Breadcrumbs - How Institutional justice isn't God's Justice - Luke 18

Giving to the community - tithing to Love God - Love Neighbor - Become a...

Who does Jesus use to teach the religious leaders of the exemplary subject of neighborly and God's love? It was their enemies. It was the Samaritans. See, the Samaritans were kind of a unique people. They were kind of cousins, I guess you could say to the, to the, to the Jewish folks at the time. And the Samaritans were a unique people because they believe that God had met them on one mountain and the people from Judaism believed that God had met them on another mountain. 

So they had a mountain con test and then this mountain contest the people with the most money and the most power and the most influence won.

So what'd they do? They destroyed the temple at the top of the mountain that wasn't theirs and they wiped out all the things that didn't. And then they said, look, you guys are the Samaritan. Y'all can just stay way over there and y'all can worship however you want and we're going to keep it going over here. So when Jesus goes and tries to explain to people how to interact and love one another, the two times that he's explaining to people he uses as an example, the Samaritans, the first one brother Glenn preached on a few weeks ago was the good Samaritan, right? It was the person who looked after another. It was a person who looked after someone who they thought needed their help. This was an example of how to love a neighbor to love one another.

The example was the Samaritans. Now there's something unique about the Samaritan because the Samaritans are the worst kinds of enemies. And I mean the worst kinds of enemies because they're the enemies you don't make up with easily. We would call those family, right? You're getting into a family dispute and what are the worst kinds of disputes you get into? Those are the ones that you get into with family that go not just one time that they go on for years and years and then there's conflict, right? Because if you get in conflict with somebody, you know you're getting a bad business deal, they can go their way and you can go your way. You don't have to see them again. But the worst kinds of enemies are the ones that [inaudible] no, that are just like you. The ones you have to have a relationship with. The ones you see over a long period of time. The ones that if you had to reconcile with, you'd have to admit to your own the false as much as you admitted to how the other person might have wronged you. It's isn't it?

The Samaritans weren't just a group of people that the traditional Jewish authority didn't like. It was the history. They had to chase their own ideals and they had to look at themselves in the mirror. Don't underestimate how this must have just ground the folks that heard this. You know who's the best person that loving other people? It ain't you. It's the Samaritans. What? What? The Samaritans. You know the people that looked after the guy in the ditch

Oh and 10 people got cured and only one thing to God. Guess which one thing to God, wait for the Samaritan. Don't underestimate how grinding this was.

the Samaritans

Let's talk private prisons

Since I have experience in private prisons here in the US, many of you have asked me to weigh in on the latest declaration by the DOJ (executive branch) and what implications it may have in the future.

First, this is not a law but a "memo" stating a direction that the department is heading. It is a simple change of action that can be reversed at any time and is heavily influenced by the politics at the time and who is in office. I would like to offer the following thoughts that people who wish to "ban" private prisons often make that are simply uninformed with how the system actually works and why this memo actually means nothing in the long term by itself.

• Private prisons make money off of human misery. 
• Well, in that case medicine should be de-privatized first. 
• Most of the support services in PUBLIC prisons are run by private enterprise. Everything from the beds, linens, doors, handles, locks, food service, medical care, drug treatment, pre-pack pharmaceuticals, jail management software, body vests, institutional control devices, etc. The list goes on and all of these companies would cease to exist without the state funded prison system. 
•  Private company's do make a profit, so that incentives them to innovate and become more efficient. Did you know that most of the private prisons use biometric security features that require detainees to use their fingerprints to access information and to check in and out of work release facilities which is far more efficient and safe than having someone sign in and out on paper? Very few public facilities have these features and it was pioneered at a private prison. Private prisons are working on eliminating standing head counts which forces individuals to stand like cattle and be counted one by one, a very humiliating practice. This practice will be eliminated by using RFID technology that can track anyone on campus giving individuals freedom of movement in space without being counted constantly. This is better for the person in custody and safer for the individual. It also saves money. 
• Public prisons have officer unions - not that unions are bad, but there is ZERO incentive for that union to want to close facilities and lose union jobs. Correction unions are one of the biggest lobbyists to ReEntry bills and scaling down of prison pipelines.
• Public prisons do a better job
• This totally depends on the level of the prison. County jails, state run facilities, and high level federal complexes are all run differently and mostly revolve around the warden who runs them. Private prisons have more programming hours, more community involvement, and are competitively bid which means they have an incentive to offer more each time. Public prisons have ZERO incentive to improve or change
• Private prisons can reinvent programming and needs as the government wills. If the current contractor cannot fit the needs of the community, there are other contractors willing to bid in order to complete the task. Government prisons are VERY difficult to overhaul as there is little incentive to turn over staff and resources to meet newer ReEntry challenges and respond to the latest research. 
• Does this affect all prisons?
• No, hardly any. If the DOJ had a real problem, they would have marched the marshals into the facility, shut them down, and relocated the detainees to another facility. How do I know this? I've seen it happen. The fact is they are not canceling contracts. They said they aren't renewing them (there is no such thing as a renewal - they would just put out another request for proposal, RFP,  which signals another round of bidding by anyone wanting to fulfill the proposal). Yes there is a shift in need and they are not putting out RFPs, that is a FAR cry from banning private prisons. The memo also said they would look at each contract on its renewal date, signalling again, that there isn't anything they find wrong with how the facilities are run no matter what they say in writing. 
• This doesn't affect 99% of private prisons. Most of the REENTRY work does by the federal government is done by private contract. So is ALL of the aftercare and drug rehabilitation, completely private. State governments are a case by cases basis and so are county facilities which are done on a county by county basis. 
• What are the issues then? 
• A good question. The government needs to QUIT handing out contracts that go on for longer than 5 years and increase oversight. In a government prison, there is NO, NONE, NADA, oversight. The government watches itself and we know how well that works out. There are very few civilian tours and even fewer press that get inside. Wardens run those facilities with iron fists and allow very few things to counter that authority. Private prisons get INSPECTED. Not enough which is why they need 4 inspections a year (two unannounced) and the private prisons need to pay the government for them. The report needs to be published and publicly accessible. At this point you have a government which has requested a service, an inspection group that checks to see if things are being done to the contract (which is usually 700 pages) and all life/safety items are being handled. This now allows the public to know the condition of the facility and the government knows what kind of service is being performed. If the service is not being preformed, the facility has a finite time (30 days for example depending on the severity of the infraction) to remedy that cause or the facility is condemned and the detainees are removed and relocated. Since the facility gets paid only if people are present, this would be like a death nail to the institution. This forces the facility to operate above standards.
• Are all private prisons good? 
• NO. Just like most public prisons are bad. There is a mix in the field. There are private prisons that look like hotels (not lying) with art on the walls and activities for families. There are also public prisons with lights falling in, moldy food, and have denied legal access to their detainees. The difference? One has oversight (some but needs improvement) and the other has itself as its oversight. 
• Where do we go?
• Private prisons are a vehicle and a method to achieve the goals that the government has already. Counties have built prisons and have used them as money makers selling bed space to ICE, The Marshal's service, and the BOP. The only difference between them and the private prison company, no oversight and no contract renewal. This practice is FAR worse than private prisons as the county governments are using this revenue to run their city/county services that should be taken care of by tax payers. This issue is far more complicated than a simple memo or a political statement made by a single office. There is no celebration that should be taking place because prisons don't put people in custody - the Judicial System does that. We need to stop blaming the end of the line for people and start looking at the laws and sentencing that gets them to the incarceration phase in the first place.