‘It has been a long time since BYM said anything on penal matters that was remotely equal to the challenge.’ Photo: by Hasan Almasi on Unsplash
Prison break: Mike Nellis on Friends and criminal justice
‘Historically Quakers took on big penal-political issues, even if they antagonised respectable interests.’
Back in 1996 I undertook a year-long Joseph Rowntree Travelling Fellowship on ‘Revitalising penal reform in the Society of Friends’. I had been drawn to Quakers a decade or so earlier by their peace witness and their long involvement in penal reform. The latter was already an established interest of mine. But by the mid-1990s Friends seemed quite lost on penal matters, uncertain whether they were still collectively committed to them. Britain Yearly Meeting’s longstanding and once influential Penal Affairs Committee (PAC) (established in 1921) had been laid down in 1992, dissipating internal expertise and attenuating Quaker links with secular penal reform bodies.
But the PAC had arguably lost its way by then, never really recovering from the protracted and abstract debate that Six Quakers Look at Crime and Punishment (published by Quaker Home Service in 1979) had initiated. Friends had not come to unity on a testimony against punishment, although in the course of discussions a practical commitment to restorative justice was deepened. Quaker probation officer Venetia Caine had co-founded the Quakers in Criminal Justice network in 1981 both to support Friends working in the criminal justice system and to be a more energetic and critical voice than the PAC. It always fulfilled its support role; in the absence of a strong Quaker vision on penal matters, the politically critical role never emerged.
I felt called to undertake the Rowntree Fellowship in response to comments in the 1994 edition of Quaker faith & practice, which conceded that its section on crime and punishment was a little threadbare. My emerging concern was tested in my then Meeting, Bournville, and in the year of the Fellowship I travelled around forty Meetings in England, Wales and Scotland, two Quaker Schools, and contacted other faith groups about their work on penal matters, with a view to possible collaborations. Approximately half of the Meetings were not convinced that modern Quakers needed formal involvement in penal reform, believing that secular reform organisations now took care of that, and that Friends rightly had other priorities. The other half wanted to see Quaker tradition revitalised, but found it hard to agree how.
I offered Friends a way forward, trying to move away from the traditional focus on prisons – modern Friends, after all, worked across the whole criminal justice system – to something I called ‘community justice’, because Friends had enduring concerns about both justice and community. The model had three interrelated ingredients: restorative justice, community safety and gradual prison abolition (except for the dangerous few). All three were rooted in the principle of non-violence, and, in my mind, in our Testimonies on Peace, Truth and Equality. All had policy and practice implications.
In 1981 Canadian Yearly Meeting had passed a minute on prison abolition. I studied it, and explored its provenance in work by Quakers Ruth Morris and Fay Honey Knopp. It spoke my mind, despite some reservations about using the easily-caricatured word ‘abolition’ in public debate. Martin Right’s important 1982 book Making Good: Prisons, punishment and beyond made a similarly strong case against prison (and for more restorative justice) without calling itself abolitionist, but did not encapsulate its position in such a concise way.
So, out of deference to the Canadian minute’s acknowledgement that imprisonment serves to bolster social inequality, and mostly did more harm than good, I used its terminology. Abolition (of slavery, capital and corporal punishment, and war), after all, was not alien in principle to British Quakers, even though, in every context, the ethical and practical challenges are different. I did not, however, want to offer the Canadian minute verbatim to British Friends, as something to adopt as it stood. I wanted Friends to discern a way forward for themselves, to leave room for the Spirit, using the raw materials I suggested to them, with no clear view of where exactly this might lead, or what the final emphasis might be.
Nothing substantial emerged by the end of my Fellowship, but on the strength of the ideas shared in it, and the sense that some Friends, at least, did not want BYM to relinquish a corporate interest in penal matters, Friends House agreed to reinstate a central committee, the Crime and Community Justice Committee in 1998, to take new work forward. I served two terms on it, happy that this talented group concentrated on promoting practical action. Circles of Support and Accountability were a major focus. We never got round to the vision issue, though Tim Newell’s 2000 Swarthmore Lecture, ‘Forgiving Justice’, helped a little.
