“Employment is essential for people who have broken the law and are trying to reenter society”

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By Alan Bean

I spent last night with 15 homeless men at Broadway Baptist Church.  For the past six or seven years, a number of Fort Worth congregations open their doors to homeless people during the hottest and coldest months of the year.  This was my first time, but our guests knew the drill.  Upon arrival, they got out their mattresses and settled in.  Some of the men spent the evening playing cards and chatting with church members, but most turned in immediately after dinner.  This morning, they ate the hot breakfast we prepared, then wiped their tables, stacked the chairs and swept the floor without a word of instruction from anyone.

Some of the men shared their stories with me, others did not; but not a single man is homeless by choice.  Many of them would be working if they could, but jobs are in short supply, especially if you have a prison record.  This morning I found a message from Mark Mauer of the Sentencing Project in my inbox. (more…)

Why the NRA opposes gun safety research

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Dr. Art Kellermann

By Alan Bean

Art Kellermann, an ER physician and researcher at Emory University, crunched the numbers and discovered that “a gun kept in the home was 43 times more likely to be involved in the death of a member of the household than to be used in self-defense.”  The NRA was so concerned about the thrust of Kellermann’s research that they shut it down.  This isn’t about protecting the Second Amendment, it is about making the world safe for those who manufacture and sell firearms.  If you didn’t catch this piece on NPR this morning, please give it a look, or click on the link below and give it a listen.

Lack Of Up-To-Date Research Complicates Gun Debate

January 14, 2013

Vice President Joe Biden is getting ready to make recommendations on how to reduce gun violence in the wake of the school shooting in Newtown, Conn. (more…)

American slavery Hollywood style

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By Alan Bean

Dexter Gabriel thinks Americans have a hard time conducting a public discussion on the subject of slavery, so we ask Hollywood to address the subject on our behalf.  Because most movie-goers are white, however, we get films that never take the subject further or deeper than white America is willing to go.

Consider the fact that, prior to the 1960s, depictions of slavery in American cinema were unabashedly positive.  Now that tells you something about the white American psyche!

This year, two high-profile Hollywood films, ‘Lincoln’ and ‘Django Unchained’, address the slavery issue in ways which, predictably, leave America looking pretty damn good.  At least we have advanced from the days when slavery was rendered positively, but Gabriel thinks we’ve got a long way to go.

This analysis is pretty much on target.  There are plenty of objective scholarly treatments of slavery, of course, but they are generally read by scholars and a handful of justice activists.  If you want the non-Hollywood take on slavery check out this piece in Colorlines. (more…)

“The Abolitionists” and the awkward dance between movements and institutions

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The AbolitionistsBy Alan Bean

Two facts struck me last night as I watched The Abolitionists on PBS.  First, the amazing characters who shaped the movement were all people of faith.  Second, the abolitionists were not warmly received by the institutional churches of their day.

Thus has it always been.  Movements and institutions have a troubled relationships.  It’s the way of the world.

In early December I listened to Brian McLaren describe the awkward but potentially fruitful relationship between institutions and movements.  Institutions, in Brian’s understanding, conserve the gains made by past social movements.  Movements make proposals or demands to current institutions to make progress toward new gains.  Organizations and movements need one another but inevitably frustrate and anger each other.

Movements harden into institutions so they can survive.  New movements are created when institutions become too inflexible to respond to present challenges.

Without movements, institutions stagnate.  Without institutions, movements evaporate.

McLaren notes that some movements successfully inject their values into the institutions they challenge.  Other movements create their own institutions or pass away–it must be one or the other. (more…)

Liptak: When Death Row Lawyers Stumble, Clients Take the Fall

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Why, Adam Liptak asks, is it morally permissible to blame clients for their lawyers’ mistakes?  In the case in point, a death row inmate was represented by a drug-addicted attorney who eventually committed suicide.  Not surprisingly, legal motions were improperly filed and, precisely for this reason, a court refused to hear the defendants case.  Here’s Liptak’s discussion of the primary issue:

. . . why is it morally permissible to blame clients for their lawyers’ mistakes?

The legal system generally answers by saying that lawyers are their clients’ agents. The answer makes perfect sense when you are talking about sophisticated clients who choose their lawyers, supervise their work and fire them if they turn out to be incompetent or worse.

But the theory turns problematic . . . when the clients are on death row, have no role in the selection of their lawyers and have no real control over them.

As a legal layperson, I have never understood why defendants should suffer for the sins of their attorneys.  But they do.  All the time.  AGB

When Death Row Lawyers Stumble, Clients Take the Fall

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Published: January 7, 2013

WASHINGTON — Twice in recent years, the Supreme Court rebuked the federal appeals court in Atlanta for its rigid attitude toward filing deadlines in capital cases. The appeals court does not seem to be listening.

A few days after Christmas, a divided three-judge panel of the court ruled that Ronald B. Smith, a death row inmate in Alabama, could not pursue a challenge to his conviction and sentence because he had not “properly filed” a document by a certain deadline.

As it happens, there is no dispute that the document was filed on time. But it was not “properly filed,” the majority said, because Mr. Smith’s lawyer did not at the same time pay the $154 filing fee or file a motion to establish something also not in dispute — that his client was indigent. (more…)

When people can’t forgive, they’re stuck

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Russell Crowe as Javert

By Alan Bean

Genuine forgiveness feels a lot like open heart surgery; but without it, we’re lost.

To celebrate our 35th wedding anniversary, Nancy and I went to Les Miserables, a musical I had never seen before.  Nor have I read the 1500 page novel, although I’ve been hearing references to it all my life.  Unavoidably,the movie presents an impossibly compressed version of the original story line.  But they got the theme right: forgiveness.

