SPONSOR: PLATFORM WORKING GROUP
PRESENTER: S.KCM Curry kcmcurry43@yahoo.com
CONTACT: S.KCM Curry kcmcurry43@yahoo.com, Elizabeth info@green247.org
SUBJECT: Reconciling Victims, Perpetrators, and Communities and Converting Prisons and Jails Into Healing Communities. Grassroots democracy, social justice and equal opportunity, feminism and gender equity, respect for diversity, and personal and global responsibility are the involved 10 Key Values of the GP.
BACKGROUND: "The American College of Physicians will continue to advocate for the rights of persons and communities to live in dignity and peace, free of the fear of unjust imprisonment or torture."(1) Californians have passed a law that justifies medical treatment instead of prison for offenders with drug addictions.(2) Imprisonment cannot be justified to enrich prison stock holders or to provide wardens and inmates with new prison rape victims.(3)
Similarly, an arrest cannot be justified by racial profiling,(4) quotas,(5) or amassing "criminal history" records, which are unreliable. "With some important exceptions, coercion causes crime and social support prevents crime."(6)
In the criminal justice system, every party is a victim of circumstances, some beyond their control. The purpose of imprisonment is to provide a place free of distraction, for the inmate to regain reliable self-control over aggressive impulses, and thereby regain the right to self-possession.(7)
Researchers have found that empathy outperforms confrontation when seeking the cooperation of a suspect.(8) Empathy is the most valuable form of compassion. Empathy requires having "walked a mile in their shoes" and extraordianary sensitivity. The diversionary path of restorative justice is best guided by the empath.
With adequate funding, the judiciary could hire the empath to conduct the restorative justice process in each case. It would relieve much of the criminal caseload of the overburdened courts. It would restore communities by replacing a violent offender not with a new violent offender but with a role model of healing and wisdom.
PURPOSE: Amendment of the Criminal Justice plank of the GPCA Platform in the form of one or more talking points.
PROPOSAL: The GPCA immediately adds the following statement to the Criminal Justice plank of its Platform as one or more talking points.
1. Each prison and jail must provide the most effective, and comprehensive cures for violence, addiction, and the root causes for incarceration. These curative measures must be nonviolent, and could include such tools as counseling, aptitude testing, halfway houses, hospices, retraining, and formal education.
2. Each prison and jail must have separate facilities for violent offenders.
3. Executive or judicial government or other not-for-profit organizations must operate all prisons on a not-for-profit basis.
4. Investigations must be conducted with the minimum of intrusion upon the disenfranchised.
5. Disenfranchised survivors of violations, who have succeeded at restoration, must be hired to advocate for victims of similar violations.
COMMITTEE DECISION: The ideas were first presented to the Green Issues WG at the 2003 San Francisco plenary. An initial written form was posted on the Women's Caucus discussion board in April 2004. It was first posted on the Platform WG list-serve in May 2004, enabled for further consideration at the May 2004 Ventura Plenary, revised extensively thereafter, and was voted at the Sylmar Plenary of May 2005 to receive General Assembly assessment. It was included for General Assembly discussion at the Yolo Plenary of December 2005 but was not published in the Plenary program but had comments at and after the Platform Committee/Working Group Meeting at that Plenary. It was revised and invited back by the General Assembly at the Ventura Plenary of June 2006. On June 25, 2006, the GPCA determined that this content shall be proposed to the General Assembly for decision in the form of proposed amendment to an existing plank in the GPCA Platform. On June 25, 2006, the Platform Committee elected a new presenter by consensus.
TIMELINE: The text goes into the platform upon approval by the GA.
RESOURCES: The platform is enhanced with up-to-date talking points. Platform printing and Platform Committee expenses are included in the 2007-2008 budget.
REFERENCES:
1. Ann Intern Med. 1995 Apr 15;122(8):607-13. Comment in: Ann Intern Med. 1995 Oct 15;123(8):636. The role of the physician and the medical profession in the prevention of international torture and in the treatment of its survivors. American College of Physicians. [No authors listed]
2. Proposition 36. The STAR program.
3. Correctional authorities substantiated 885 incidents of sexual violence in 2005, 15% of completed investigations. 38% of allegations involved staff sexual misconduct; 35% inmate-on-inmate nonconsensual sexual acts; 17%, staff sexual harassment; and 10% inmate-on-inmate abusive sexual contact. Sexual Violence Reported by Correctional Authorities, 2005, 7/06 NCJ 214646
4. Four datasets (the FBI's UCR arrests, State felony court convictions, prison admissions, and the National Crime Victimization Survey) all point to a sex offender who is older than other violent offenders, generally in his early 30's, and more likely to be white than other violent offenders.
5. Hubert Williams, president of the Police Foundation in Washington, admits that quota-driven enforcement "has the potential to undermine public support for the police because people fear they're being targeted just so someone can enhance his own performance." Source: Eric Peters, "Guess Who Loses the Traffic Ticket Lottery?" Washington Times, March 31, 1998
6. Mark Colvin, Francis T. Cullen, Thomas Vander Ven (2002) Coercion, Social Support, And Crime: An Emerging Theoretical Consensus Criminology 40 (1), 19–42.
7. Boyd v. United States (116 U.S. 616, 630 (1886)); Union Pacific Railroad Co. v. Botsford (141 U.S. 250, 251 (1891)) ("No right is held more sacred ... than the right of every individual to the possession and control of his own person, free from all restraint or interference of others, unless by clear and unquestionable authority of law").
8. Proceedings of the Association for Criminal Justice Research of California, October, 2005, Long Beach, CA.