Goose Chase: Happy Birthday, Abu Ghraib

Three years ago today, inside photos from Iraq’s prisons burst into the world’s press. I was at a conference of Prison Ministers. Their response was “not surprised.” This sharply contrasted with the Bush response. “Unamerican,” he called Abu Ghraib, thereby illustrating his continuing role of the naked emperor. The fact is that prisoner treatment is not high on the nation’s penal agenda. “Keeping ‘em inside” is. I want to explore some questions: How could this happen? Who is responsible? What are the Alternatives?

How could such a thing happen?

Abu Ghraib is the offspring of one Lane McCotter, a penologist sent to Iraq to set up the prison system. Not unlike the missionary movement of the 19^th and 20^th century, we did not send abroad our first string players. (The present rift between 1^st and 3^rd world Christians can be understood as the product of having sent the B team to the mission field.) Mr. McCotter’s work in the domestic field was not recognized as the best foundation on which to build Iraqi prisons.

Philip Zimbardo’s study now printed in The Lucifer Effect: Understanding How Good People Turn Evil, offers a good place to start understanding Abu Ghraib along with the domestic prison system. But, if it is to be something other than an excuse, it will require wholesale rehabilitation of the prison system.

In effect, what happened in Iraq was simply a hidden narrative familiar to prison workers in the U.S. Some facts: There were in the year 2000 some 2,166,000 persons in U.S. prisons. This represented 25% of the world’s prison population in an era in which the domestic crime rate was going down. Broadly speaking, this skyrocketing population came about as the result of the fears and righteous anger of the voting public run amok. Were one to compare the imprisonment among minorities to the height of the apartheid system in South Africa, one finds that the domestic incarceration rate exceeds the South African rate some 10 times, a rate of some 7,000 per 100,000 of population.

Jeffery Reiman’s book The Rich Get Rich and the Poor Get Prison details the rise in for profit prisons across the country. Strong parallels are drawn between the exploding growth of the so called military/industrial complex and what is becoming known as the prison/industrial complex.

Where is there Accountability?

The problems of prisons are complex. There are no superficial answers to their present dismal state. The response to Abu Ghraib was to make Lindy Englund poster child for prison misbehavior. Later, her commanding officer was put on the hot seat, but the accountability stopped there. One needs to pursue concerns about human prisons with those who find the profit motive in the punishment of inmates. How is that system supported by the justice system? Political leaders have yet to confront the consequences of simple response to our system of retribution. We have yet to identify those who are doing a good job of running prisons. We have yet to expect accountability of the General Staff, the Defense Department and the Bush Administration for the travesty of Abu Ghraib. But such abuses do not go unnoticed in the rest of the world. Perhaps a sort of accountability is shaping up over the growing resistance to the entire Iraq enterprise.

What are the Alternatives?

The problems of our prisons are brought to our attention by Abu Ghraib. There are a lot of voices presenting alternatives that deserve our attention. Happily, theologians are making important contributions. They recognize the central importance in Christian Scriptures of the incarcerated. These resources chart a course to Restorative Justice and prison reform, each of which can benefit us all.

Abu Ghraib may have been a wake up call to our own prison system. Happy, theologians armed with their WWJD armbands can form the vanguard of reform. What congregations can now do is to educate the public that we have other ways doing things in our legislatures, courts and prisons. It may be time to "flesh out" the choices we face

Want to Know More?

Some background including Harmon Wray, theologian and prison minister

http://www.spiritualityandpractice.com/books/books.php?id=15821

Phillip Zimbardo’s groundbreaking study

http://www.lucifereffect.com/