper truth. This is home, he said, confirming it. I don’t belong anywhere else.

If the impossibility of his life isn’t enough to make you cry when you’re driving home down Bell Street, I don’t know what would.

The challenge for anyone interested in asking these questions is the accusation of ”going soft on crime”. Those who are concerned about the welfare and human rights of prisoners are represented as ”do gooders” who ignore the ”fact” that many of these individuals are beyond rehabilitation and redemption; many have committed terrible crimes and there are victims who continue to suffer as a consequence of these crimes…

Women represent a notable case in point. Nationally women comprise the fastest-growing population in the prison community and between 2008 and 2009 the rate at which Victorian women are imprisoned has increased by 25 per cent, the highest level since the 19th century. The majority of women incarcerated in Victoria have been convicted for non-violent, drug-related offences, or are imprisoned as a consequence of fine default or welfare fraud. Many have committed crimes as a direct result of poverty and trauma. Women in prison are not generally violent or destructive individuals who present a threat to the community. Many have also been the subject of victimisation and are members of the most economically and socially marginalised communities in our state.

Women who come into contact with the criminal justice system are often homeless; have experienced familial dysfunction, childhood sexual abuse and/or domestic violence; experience problems with substance addiction and abuse; suffer from post-traumatic stress disorder or mental illness that is undiagnosed or untreated; have poor physical health and/or a disability; have been made wards of the state early in their lives; and are often sole parents and have experienced the removal of their own children whether by the state or as a result of violent intimate relationships…

It’s Christmas and How to make gravy, Paul Kelly’s imagining of a man’s letter from inside prison, resonates. It calls us to remember that while we celebrate the season and are distracted by short-term media cycles, there are practices of justice, sentencing and imprisonment that are becoming more firmly entrenched with each passing day, with consequences we have so far largely ignored.

The pdf offers some quick and easy actions that each of us can participate in. You can download it here: Mental Health and Victorian Prisons

We’ve produced an advent candle lighting liturgy for congregations to use, with the hope of echoing the imagination of the prophets for a world created around restoration and justice.

Please download, distribute, adapt and use as you would like…

From week one:

God of the Advent,

Illuminate the world around us
so that we will see the cracks and stains
that mark the foundations of our community.

We pray for courage to look for your coming,
even though we know it will mean
that we will never see the world
with the same eyes
again.

Come, Lord, come

Response: Let light fill Your world.

Advent Candle Lighting – pdf