Early in the story, Jean Valjean is paroled after serving nineteen years for stealing a loaf of bread.  But for repeated escape attempts he would have been released much earlier.  Unable to find work, Valjean comes under the care of Bishop Myriel, a compassionate cleric whose deeds of kindness have earned him the informal title “Monseigneur Bienvenu”.  Unable to sleep on a comfortable bed, the restless Valjean steals the Bishop’s silver and flees into the night, only to be captured and hauled back to the Bishop in chains for identification.

Myriel tells the gendarmes that his guest received the silver as a gift.  In fact, he was also given two silver candlesticks that he neglected to take with him.  When the two men are alone, Myriel tells Valjean to use the silver to become an honest man.  Overwhelmed with this display of unwarranted forgiveness, Valjean is transformed. (more…)

Bowling Alone?

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By Charles Kiker

January, 2013

Doesn’t sound like much fun, does it? It’s not supposed to be. It’s the title of a book (Copyright 2000) by Robert Putnam, Professor of Public Policy at Harvard University. Professor Putnam chronicles and laments the decline of doing things together in the United States. He found that civic clubs of all kinds were shrinking. Even bowling leagues and teams were in decline. People would rather just bowl as individuals. Hence the title: “Bowling Alone.”

It will come as no surprise to anyone who follows religious life in American that Putnam found churches and other religious institutions to be in decline. And that trend has continued in the dozen or so years since the publication of his book. So much so, that now sociologists and wannabes find “nones” a significant plurality in religious life. These nones are not atheists or agnostics; they are not anti-Christian. They claim to be “spiritual but not religious” in that they have no affiliation with any religious group. They are individualists in their spiritual life.

This has been coming on for a long time. When I was a campus minister in the early ‘70s there was a little ditty some of the college youth liked to sing: “Just me and Jesus got a little thing going . . . Don’t need nobody to tell us what it’s all about.” (more…)

Guns don’t kill people . . .

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By Alan Bean

“Guns don’t kill people,” David Cole says, “indifference to poverty kills people.”

So long as the consequences of gun violence are born by poor black males, Cole believes, the nation will not pass meaningful gun regulation laws.

There are two obvious responses to Cole’s argument.  It has frequently been noted that most of the cities with high rates of gun-related homicide already have strict gun control laws.  But this only underscores the need for national legislation that discourages people from importing guns into urban neighborhoods.

The second quibble is even more obvious: if poor black males are using guns to kill one another that’s on them.  The only solution, this argument goes, is for young black males to use firearms more responsibly. (more…)

Texas business needs Latino labor; the Texas GOP needs Latino votes

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By Alan Bean

Thanks to Scott Henson for alerting me to this piece in the San Antonio Express-News.  In the 2012 election, as everyone knows, Latinos turned out in record numbers, voting overwhelmingly for Barack Obama.  Signs abound that Republicans, even in safely red states like Texas, are taking notice.

Even if Latinos continue to support Democrats, the blue team won’t be competitive in the Lone Star State for at least another decade.  But Republicans can’t win the presidency without significant Latino support, and that sobering fact has deflated the anti-immigrant movement, at least temporarily.

Long-term, Texas Republicans can maintain control of their state’s legislative machine only by cultivating Latino participation and influence.  That won’t happen if Texas Republicans are lining up to sponsor anti-immigrant legislation.

Jason Buch’s article (see below) suggests the Texas GOP may be awakening to the new reality.

If so, this is great news.  Mass deportation is having the same impact in poor Latino communities that mass incarceration has wrought in poor African American neighborhoods, and for similar reasons.

During the most recent session of the Texas legislature, immigrant rights activists combined with pro-business groups to defeat most Arizona-style bills. Texas businesses, large and small, need undocumented workers in the same way the GOP needs Latino votes.  Texas Republicans can soldier on as the Party of White for at least another decade without Latino support, but bereft of undocumented labor the state’s economic infrastructure would collapse.

Immigrants, legal and otherwise, contribute far more in labor and taxes than they absorb in various forms of social assistance. Brave men and women (it takes courage to cross the border these days) come to America in search of work and show their gratitude by working far harder than most native born citizens.  As Texas moves reluctantly into new demographic territory, may these good people receive the dignity and respect they deserve. (more…)

Obama: mass incarceration is having ‘a disabling effect on communities’

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Nadav Kander for TIMEBy Alan Bean

The criminal justice system was hardly mentioned during the 2012 election season.  No one was banging the tuff-on-crime drum and we certainly didn’t hear anyone calling for reform.  With violent crime ebbing steadily, politicians are no longer locked in a Tougher Than Thou race to the bottom.  And although he didn’t press the issue during the campaign, President Obama has been dropping hints that his second term will address the problem of mass incarceration.

I have pasted the relevant section of Obama’s December conversation with Time magazine below.  As one would expect from a politician, he begins by burnishing his tough-on-crime credentials.  But pay close attention to his focus on non-violent criminals, a euphemistic reference to drug dealers.  The president isn’t simply arguing that the war on drugs has been a failure.  In fact, he wisely avoids any mention of drugs.  His point is that our ill-considered war on drugs is destroying low-income neighborhoods.  This is a moral argument.  Moreover, it shows that the essential features of Michelle Alexander’s critique is beginning to sink in.

One of the other things that I’ve heard is being discussed when you think about a second term is the idea of criminal justice reform. What would your goals be in that area? What is the problem you think can be solved in the next few years? (more…)