FIRlnGLlne "ARE PRISONS SERVING THEIR PURPOSE?"

Transcription

1 The copyright laws of the United States (Title 17, U.S. Code) governs the making of photocopies or other reproductions of copyrighted material. If a user makes a request for, or later uses a photocopy or reproduction (including handwritten copies) for purposes in excess of fair use, that user may be liable for copyright infringement. Users are advised to obtain permission from the copyright owner before any re-use of this material. Use of this material is for private, non-commercial, and educational purposes; additional reprints and further distribution is prohibited. Copies are not for resale. All other rights reserved. For further information, contact Director, Hoover Institution Library and Archives, Stanford University, Stanford, CA Board of Trustees of the Leland Stanford Jr. University. 0 FIRlnGLlne HOST: GUEST: SUBJECT: WILLIAM F. BUCKLEY JR. CHARLES COLSON "ARE PRISONS SERVING THEIR PURPOSE?" FIRING LINE is produced and directed by WARREN STEIBEL. This is a transcript of the fjrjng Ljne program (#976/2305) taped in New York City on July 27, 1993, and telecast later on public television stations. copyright 1993 NATIONAL REVIEW

2 Charles Colson was awarded the Templeton Prize recently. It's an annual award of $1 million for the purpose of honoring someone whose promulgation of Christian teaching and practices has been the most striking. Mr. Colson dispatched the money as he does the royalties of his lectures, of his articles, of his books, of his columns and of his radio commentary, to the Prison Fellowship, the foundation he began and which he pursues. It seeks to accost the problem of prison life and the culture of prison mentality. When Charles Colson himself went to prison for involvement in the Watergate scandal, 78 out of 100,000 Americans were incarcerated. That figure has multiplied now by a factor of four. Charles Colson is a graduate of Brown University who took a law degree at George Washington University, practiced in Washington and became the youngest administrative assistant in the Senate, working for the late Senator Saltonstall and soon found himself working in the White House with President Nixon, whose principal tactician he became. In 1973 he had an epiphany discovering in the teaching of Christ the illumination that transformed his life. There was great skepticism about Colson's conversion, but this dissipated and resides now only in those obstinate corners of fixated guilt that reluctantly concede the legitimacy of anyone reborn, with the possible exception of conservatives who become socialists. [laughter] Mr. Colson was our guest several years ago, touching on the subject we raise yet again, given the breadth of his continuing experience. In a recent speech at the National Press Club, he made several points I wish him to revisit today, one of them describing a prison in Brazil whose practices he considers exemplary. It's called Humaita, and prisoners who leave that institution have a recividism rate of four percent, which contrasts with the 75 percent of graduates of other prisons in Brazil. So I begin by asking, what is singular about Humaita? How do you pronounce that? Hu-mye-ta or Hu-my-ta, either way. Humaita. Humaita. What's unusual about that prison, Bill, is that it was started 20 years ago by a couple of Christian laymen. The prison was about to be closed. They went to the Brazilian authorities in the state of Sao Paulo and they said, "We'd like to take it over and run it on Christian principles." And they've done that. When people arrive in that prison--they have about 300 inmates--when people arrive in that prison, they come in chains. And one of the prisoners will take off the chains and say, "In this prison you are no longer constrained by iron and steel; you are constrained by the love of Jesus Christ." Many of the people who come aren't Christians, but 1

