Other than a sociopath, no one wants her child involved in the legal system. In fact, most parents spend a lot of thought and energy into considering how to keep our children from being victims of crime from the time we worry about kidnappings and child molesters through driver's licenses, popular music concerts and dating on college campuses. And no one is happy when that child engages in behaviors that are illegal.

But how many folks say, "Someday I hope my child grows up to be a Correction Officer or a Prison Chaplin or a Warden"? I know third and forth generation military families, law enforcement families, firefighter families, teachers' families who consider their honorable public service worth the challenges. But not so much for Correctional Officers laboring in dangerous and often unpleasant and hostile environments requiring extraordinary vigilance to keep each other, themselves and the incarcerated folks safe in persistently difficult situations. The near constant anxiety, frequent pressure to act unethically, low salaries, 24-7 scheduling, growing overcrowding, constant exposure to angry, sad, fearful, hopeless folks and pernicious danger leads to physical illness, fractured families and too often overwhelming sorrow. 

Even if only 10% of the incarcerated population has embraced violent and outrageous behaviors, this is a losing situation for all folks inside the walls. And the less hope there is for a better tomorrow, the worse the odds get as more incarcerated people are subject to the unwanted attention of the worst offenders. The poorer are working conditions the harder it becomes to attract high-functioning, able and ethical prison staff which leads to staffing shortages which makes facilities more dangerous than ever.

Then we have the people at the top of the chain of command, the elected officials who either believe there are no better ways than what we currently have or the ones who feed the fears of their electorate with promises of "getting tougher" even as crime rates do not improve and folks who complete their sentences or are released on parole re-offend in ever higher percentages while crime rates fail to drop and even rise and as whole communities continue to flounder.

We are incarcerating AND failing to rehabilitate such a stunning portion of our overall population that from a purely financial point of view this is a growing disaster. When looked at from a humanitarian perspective is it unconscionable...and unparalleled in the world. 

Rikers Island has been found to be place of appalling abuse, filth, waste, danger, public health concerns and inconceivable working conditions that are the entrenched norm have required federal court intervention. It is so horrible there is now consensus that "something must be done as fast as possible" and they think they may be able to close it down in 10 years (a reduction from the Mayor's earlier "hope" they could do it in 20 years) if they can reduce the incarcerated population from the current 10,000 to 5,000 and raise $1.39 BILLION dollars (which will be estimated to save $1.4 million per year) .*

Praying is essential, but this much foster the following through of churches and their members in advocating, educating and working to reduce the number of children lost, improve conditions of incarceration and step in to mentor those who have completed their time of incarceration and long to return to or to become contributing members in their families and communities.

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*   www.nytimes.com/2017/04/02/nyregion/rikers-island-jail-closure-plan.html?mcubz=3

I happened to walk past the TV as a 48 Hours episode was ending. Because of my increased awareness of the extreme differences in sentencing I took note of something I had not really listened to before. Two folks in different states were dead as the result of property crimes gone wrong (a home invasion robbery and a car jacking) but the sentences in one instance were 25 and 30 years and the other was 5 and 7 years though each occurred during the commission of a crime. Was one person more likable than the other? Better or less well educated? More or less valued by their families?

Several things contribute to an increasingly irrational and frightening trend in sentences that tend to make people trust the legal system less because it is experienced as increasingly capricious and inexplicable.

1. Who arrests you matters.  The same offense investigated and charged at the local level could have sentencing guidelines that vary by two to three times. For people who have been caught in the pornography marketers web come ons ignorance can be costly: if a website or Craig's list contact tells you that what they are selling is "within legal limits" it is not necessarily true and EACH frame of a video clip is a separate charge at the federal level. At this time federal offenders are receiving higher sentences for e-crimes than local folks are getting for who actually have had contact with a child. Wives who have trusted husbands to handle family finances can be charged if funds from an illegal activity (whether that is fraud or a drug connection) if "dirty money" has been deposited in a joint account they used to pay household bills. This is often done to give prosecutors leverage to get a spouse to "flip" even when there is no evidence that the spouse has anything to "sell". This can result in a savvy co-conspirator negotiating a lighter sentence than the clueless mom watching her kids being sent into foster care.