An iteration of that committee still exists, in much diluted form, though probably not for much longer. And still there is no vision akin to the Canadian minute on prison abolition, or – crucially – no obvious attentiveness to prevailing penal realities and penal politics, equivalent understandings of which, right back to Elizabeth Fry, have underpinned and informed Quaker penal witness. It has been a long time since BYM said anything on penal matters that was remotely equal to the challenge of rising prisoner numbers and deteriorating prison conditions, or even recognised the dubious ethics of reforming (i.e. consolidating) unjust institutions that Canadian Yearly Meeting became convinced were failing forty years ago.
Among Friends, practical humanitarian work remains extensive. This is voluntary and professional, and takes place in prisons, probation services, and third sector organisations. It concerns offenders, victims and community safety campaigns. It involves participation in the judicial process, alliances with ex-prisoners, and even involvement in penal reform bodies. This is an honourable expression of Quaker faith and tradition. It meets needs and must continue.
In my experience, some Friends feel no need for a critical position statement: practice is enough. But that is an incomplete witness. Historically Quakers took on big penal-political issues, even if they antagonised respectable interests. Practice and politics are linked. It is precisely because we can speak from a position of shared experiences that we should, alongside others, speak out about pointless penal excess. Informed experience, grounded in faith, is where our authority comes from. Remember William Penn: ‘They have a right to censure that have a heart’. Our ‘heart to help’ seems strong as ever but, sometimes, I fear that no matter how dire penal practices become, British Friends no longer have the wisdom, courage or collective competence to censure pernicious developments.
With the prospect of England and Wales’ prison population rising to almost 100,000 by 2026, and no likelihood of financing decent regimes at this scale, things are becoming even more terrible. Some abolitionists foretold this trend, and we should all have listened earlier.
On 15 September he will be facilitating an online discussion on abolition with Woodbrooke. See www.woodbrooke.org.uk/quakers-exploring-penal-abolition.
Comments
I would love to see an active discussion regarding this article - I have reached a place of despair about the state of English and Welsh prisons and criminal justice more widely.
The issues are complex and go back centuries and I find it hard to express myself as clearly as Mike Nellis.
Ultimately penal reform - I am an abolitionist - acknowledging there wil always be some who for the time being need to be kept apart from most of society - and there I am rambling again - such is the problem for us neurologically disabled folk - who I fear figure dispproportionally in the statistics of those who are labeled convicts - whatever adjudication comes from the courts -
Again - “Ultimately penal reform needs” .. parliamentary action and such are the views of the majority of the electorate that it is only a very few members of parliament - especially in the House of Commons - whatever personal views they hold - who will take an active stand in favour of real reform - that MUST find ways of massivley reducing the numbers in prison - I know only really of the English and Welsh system.
It must always be remembered that within the UK we have three separate Criminal Justice Systems, Scotland, Norther Ireland and the aforementioned England and Wales.
Folk maybe interested - that when I last enquired - a few years ago - Ireland continues to have it’s probation system use the 1907 probation of offenders act - long since repealed in the remaining parts of the UK!
By Tolkny on 2nd September 2021 - 12:38
I had not realised my pseudonym “Tolkny” from decades ago would appear.
I was last a criminal justice professional in 2003 - and much earlier learned to protect my family’s identity. Soon after we moved from Merseyside to Essex in 1982 as was conventional - I had my name listed in the telephone directory - I started getting calls at my home - very soon after that a particular disenchanted client of the probation service where I then worked started targeting colleagues and myself with malicious actions - the worse I faced was a puncture in a car tyre - the repairer said “it is unusual to see a row of nails knocked into a tyre” and when I was out of my office to have a client barricade himself in and do a little damage - the most difficult to resolve - was all the files he removed from a cabinet and threw from a first floor window onto the main street - he eventually went to prison - for Contempt of Court (his actions had breached orders of the Family Court - he was not a criminal client of the probation service)
Thus, when the internet came along, I mostly used a pseudonym - including when I first had an account on The Friend’s website.
By Tolkny on 2nd September 2021 - 12:57
I thought I had removed the pseudonym - but it seems that is beyond my technical competence!
Tolkny is Andrew S Hatton.
By Tolkny on 2nd September 2021 - 12:58
in his otherwise judicious editing of this article The Friend’s editor inadvertently truncated my Penn quote, diminishing Penn’s insight. It should have read “they have a right to censure who have a heart to help”. Without those last two words the following sentence makes less sense.
Mike
By RMNELLIS on 7th September 2021 - 12:48
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