3 they are given an option of either going to chapel or to a valorization program, character development. They are assigned a buddy, much like the military, a buddy system, so someone is accountable for them. They have a volunteer family. I have been in 600 prisons, in 30-some countries of the world, and I have never been in a place like this, where they have two staff and the rest of the prison is run by the inmates. You walk through it and it's absolutely spotless clean. The morale is wonderful. The inmates, many of them, are humming and singing hymns that are Proverbs and Psalms blown up on the wall, in Portuguese, of course. Well, is there a way station before they-- You don't go there directly from a serial killing, do you? One of the young men that gave me one of the most vivid testimonies of Christ in his life was a murderer, life without parole. Yes, they are required under law to take anyone that wants to come to that prison or anyone the officials send to that prison. And they get all sorts of fellows. And they've had a mix that goes right across the waterfront. The key to the prison, the heart of the prison, really is-- As I was leaving, one of the inmates said, "Would you like to see our maximum security cell?" It's the punishment cell. This is an old prison, where they used to torture people to death. And I said yes and he walked me down this long corridor of steel doors and we got to the end and he said, "We have one prisoner here in the maximum security punishment cells." And then he looked in through the trap and he said, "Yes, he's there," and he closed it and said, "Are you sure you want to go in?" I somewhat impatiently said, "Yes, I've been in punishment cells all over the world. I've been in Perm Camp 35. Take me in." And he swung open the door slowly and there was a dim light and some flowers on the table and some chairs and I walked in and to the right, I turned, and there was a crucifix, Christ hanging on the cross. And he looked at him and he said, "That's the prisoner that's doing the time for us." The Christian influence is so pervasive in that prison, unlike any prison I've ever visited anywhere. The atmosphere is different than any prison I've ever visited anywhere. And they simply run it on New Testament teaching about the way we treat one another and behavior, and the results are quite evident in that four percent recidivism rate. And we know this to be true because we follow these people when they get out of prison. Well, why is it not more widely emulated since it's on the scene? Well, it's being widely emulated. I visited with the president of Colombia, the president of Ecuador, with the justice minister in Peru. Many Latin nations are now doing 2

4 this. They've sent a delegation from Russia. We run this prison. It's actually owned by Prison Fellowship. All over the world, people are flocking to Sao Jose dos Campos to see Humaita. The problem is here, we spent--jack Eckerd, the wonderful philanthropist, spent a half a million dollars to explore the feasibility of doing it here and concluded because of the ACLU and separation of church and state that we would never be able to do it. Tragic. They might fall in love with God rather than Mammon. They don't want to run that risk. Well, we might offend someone by suggesting that there is such a thing as truth or Christian values that can transform a person's life. And that would be offensive in today's tolerant society. Let me ask you this. A point that you have considered basic now for several years is that our prison population, which is not far from a million, could be cut in half if people who were not guilty of violent crimes were dispatched to do other things--community service or whatever. I have two questions to ask you. One of your postulates is that people who go wrong tend to go wrong because they haven't had training in moral values. A second is that time in prison tends to dehumanize rather than humanize. Now my first question is, can society derive the kind of satisfaction it seeks when it runs against a first-rate white-collar criminal by sending him other than to Sing-Sing? Well, first of all, you have to stop equating punishment and prison. There are many ways to punish people apart from isolating them from society and quarantining them. Quarantine should be used as it is in medical cases for people who have diseases that are contagious or dangerous to the rest of society. But the demand of justice, or at least the appearance of justice, is necessary for the preservation of order and so the celebrated cases like Chuck Colson and Bob Haldeman and the Watergate cases and Rostenkowski--if they don't manage to cover it up, which they probably will--and cases like that are going to have to have prison in order to satisfy the public's perception of justice. A metaphor of prison. Right-- Well, no, prison. Oh, actual prison. Yes. I think in the celebrated cases, the public cases, they're going to have to, simply because the public won't settle for less. But that's one tenth of one percent of 3