2. How the offense is calculated matters.  If a person burglarizes your house while you are away (purely a property crime) and you are a person of influence in your community and are deeply upset, the prosecutor may add things like "possession of burglary tools" and "trespassing" to the charges in order placate someone they perceive as "important" or to leverage the process or to use plea bargaining to polish their conviction record. A less attractive offender may also evoke a harsher response such as someone who is poor, homeless, fresh out of foster care or unemployed. This in turn confuses people who learn that when their personal burglar was sentenced it was for a much lower time even though they had learned it was a multiple offender and so a sense of unequal justice is born in both in the victim and in the family and friends of the offender. Most of the "extra" charges were originally enacted to allow folks to face charges if apprehended BEFORE actually breaking into a home, but are now used in a destructive game stacked in favor of those with resources for attorneys, bail, fines, rehab, classes and restitution.

3. Who you are matters.  We want to believe this on one hand but every day attorneys advertise to assure us that we dare not speak with an insurance company or handle a traffic ticket without their help. A "simple" charge with a single hearing and dismissal can easily run up a $5,000 legal bill. For a serious crime where professional help in running down records and witnesses can easily run to six figures quickly. So, until we have National Legal Care, folks who have the money go to driving class or drug court have a very different experience than people without who sit in jail because they can't even make bail. It feels like the correlation between the number of attorneys in the halls of state houses and Congress may be affecting how important clarity in legal statues, regulations, rules et al is to those who make the laws.

4. Police officers and deputies have little if any input in what happens at the prosecutor's office. They may see a child as needing to be removed from a parent to another family member for a time because they know the people and community involved. But the prosecutor may see someone whose parent is irritating or whose legal aid advocate is not meeting deadlines. The prosecutor's perspective prevails. Additionally I believe many in the proprietorial and judicial systems prefer to ignore the part they are playing in the growing problems; I'm pretty sure that if their college student is picked up DUI a very small number ever spend the weekend in jail as a result. Recently, amid a growing scandal of assaults of both COs and accused offenders/low level offenders by unsegregated violent offenders awaiting trial or transport, increasing lawsuits for unsafe conditions for jail staff and those incarcerated, and terrifyingly inadequate medical care resulting in severe injuries and deaths of people being held at the jail (80%+ have not been adjudicated but neither they nor their families can pay bail, or they have been convicted of misdemeanors but are not able to come up with the cash to pay court costs or fees or fines. This can result in children being added to an already overcrowded foster care system.) Yet one of our local judges was quoted as saying, "We even have to adjust our schedules when there are not guards available to transport prisoners." If he walked across the street he might realize this is a much bigger problem than he seems to perceive. Earlier this month an already dangerously understaffed jail experienced a 25-person "outage" making conditions even more than usually dangerous.  Of course, those incarcerated there are not able to call in for a mental health day. And even when a citizen is found innocent they are often have no voice when they seek to advocate for reforms.

Every year members of governmental agencies, in state Houses and Senate halls, in our national's Congress people seeking political power feed the nonsensical notion that if we make a thing illegal it stops happening. As a result new laws are passed without thoughtful consideration of how other laws are affected, if other laws should be amended or recodified or rescinded and a change in federal law can take a long time to seep down to Two Egg, Florida. Personally I'd like to find candidates who promise to write no new laws, to only clarify, repair and recodify the millions of rules, regulations, laws, court case precedents and rulings to attempt to make the law possible to obey.

