Showing posts with label prisons. Show all posts
Showing posts with label prisons. Show all posts

Saturday, September 6, 2014

Changing Free Will from a Harmful Illusion to a Life-Affirming Fact

Underlying many of the social systems and moral perspectives that govern our society is the concept of free will.  Whether stated as the ability to know right from wrong or whether it’s the belief that anyone can pick themselves up by their bootstraps, our system of laws, both criminal and civil, and government’s approach to helping those in need is founded on the concept of free will.

But do we really have free will?  Does each person really have this broad range of options from which he or she can choose?

The answer, in short, is “no.”  We are, each of us, a product of our upbringing, in all its many aspects ... from our experience in the womb, to the nurturing we receive in our early formative years, to everything we experience and learn at the hands of our family, peers, and the larger culture.  How all those different factors impact each person results in the multifaceted nature of humanity ... literally, no two people are the same, not even twins, and certainly not siblings.

While this statement should not be controversial, the further implications of it will likely be viewed as highly so.  The environment of our upbringing programs us (our minds are like extremely complex computers) to act the way we act. This is not to say that we are like robots.  Because we have minds and the ability to think, each of us has a range of actions that we can take.  But it is a much smaller range than assumed by the concept of free will.

Whether someone has ambition or has none, becomes a criminal or not, is kind or ruthless, and the list could go on and on ... regarding almost every area of human activity, most of the “decisions” we make are not really decisions, because decision implies a real choice.  Instead, these “decisions” have been made for us by the way we have been programmed by the environment of our upbringing.

Let’s take the example of two individuals growing up poor in the ghetto in similar circumstances and with a similar lack of educational achievement.  One takes the path of crime to provide money for the basics of life; the other rejects that route and takes a low-paying job.  The conventional view would be that the first individual makes a conscious decision to do what he knows to be wrong, while the second one makes a choice not to do what he knows to be wrong.  

But that is false.  The first individual, by virtue of his upbringing, does not think crime is wrong; he knows it’s illegal, but that doesn’t mean it’s wrong as far as he is concerned.  The environment of his upbringing programmed him to disregard the larger society’s morality and to believe he had no other options for making it.  The second individual, on the other hand, had something in his upbringing ... possibly a parent or church ... that taught him that crime is wrong.  He could no sooner do that than chop off his hand.

Then there is the well known example of the child or wife abuser.  As research has clearly shown, these individuals do not choose to abuse their children or their wives.  They themselves were typically abused as children and their minds equate abuse with love because as children that’s how they coped with being abused by a parent.  And so, they are programmed by their past to abuse their loved ones.  They have no choice, absent intervention and therapy.

It is the mind’s programming that causes those who are abused to become abusers themselves.  As hard as it is for us to understand and accept that fact, as incomprehensible as it may seem, it is nevertheless a fact.

The implications of this analysis is significant.  There is no such thing as a bad person; that is to say, no one comes out of the womb a bad person, no one is an inherently bad person.  But people do come to do bad things because of what they’ve been taught by the environment of their upbringing.  

While that should and can have no impact on the laws of what is socially allowable behavior.  And those who violate those laws must take responsibility for their behavior, even if they in reality had little or no choice ... that is necessary for the stability of society ... how we treat such individuals is another matter.

Based on this analysis, how we deal with those who violate the law needs to change drastically from current and past practices.  For example, the goal of the criminal justice system is to increase public safety.  We know all too well from experience though that fear of incarceration or even death does not act as a deterrent and change people’s behavior.  Such is the power of their programmed minds.

Thus, while the criminal justice system would still determine guilt or innocence, the driving goal of the sentencing process would be rehabilitation not punishment.  Not just sentencing, but the whole prison culture would be totally transformed because in order to rehabilitate, a person’s thought process must be reprogrammed.  This is a complex process, but first and foremost it involves building someone’s feeling of self-worth and his sense of oneness, his interconnectedness with all people.  Only then will a person stop treating others badly, whether family, peers, or strangers.  (See my post, “Prisons as Monastery not Dungeon,” 11/20/14.)

The latter lesson will be very controversial for most readers because our whole system of social interaction, from the micro to the group to the nation is based on an us v them analysis, which in turn is based on our insecurity.  Virtually every conflict that man has been involved in has been a result of this insecurity and his us v them perspective.  Even the three great western religions have an us v them perspective at their core.  But this human weakness must be eradicated wherever it appears if we are ever to achieve peace at any level.

This analysis of the programming that robs us of free will also should impact the function of our public schools.  It is not enough to teach people job-related skills (yes, I know that many schools do a poor job of even that).  Schools must teach people what they are all too often not taught at home or by the media ... to be ethical human beings, regardless of the circumstance.  (See my post, “Schools as Educators of Citizens,” 3/10/14,)  Only then will children see beyond the immediacy of their environment and have a real chance to exercise free will

The goal of these changes I’m suggesting is to provide a real opportunity for people to exercise free will, to free themselves from the straight-jacket of their mind’s programming.

I stated in the beginning that for the most part, our systems are based on the invalid assumption that we have free will.  But in one critical arena, the injustice suffered by many results from the opposite assumption ... that they have no free will.  Schools, especially inner-city schools, mostly accept as given that children from bad backgrounds are hopeless, s lost cause, and nothing but trouble.  And that has become a self-fulfilling prophecy,

Let’s take two people of equal talent and intelligence,  One is born in an upper middle-class family with all the attendant privileges and supportive parents. One is born into a drug-addicted family living in poverty on the fringes of society.  There is no difference in the two children regarding their genetic-based talents and intelligence.  