5 the prison population. I was in prison with a lot of nonviolent offenders who were carpenters and plumbers and bootleggers and people who-- And their crimes were characteristically what? Income tax or something? Oh, bad checks or income tax or petty embezzlement or shoplifting or not paying bills or very minor offenses. And it seemed to me ludicrous that we would spend $20,000 a year to incarcerate that person, separate them out of society, break them away from their families, stop them from being the breadwinner, put their family usually on welfare or break up their family--in 90 percent of the cases in prison, the man loses his family--f or something which would have been far more redemptive to put them to work--redemptive to them morally, and socially redemptive to society. It's insane what we do now, the indiscriminate use of prisons. And one of the problems we're running into today, with mandatory sentencing for drug offenses, you're getting people in the federal prisons for year sentences without chance of parole, first time drug offenders who may have been driving someone to a deal or may have been caught on the fringes, or might be small-time users and because they are taking up prison space on mandatory sentences, rapists and murderers who are dangerous to society are being released. I mean, it's a very counterproductive system. Well, now let me just back up. Do I understand you to say that conspicuous white-collar felons have got to spend time in jail to satisfy the public's sense-- It's not-- --of retribution? It's not justice, but it is the appearance of justice necessary to preserve order. And there are those cases, and Watergate would be a classic example of it, where-- I had in mind Charles Keating, and the reason I picked him is because it happens that our paths crossed socially a few times, and in part also because there was never anybody I ran across who seemed to be more ostentatiously conscious of Christian commandments. When I first met him he had a priest vacationing at his house, he has 10 or 11 children, that kind of thing. So you can't point to him as an example of somebody who didn't between ages one and six have the right kind of moral training. Would he be somebody who would have to go to jail because of the nature of his offense and the people it affronted? 4

6 Well, I have had a lot of contact with Keating as well, and have helped him a bit in prison. Yes, because of all those little investors who had their money lost-- Whose lives he ruined, yes. --who would simply--their lives are ruined--they would simply be outraged. They would no longer believe that justice worked in America if a fellow like Keating didn't go to prison, tragic though it is. I don't want to get into an anatomy of Charles Keating, but he is typical of many people who believe because they have been very righteous about their lives and behavior that they're beyond temptation, and the most dangerous people in the world are those who are self-righteous. I came from rather puritanical roots and studied Kant's categorical imperative and believed that I would never allow myself to be compromised. I gave away gifts that I received at Christmas. You're never more dangerous than when you are selfrighteous because you have an infinite capacity for selfdelusion. I ended up in prison; so did the fellow like Charles Keating. I have discovered that something has to happen to transform the life, to subdue the passion and will. Reason alone is not enough. And that, of course, is the change of life that--change of your whole view of life--that comes from a conversion to Christ. Well, what percentage of that one half who you think don't belong in jail would belong there for the reasons you cite, i.e., that they were conspicuous publicly offensive? Oh, one percent, Bill. I see. In prison and jail today you've got 1.3 billion people behind bars in America. That's just a little shy of the size of the active duty armed forces when the Clinton cuts are finished and it's an appalling waste. Ninety-eight percent of them have no work to do, which is utterly shocking. It destroys them and of course it's an enormous drain on society. You go to a place like Singapore, 10,000 inmates in the Changi prison, every single one of them working in a private enterprise that can bid and compete to get into the prison. It runs very efficiently, they all have jobs to do, the morale is far superior to what I find in any American prison. And it's absolutely ludicrous that we are keeping--i would dare say-- 400, 000 to 500,000 people incarcerated who could instead be wearing electronic bracelets, be living in their homes, paying for the support of their families, and working at jobs outside and making restitution to their victims or to a public restitution fund, carefully monitored by probation officials, severely punished in terms of restriction of their civil 5

