Reflections on the ‘Red Book’: True spiritual experience
Noël Staples reflects on Quaker faith & practice 23.101
‘Imprisonment… offers some protection to society by removing the offender. But consider how limited that protection is compared to what it could be. It puts the offender against property into a place where he is deprived of opportunities to practise the social rules about property; it puts the violent man into a subculture which is governed by violence; it puts the defrauder into a power system where corruption is rife; it puts the sexual offender into a place where sexual relief is only obtainable by substitutes… it puts those who need to learn to take control of their lives into a situation where all significant choices are made for them; and it puts the offender who is likely to reform into a milieu where most of the influences on him or her are criminal ones.’
John Lampen, 1987
Quaker faith & practice 23.101
While I am drawn, reading the ‘Red Book’, to reflect on pieces whose spiritual experience I identify with, I feel it is more important to reflect on our social responsibility. Spiritual experience’s real value lies in its transformative power – its ability to make us witness to its presence by actions. John Macmurray, the Quaker philosopher, said in his 1965 Swarthmore Lecture: ‘A spirituality that does not seek and secure its material embodiment is imaginary and unreal. A material life that is not spiritually directed is a meaningless quest of power and more power for its own sake.’
Maybe spiritual experience only becomes real when it is lived. It is a stain on our otherwise civilised country that, at 124 per 100,000 head of population, the UK incarcerates more offenders than any other European country. The USA (at 567 per 100,000 head of population) exceeds us by far, while Japan (the lowest at 40) and the Scandinavian countries imprison fewer than half as many. Protecting society from offenders committing serious property crimes or doing great violence is the only practical value of incarceration. Attempts to (re)-integrate offenders into our community are seriously limited by the complete removal of autonomy. Incarceration institutionalises!
Many prisoners, failed by lack of mental health care or our education system, are mentally ill and/or functionally illiterate. Governments must invest in helping sentenced offenders within the community to integrate properly into society. This means educating the public both about the limitations of penal policy and the real causes of crime.
Richard Wilkinson and Kate Pickett’s 2009 book The Spirit Level demonstrates the effect of a greater inequality of wealth (the UK is third behind the USA and Portugal). It leads to more crime, unemployment, homelessness, mental ill-health, drug dependency and other social ills. We must look to Japan and the Scandinavian countries for ideas. They have average income ratios between rich and poor of 4:1 compared to our eye-watering 10:1. If government allows so much money to be held by the few, there is much less for the rest. The best strategy is to recirculate money to the poorest by progressive direct income tax. Indirect taxes like those on sales (VAT) and fuel (excise duty and VAT) are regressive, hitting the poor hardest. The wealth gap is reduced if government recirculates money to the poor, who spend it! Profits return money to the rich.
True spiritual experience expresses itself in activities – especially those persuading government both to reduce inequality and imprisonment and look at rehabilitating and educating offenders within the community. Meaningful action towards reducing imprisonment and inequality proceeds from a true relationship with the Spirit.
Comments
How about a campaign or even a concern to abolish prisons? I admit that Friends have given no encouragement to this, not in my experience. On the way, the level of imprisonment is likely to be reduced. We may never get to abolition but think what we might achieve in trying. At least, abolition is a clear objective.
By dthorpe on 21st March 2017 - 10:01
I’m not sure we can ever abolish prisons because we do need somewhere to put those offenders who are a danger to public safety. But I do agree with Dthorpe that Friends could campaign to reduce the use of imprisonment as it generally does more harm than good and does not achieve what we would wish to see, namely offenders being properly integrated into normal society whatever that is.
By NoelS on 29th March 2017 - 11:42
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