In the one case the talents and intelligence are recognized and nurtured, sometimes obsessively, the talent and intelligence blossoms and the person goes on to become a productive person.  But in the other case, the talents and intelligence are neither recognized nor nurtured ... the seeds that are within are not watered ... and so that talent and intelligence atrophies and the person goes on to the life that is more or less typical for people raised in those surroundings.  Free will was not a factor in either case.

This is a huge waste of human potential and a crime against humanity.  Children indeed do not have free will, but they are young and their minds are malleable enough that they can more easily be taught to feel self-worth than adults.  Thus, all schools must instead function with the goal of making the most of each child’s potential and from the perspective that a child’s background and SES group does not predetermine that potential.  Just as our criminal justice system ideally follows the maxim “innocent until proven guilty,” our schools should follow the maxim, “talented and intelligent until proven otherwise.”

Our system of justice and social engineering based on the assumption of free will, or in the case of many inner-city schools, the lack of free will, has done an injustice to untold millions of people to the detriment not just of their lives but of the health and stability of our society.  We assume that people have free will when convenient for us, when in fact they do not; but at the same time believe that people have no free will, when that is what’s convenient.

What we must do is reform our systems so that all people develop a sense of self-worth, of opportunity, and thus in fact can exercise free will.  Only with such reforms will we ever see the full implementation of the promise of the Declaration of Independence ... that all men are created equal, have an unalienable right to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness, and that governments are instituted to secure these rights.

Monday, January 20, 2014

Prisons As Monastery Not Dungeon

In my previous post, “Rethinking Criminal Justice in a Civilized Society,” I argued that if a crime does not warrant the death penalty, then rehabilitation should be the predominant motivator in sentencing and its execution, not retribution, not punishment.

Prisons today are merely modern-day dungeons with a prettier face.  No longer do inmates have to fight off rats in dank, dark cells.  They receive decent meals, are provided beds (assuming the prison is not overcrowded), are allowed visitors, get some minimum of exercise and daylight, etc.  Some education is often available.

But the dominant policy is still punishment.  Prisons are a spiritual dead zone.  Except for insuring order, inmates are left pretty much to their own devices; they are provided no direction in changing their lives.  And so despite the fact that they are confined and watched, criminal conduct and gangs flourish in prisons.  They are a breeding ground for a more committed, smarter, criminal.  As a result, more than two-thirds of released inmates commit new crimes, often more serious and violent, within three years of leaving prison.

Is this really what our society expects from our criminal justice system?   There are two reasons why people support the punishment model.  First, it feels right ... the old “eye for eye” perspective.  But I think most people support it to improve safety.  They understand that most prisoners return to their communities within a few years, and people believe that punishment reduces the likelihood that they will commit more crimes after being released from prison.  Also, the theory is that it will deter others from committing crimes to begin with.  But our experience shows that our current prison philosophy secures neither end.

Our society’s answer to this problem has been to increase the severity of prison sentences, even for the most minor of crimes.  But that hasn’t worked either.  All it has done is create even more hardened criminals at an incredible cost to society (both regarding the cost of housing inmates as well as the cost of a continuing career of crime).

No , the answer lies elsewhere ... in the concept of rehabilitation.  Unfortunately, the concept of rehabilitation has been pretty much discredited because it’s just been given lip service, it has never really been given an opportunity to work.  Rehabilitation has to be the guiding principle; it can’t be a side effort in the midst of a brutalizing environment.  And then you have the rants of the right wing who argue against “coddling” criminals.  

In a series of pieces arguing for more emphasis on rehabilitation in The New York Times, the case was made for providing all the therapy needed and all the education desired, preferably within a “locked, safe and secure home-like residential community.”  

While I agree on the need for and the benefit of more therapy of all types and education, I believe that for most inmates, certainly for the more hardened ones, given the nature of their environmental backgrounds, a far more structured environment is necessary in order to ingrain in them new patterns of thought and behavior.  And so I would advocate a setting more patterned after the monastic experience, replete with both a regimented daily schedule and spiritual lessons and meditation.  A repurposing of our existing prison structures.

Why?  For much the same reason that boot camp is necessary to turn recruits into soldiers.  Most inmates, like most individuals, have grown up in very undisciplined circumstances. Although life does not require the discipline of the military or a monastery, discipline in the face of all the temptations and assaults of our society would be very helpful in enabling released inmates to resist falling back into familiar behaviors.

And because most inmates, like most individuals, have grown up in an atmosphere that has created a feeling of insecurity and a negative sense of self, a non-denominational spiritual program including meditation would be very helpful.  Inmates need to develop a new way of relating to themselves and to those around them, both family and the larger society.  

Above all they need to develop faith in themselves, and that can only come from a more robust spiritual life, together with education and various forms of therapy.  As a Buddhist, I would advocate a program based on Buddhist teaching as it is non-denominational and has been shown in numerous prison settings to be very effective in helping inmates (granted that in those cases the inmates self-selected the program).

The question needs to be put to the public:  “Is your primary concern regarding the functioning of the criminal justice system one of increasing personal safety?”   If the answer is overwhelmingly yes, then the future direction of prison/sentencing policy should be clear.  Rehabilitation needs to be the dominant goal of prison policy.

We’ve built all these prisons; we confine all these people; let’s make better use of that opportunity for the benefit of the public as well as the inmates.