Getting what we deserve? Rebecca Hardy watches this year’s Swarthmore Lecture

‘Proximity is a gift and a privilege, but not always a comfortable one.’

In the description for Ben Jarman’s 2024 Swarthmore lecture, announced last September, Friends were told he would ‘reflect on where current prison conditions belong in the longer flow of Quaker witness on penal reform’.

With his background working in and around prisons and the penal system for nearly fifteen years, Ben was in ‘a unique position to share his ministry on this complex area’. ‘The committee believes that Ben can help the Yearly Meeting tap into the many voices of those with lived experience of the criminal justice system,’ said Sarah Donaldson, clerk of the Swarthmore Lecture Committee.

This was what Ben certainly delivered in a thought-provoking lecture that managed to raise some pertinent questions about contemporary Quakerism along the way.

Some of the content might be ‘heavy’, he warned Friends towards the beginning, as most of the people mentioned were perpetrators of serious violent crimes. Titled ‘Getting What We Deserve? Imprisonment and the Challenge of Doing Justice’, a continuing theme was ‘the gift of proximity’, and unpicking the up-close complex truths that lie behind abstract criminal justice policy words such as ‘rehabilitation’ and ‘risk’. Ben Jarman wanted to point to ‘a deeper story’, he said, as well as examine the emotions that underpin the idea of ‘punishment’. 

Citing the life stories of three friends of his who had served long-term sentences in the last ten years (none of whom had been sent back to prison), the lecture certainly drew on lived experience. The three friends included Nelly and George, who both grew up around violent fathers, and Lomana, a child refugee who joined a gang of teenagers in which violence became a way of life, and who has been left in ‘legal limbo’ regarding citizenship. In all three cases, said Ben, it could look as if ‘they got what they deserved’ – they paid penalties for breaking the law, and society was protected from their harmful behaviour. However, said Ben, this wasn’t ‘the full picture’.

All had been in therapy, which had significantly contributed to their rehabilitation. At Grendon prison in Buckinghamshire, where all three had been incarcerated, all the inmates are serving long or life sentences (usually for either killing or seriously harming someone) and group therapy is the norm. But not everyone gets therapy in prison, Ben pointed out. Neither was therapy a panacea, he added, but only works for those who want it. For those who do, however, it can be ‘transformative’.

Overall the lecture was a carefully considered exploration of ‘big ideas’ such as ‘justice, punishment, rehabilitation, and belonging’, as Ben sought to present us with the real complex people who lie beyond the statistics and abstractions. This country imprisons a higher share of the population than any other western European nation, he outlined, with many jailed for short term sentences for relatively minor offences. Yet the real problem is ‘we over-punish more serious offences’, Ben argued, and we make it difficult for ex-offenders to resettle into society when they are finally released, in a system that thrives off division, exclusion and stigma, and where ‘belonging’ is rarely felt. If Friends want to do reconciliation work, he suggested, they could work to help this group. Research shows that those who have served long sentences are much less likely to reoffend.

‘We can’t understand serious cases without taking seriously the difficult emotions that underline the urge to punish.’

The lecture also drew on Quaker history of penal reform, which was ‘rich in cautionary tales’, including late-eighteenth and early-nineteenth century Pensylvannian Friends who pioneered solitary confinement, now recognised as a form of torture. Casting our mind back through this backstory also revealed that there has never been a settled Quaker position in criminal justice, he added.

Throughout the lecture the theme of ‘proximity’ emerged and was particularly underscored as Ben told us about his lived experience working closely with violent offenders and those serving long term sentences. Describing a 2019 conference at London’s Fishmongers Hall celebrating the ‘Learning Together’ project, where a former prisoner, Usman Kahn, stabbed five people, leaving two dead, Ben described the anger he experienced coming to terms with the event (at Khan himself; the inquest; the media; and the police for killing Khan and preventing him from serving time). Yet he had also seen a man, previously jailed for serious violence, behaving compassionately and with presence towards a distressed witness in the crisis centre – acting as ‘a speck of light on a dark, dark day’. This kind of ‘up-close’ observation offers a perspective far beyond the cold detachment of news reports and statistics, he said. Proximity is ‘a gift and a privilege’, but ‘it’s not always a comfortable one’. One thing proximity had taught him is ‘we can’t understand “serious cases” without taking seriously the difficult emotions that underline the urge to punish.

It’s hard to summarise the meditation that followed on anger and forgiveness in a way that doesn’t sound trite – and Friends are encouraged to watch the YouTube video of the lecture available soon for a full flavour of the prepared ministry. Yet there was a palpable quiet in the room as Ben touched on Marian Partington’s struggle to come to terms with the murder of her sister Lucy by Frederick and Rosemary West; Quaker Lesley Morland’s similar struggle following the murder of her daughter Ruth by Andrew Steel (who she eventually met and couldn’t forgive); and John Lampen’s 1987 Swarthmore Lecture in which he says telling people harmed by violence that they ought to be reconciled is ‘a kind of an insult’.

Drawing on real examples of people he had known in the system, Ben also examined how, in determining sentences, our prison system is ‘more interested in [assessing] risk’ than the offender’s sense of accountability for their actions. What all the people mentioned had in common, he said, was a need for the ‘time, space and distance’ to make sense of their accountability and what had happened to them. 

There are no easy answers, Ben reiterated, but ‘I do think the better answers require proximity’.

As Quakers, our best work has come from when we were close (to either the people or situation we were working on). Our biggest ‘missteps’ have been when we ‘prescribe from a distance’.

‘As Quakers, how close are we to the realities of violence and the aftermath of violence?’, he asked. Perhaps Quaker peace work can include creating ‘spaces of moral repair’ where people who have done harm, and those who have been harmed, can belong.

Some time was spent examining what this ‘getting close’ for Quakers looks like. This isn’t just through individual action, he said, such as becoming Quaker prison chaplains or volunteering, but can include what Friends do as a community. The Welcome Directory helps faith communities become places where people leaving prison can find acceptance, for example. Action can also happen beyond Quaker settings, citing new prison minister James Timpson who has set up a network to help firms take action, like his company, where around ten per cent of its workforce are people who have left prison. 

Overall, the lecture was an affecting call for Quakers to reflect on their own closeness to the complex realities of the criminal justice system. Perhaps this can best be summed up by a quote from Reuben Miller, a Chicago prison chaplain, who said: ‘Being close allows me to see things that detached observers miss, and [to] move to spaces where the policy makers rarely care to look.’

As Friends left the room, there was the inescapable sense that some of us might be more willing to look.

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