Mens rea, the requirement that there is intent to harm, is too often being replace with the "make an example and other people won't do this." But with the millions of rules (just think of the tax code with books of statues, Revenue Proclamations trying to clarify the law, Letter Rulings trying to address whether or not a particular course of action might or might not be illegal/actionable and the Tax Courts, the U.S. Courts of Federal Claims, District Courts and Bankruptcy Courts and the U.S. Courts of Appeals findings and rulings. And that is JUST the federal tax code. Now add the tax rules, laws and regulations in 50 states and the District of Columbia) it is frustrating for citizens. People often are so worried about "getting into trouble" knowingly pay higher taxes than the law provides, or lacking the financial resources to defend themselves, allow a disallowed deduction to stand because it is too expensive to fight what may be only a poorly trained examiner. While even trained legal professionals have trouble giving a clear response when a question is asked (have you ever emailed the IRS with a question?) people at all levels of literacy and education are held accountable for errors of both omission and commission.

So we are coming far too close to a nation where if anyone looks hard enough at anyone else they can probably find a mistake and if the person looking has "clout" and person being looked at does not, they are truly in a mess.

I suggest we ask our representatives and senators regularly what they have recodified or rescinded recently in the interest of moving toward a more just society.

People who have been affected by crime and the families of crime victims are affected. They often report feeling confused, vulnerable, afraid and frustrated. For family members surviving homicide victims, the aftermath can be years in the healing as investigation, which can include surviving loved ones being considered as possible suspects, is rarely swift; months and even years can pass getting to trial and more years of appeals and parole boards. If the offender is also a family member, which is statistically not rare, there are even more circles of pain involved, more victims to process and hard work to recover physically, emotionally, spiritually, financially plus the struggle to avoid damage pouring into another generation.

Churches do pretty well with weddings, babies, failing health like surgery or hospice patients, and funerals. Issues related to family care following a violent death, divorce, incarceration, financial collapse, long-term illness, mental illness and the like, not so much. Too often when we don't know what to say we stay away. Really there is not a lot that can be said, but there a deep need to have someone listen, to be heard. We need someone to assure us that we are still acceptable, still valued, despite "unspeakable" challenges.

Larger police departments now hire someone to liaison with families of homicide victims and surviving victims of crime, but during the investigation, especially where family members wait to be cleared of suspicion, there is a fine line about what to share and with whom. This leaves victims and families frustrated and increasingly anxious, often while dealing with significant financial challenges within shattered families. If an offender is identified, goes to trail and pleads or is found guilty, there are increasing opportunities for victim impact statements as part of the sentencing process. But for folks whose case is never heard, there are extra barriers to moving forward.

All states have funds available for victims of crimes and survivors of homicide victims. You can check yours out by "googling " 'victim compensation and your state). You will be doubly glad that you are not a victim of crime because there are many barriers to receiving any help. Many non-profit service providers apply for funds (and this seems more emphasized on my state's website than are direct to victim's help, but even established service providers struggle to get funding to them in a timely manner so their staff and utilities can be paid.) Judges who think they are being kind to forgo court costs and fees are not being kind to low-income families in desperate need of victim compensation funds and services.

For victims of crime in my state (once many barriers are overcome) a maximum benefit of $25,000 may be awarded on eligible claims and may not exceed:

• $400 per week for lost wages for crimes occurring on or after Aug. 28, 2015 (equivalent to 20,800 annual salary - roughly the poverty level for a woman escaping domestic violence with two children).
• $5,000 for funeral expenses
• $2,500 per claim for counseling expenses (Sometimes provided as a possible future benefit "if needed".)
• $250 for personal property such as bedding and clothing seized by law enforcement as evidence in the crime for which the compensation is being sought

However, losses not covered include stolen or damaged property, crime scene clean-up, relocation costs even when the crime scene is the victim's home and cannot be used by the victims because of on-going investigation, damage or having been made unsafe because of the crime. In truth, few victims of crime receive any financial help except for medical treatment of injuries directly related to the crime and that is only if they are very persistent and able to figure out the forms and get all the necessary documentation in before deadlines during one of the most confusing and frightening times of their lives.

Often victims express a desire to speak with a convicted offender, but this is rarely facilitated even though it is often both healing for victims and a step towards an offender understanding more clearly the cost to people he or she has never even met. This is a revelation to too many offenders whose upbringing offered little opportunity learn empathy. It is an essential part of a successful return to a productive life in communities.