7 liberties, but at the same time not costing us $20,000 a year- and that figure is going up rapidly as we are building more prisons. To what extent are they approaching that direction in Minnesota? Well, Minnesota is one of the models in the country, where they have done the very best job of finding alternatives for non-violent offenders. Many years ago when I walked through one of the Minnesota prisons, it was maximum security, and I said to the warden, "This is a tough prison," and he said, "Well, we only build tough prisons." He said, "If it didn't have to be tough, the person wouldn't have to be in prison." And that philosophy has pervaded. So the result is that in Minnesota, the cost of incarceration, the cost to the taxpayers of their prison system, is a fraction of what it is, say, here in New York, or in most of the rest of the country. And yet their crime rate is one of the lowest in America, and they only incarcerate dangerous people. So they have found a formula that if adopted elsewhere would not only be a sane and rational policy, it would save us lots of money and keep people from getting once institutionalized, and then you can't-- It's very difficult to recover them once they get into the prison pattern. Now you go out here to Riker's Island, 25,000 kids- they're being indoctrinated into a system of life that is extremely hard to break. Keep them out of it in the first place as long as you possibly can if you possibly can. Now, what kind of progress, if any, are you and the foundation making in advancing this as a national goal as opposed to working in individual states? Well, we just had an--i'll answer the question in just a second--but we just had an extraordinary breakthrough in North Carolina. I went to North Carolina, spoke to the legislature. We did a 26-point package of reforms, and the legislature was battling between the liberal and conservative mentalities on this issue, which have both been wrong. And we walked in and said, "Here's a package that will work," and as of last week they voted to pass the entire package. So we're going to see what really does happen in a state that decides to take a sensible alternative policy and rational sentencing guidelines. It's about to happen. At the federal level we see a glimmer of light with Janet Reno, who says that we're making a serious mistake with mandatory sentences for drug offenders and we're overusing prisons with the wrong people, and we should be treating them like scarce resources. So I see a bit of hope in some of her public statements. We've had some discussions. And I think we might see something happen in the federal system. 6

8 Well, if it's true that who says A must say B, then isn't it true that the overwhelming number of people who are arrested for using drugs ought not to be arrested for using drugs? So does your program accost the question of criminology as distinguished from penology? Ought somebody to be prosecuted if he is detected smoking marijuana? Well, we are about to get on very thin ice as far as I'm concerned, because it grieves me any time that I find myself in disagreement with Bill Buckley, one of my mentors over the years, but on the legalization of drugs, we would have different views. I think the law has to be a moral teacher, and I think the moment you say that this is sanctioned, either for pragmatic reasons or because it would even have a prudential value to society-- Isn't sanctioned different from permitted? Yes, it is, but I think that that's a distinction that is lost on the user and on the general public, and if you go-- Isn't that a problem we should accost? Is what? Isn't that a problem we should accost, the confusion? So many people-- Educational problems are something-- So many people do say if you license drugs that means you approve of them. I don't think that's true. I think if you license prostitution, which here and there is licensed, you don't necessarily approve of it. What you're simply saying is-- I think you're losing the convicting part, you're losing the moral authority of the law in the sense that the law is to establish standards of right and wrong. And in a relativistic society, we're tending that way as it is. Do we sanction tobacco? Yes, but we have powerful stigmas against its use, which have been working quite effectively, but it is not as dangerous a drug as-- Well, who's against-- Well, as a matter of fact, it kills many more people than drugs do, as you probably know. But who's against mobilization of stigmas? Because I'm not. It seems to me one should advertise the stupidity of anybody 7

9 who takes drugs, plus also the Russian roulette aspect of it. But to say for that reason I am going to park you in jail for two or three years for doing that-- One of the fashion trends that on the market today are these tee-shirts which have marijuana leaves on them. It's becoming very fashionable for the younger generation to sort of glamorize drugs. We don't have the stigmas against drugs that we have against smoking. That is a practical reality; it's sort of absurd when you stop and think about it. But even if we did have as effective a stigma, I would still say that you are losing some moral authority on the part of government when you do sanction drugs. I think you have to remember as well that when we do say something is all right to people, we are sending them a signal. When we hand out condoms in school, we're sending them a signal really that it's all right to engage in sex, that this condom is going to protect them. And if you legalize drugs I think you are saying the same thing. Well, you legalize automobiles that can drive miles an hour, and you legalize booze, which can make you an alcoholic. I find it very difficult to formulate a notion of a society in which you have simultaneously liberty, plus also an operative social sanction against the misuse of that liberty. We allow freedom of speech, but speech is very often abused; the freedom to read is very often abused. So I hate to think of legality to be coterminous with sanction. Well, liberty is not a goal in and of itself. I mean, the liberty to kill oneself is something that society still says is not civilized. Well, theology teaches that you are not free to do wrong, but theology also teaches us that the whole human adventure raises the question of whether you can discipline yourself. There's another side to the issue, though, Bill, and that is whether it would really reduce the criminal element involved in drugs, and I don't think it would, because even if society were to legalize certain drugs and at certain ages, there would still be an illegal trade reaching-- Why? --reaching young people-- Why? Because you would still have laws that you would be able to violate at great prof it. 8