We need to remember that 95% of people who are incarcerated today will eventually return to their communities. We all benefit if they return with the skills needed to rebuild their family relationships, function as able employees, and generally strive to benefit rather than damage their community. Victims most of all benefit having their loss respected within the legal system.

We have indeed become the incarceration nation.  While our crime rate is similar to Canada's we incarcerate 30 times more people. So, unless you believe it takes 30 Americans to commit each wrong that only one Canadian can commit, there has to be something seriously wrong south of our northern border.

The language has changed over the years from penitentiaries (a place of penitence where people should contemplate the error of their ways so that they might return to their homes convinced of the wisdom of staying on the straight way) and reformatories (that people might find an improved or reformed attitude) to the more modern correctional facility. Although in many other nations people often do return to their communities never to reoffend, our recidivism rate is very high between 60 and 76%* (while Australia, Singapore, and Norway are at 20% with lower crime rates than the United States). Those are strikingly diverse cultures yet the low recidivism rate in each is paying off in less crime.

And of course crime does not happen in a vacuum: the incarcerated are far from the only folks caught in this nightmare.  Let's start with the people who have been victims of crime or survivors of crime, have themselves been harmed as are their families who love them. To know a child in ones own family has been removed from a violent, abusive home wounds those who love both the child and the abuser. Some one may step forward to house and tend the wounded child. Other children are dropped into a broken governmental foster care system. The financial structure of victims of crime are damaged and health can be compromised for a lifetime or life can be lost at the time of the crime or in the aftermath. Members of law enforcement and the judicial system that deal with both victims and offenders then take their broken hearts home to their families and, if not well tended, those broken hearts break more hearts. Then we have the offender who has changed the course of his or her life with one more bad decision or impulsive action or stunning selfishness. Which leads to a whole new set of victims in the families and loved ones of the criminal sinner with the backlash here being as bad as for the victim of the crime as attorneys and commissaries and travel costs eat up funds better used for education and better food and safer housing for the children and aging parents dealing with the loss of a father or a mother or a son or a daughter. When the offender returns after completing their sentence their earning capacity is drastically diminished and the reality of life after release is full of challenges that expand exponentially for each year of incarceration.

Men and women who HAVE PAID their "debt" to society regarding their most public sin must continue to pay every day because people who are NOT without sin are so happy to caste stones rather than restore lives and communities. An estimated 44,000 laws, regulations and rules apply uniquely to people who are no longer incarcerated or under the jurisdiction of our penal system, making the rest of their lives a land mine. Additionally health problems which are attributed to or exacerbated by incarceration are lifelong burdens for many.

It is estimated that one in 4 people in the United States have been arrested at some time in their lives. With the advent of internet "background checks" not only these people but people inaccurately identified as these people are subject to discrimination in housing, jobs, and protections afforded other citizens and legal aliens by our government.

So the current system heaps new injury on victims of crime, extorts a stunning emotional costs of those professionals charged with dealing with victims, identifying the offender and meeting out the punishment on behalf of society, is highly unsuccessful at invoking penitence, reformation or correction, inflicts consequences on the families of the incarcerated who have themselves committed no crime, increased the cost of government and reducing the taxes that might be paid by a post-incarcerated, restored individual and mortgaged the future of a generation because we can't seem to do much more than turn a blind eye or or wring our hands. 

Lord have Mercy
Christ have Mercy
Lord have Mercy upon us all.  AMEN

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*federal versus state prison rates

I must have been in grade school when I stood in my backyard staring into a bucket of water so I could safely see a partial eclipse. It was exciting to see something that movies at the time depicted as having been used to manipulate primitive peoples by folks who had science on their side.

But now I must admit that even before the amazing event I'm pretty burned out on the daily update on eclipse glasses availability at locations that never seems to be in my part of the county anyway. Yes. yes. I still think it interesting and educational, but I got a giggle by a scholarly article warning solemnly that children, especially small children, might find all the hype has not prepared them to stand quietly for the less than two minutes of the total eclipse (at about
1:08 p.m.), much less the slow pace of the full eclipse experience which runs from 11:40 a.m. to 2:36 p.m.

And I admit I hope there is not any news from the other continents today since I doubt there will be much time for coverage. You see, this eclipse is an almost wholly North American, in fact an almost wholly United States of America mainland event.* I'm hearing it will be an economic success for many "in the path".

But all this leads me to think about other issues. A solar eclipse is not about the sun doing anything, but rather about a smaller orb getting between the sun's light and warmth and those of us that rely on that light and warmth. And I am amazed by how often I allow something small to get between me and something more important in the larger scheme of things.

So today I hope we all heed the warnings and come away with no vision damage, make a memory of folks being kind to one another as they share a common and rare experience, and experience people driving with care!

Creator of this World, this Universe, thank you for this amazing Earth and solar system with all its delightful features and our capacity to enjoy and share and learn together. AMEN

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* South America from San Juan to Buenos Ares in Argentina gets their total eclipse on July 2, 2018. Do you think our news community will cover that?

I've been looking for a Bible study/small group program -- whatever the current term is -- to help my home congregation begin thinking more deeply and acting more intentionally about the condition of our "legal system". I just can't call it a justice system when what we have currently is so thoroughly lacking in both justice and common sense. What is it about humans! When we try a solution to a problem, if it does not work, we so consistently, ​stubbornly demand that we do more of the same faster, rather than stepping back to consider what part may be working or how to make adjustments. I suppose it is asking too much to expect the world to actually put on the brakes and change directions when they are barreling toward a cliff at warp speed.

But just as Christians stepped forward to power the underground railroad in the 1850s, just as church leaders have stepped up in the past to bring focus and propose solutions to horrors from sweat shops to debtor's prisons, just as Christians bring education, health services and clean water to some of the poorest children in our world today, so you and I as Christians are called to think about these issues, inform ourselves about the status quo, speak out and work to make changes that might at least slow the bleeding.

The "reforms" of the 1980s with longer sentences for non-violent crimes and "three strikes you'e out" that have both been implemented (in ways never envisioned by legislatures responding to fear driven constituency) with demonic glee by people who are benefiting financially and political, and have brought a demonstrated increase in crime as families and communities have been devastated financially and spiritually, family connections have been damaged, and communities broken; with a stunning percentage of young people coming out of foster care into incarceration without reformation. It is distressing to think that these young victims of crime find incarceration for non-violent crimes quickley becomes is super highway to a new dangerous "family" behind prison bars.

And frankly, I'm disconcerted that so few church I contact have any prison ministry contact person, committee or, it seems, willingness to heed St. Paul's directive in Hebrews 13:3  Remember prisoners as if you were in prison with them, and people who are mistreated as if you were in their place.

My fellow followers of Christ, there is a lot of mistreatment going on! The price for our negligence is being paid by men and women whose very public sins are not being met with punishment that fits the crime, victims who are not receiving restitution, men and women who work in prisons are suffering, law enforcement and court personnel are discouraged, communities are finding released prisoners have NOT been prepared to reenter society. In other words, the legal system is making things MORE dangerous rather than fulfilling its prime directive: serving to protect and encourage all members of society to have faith in their capacity to make this a better world.

Won't you stick a note on your bathroom mirror or above your TV, or make a bookmark or discuss this with your accountability partner so that you remember to pray daily this week, to pray with focus and an open heart about those affected by crime, punishment and its ever-outwardly expanding circles of pain, wasted lives and broken hearts. Remember to pray for those working in the "white fields" called prison ministry, sharing the love and healing power of Christ with the incarcerated and their families, with law enforcement and prison workers, with survivors of crime. Remember to pray for an open heart that you might hear what God is asking of you in sharing the good news with all his beloved children in all places and at all times.

King of Kings and Lord of Lords, hear the most tender prayers of our hearts. AMEN

"white fields" refers to John 4:35