10 Well-- Because it wouldn't be a complete elimination of any kind of restrictions on the use of drugs, I would hope. Well-- You don't even contemplate that. No, no, I would favor visitation of very heavy penalties against anybody who conveyed a drug to a minor, but it seems to me that if you were to withdraw the economic benefit of the black market drug, you would simply do away with the profit and do away with that criminal culture that you are now subsidizing, wouldn't you? Well, do you do away with the criminal subculture that has been profiting from drugs, or does that criminal subculture simply transfer its commercial enterprises to another area? If you take Banfield's thesis that a certain percentage of the population-- Yes. --are going to be incorrigible, they're going to find other places to be incorrigible other than with drugs. Yes, that is a thesis of his which however doesn't accurately take into account the huge rise in the commission of crimes, which you document very eloquently, and that rise can be attributed to the Woodstock generation in part-- Clearly. --but also if you look statistically at the figures and you discover that 52 percent of the people who are in jail in New York State are there for drug-related crimes, you've got to ask yourself the question, Would the situation be better if there were no such thing as a temptation to kill or steal in order to finance your drug habit? Well, the drug-related crimes, a very small percentage of those are people who were dealing and really in criminal elements. Most of them are users or, the more likely case, of the thousands of inmates I have met and people I did time with, is that they engaged in criminal activities to finance their own personal drug habit and that's what gets them in prison. So-- You wouldn't have that problem if they could actually go to a federal drugstore and get that drug. 9

11 Well, you can legalize anything and therefore by simply saying it's now legal, you're not going to have people in prison for that purpose. That's right. So I mean it would-- MR.. BUCKLEY: It makes you and me and Mrs. Jones safer if they don't have to rob us in order to finance their habit-- Except I think they would still-- That's right. In that-- To that extent marginally we would be-- Better off. --somewhat safer, I'll grant you that. Well, I don't want to turn this into a question of should we or should we not, but my fascination with your idea of how to change the prison system necessarily takes into account the appalling paradox of sending people into prison for four or five or six years when their crimes have been relatively trivial and when they enter into a culture that seeks to transform them into a criminal mentality. Well, there's no question-- I mean, I never went to sleep one night in prison without smelling marijuana burning. There is no question that when someone gets into a prison environment that they are learning all about lying, cheating and stealing and hearing about the next generation of crimes that they are already planning to commit when they get out or get even with society. So once they're into the system, it is deadly, what happens to those individuals. That's why I believe in keeping out the 40 percent--i would say conservatively--who aren't dangerous. Now that doesn't simply-- That isn't violent and nonviolent. I would consider drug dealing to be dangerous even if it doesn't involve physical violence against the person. So we've drawn up some pretty good categories and given them to various state legislatures, and congressmen and senators, on what is dangerous, what is not dangerous. You could end the prison building boom in America today, which is one of the biggest public works projects we've had in this country since Eisenhower's highway program, if you simply got those people out and put them into work programs, into boot camps, into monitored, supervised restitution programs. And all of those programs, by the way, are available, working around the country. I could take you to almost any state in the union and find very good alternative programs. It's simply we don't fund them because they are not very glamorous politically and it makes much better headlines for Senator Jones to stand up and 10

12 say, "We're going to throw away the key and lock all these people up." It's just irrational. In the 15 seconds we have left, what single reform would you most ardently welcome? Discrimination in sentencing, so that you really do have longer, tougher sentences for people who are genuinely dangerous to society, and work for every inmate outside and inside of prison so that they have a sense of purpose and selfworth. That's what we see in Humaita, one of the elements of Humaita that is so effective. Thank you, Charles Colson, president of Prison Fellowship; thank you ladies and gentlemen. 11