Heal or punish?
betaboy
Veteran
Think of sin/ignorance as leprosy. The ignorant man ostracized the leper, whereas Jesus healed him, showered compassion upon him. This is because the ignorant man saw sin (or leprosy) as an evil thing to be punished, whereas Jesus saw it as a sickness that needed healing.
Apply this to the present world - our thinking is dominated by the reward-punishment theory. That's why we swing between extremes - we either idolize (sometimes even worship) the people we believe are heroes. Look at the fans of celebrities. Or, sadly, we treat people as villains, bad guys, and demonize them. Look at the prison system. Not much balance. Even the popularity of certain movies/books (the almighty hero vs the arch-villain) reflect our general mindset.
If, on the other hand, we cultivate the Christian attitude (as exemplified by Jesus' healing), then we see people as victims of a sickness, call it ignorance or sin or what you will. We will no longer see them as perpetrators of evil. This major change in attitude results in a major change in behavior too. Instead of a condemnatory attitude, we will have compassion. Instead of raising the fist in retaliation, we may extend a helping hand. Instead of saying, "He is an evil man and I must punish him," we might say, "He is a victim, let me heal him."
We will no longer worship certain people as heroes, but neither will we punish those we believe are evil.
We will be healers, not butchers. And that's the beginning of wisdom.
Comments
Righty-ho. Whats for tea ?
A shrink friend of mine once commented, "If a man punches you in the stomach, you don't ask if he lives in a rat-infested apartment."
Healing is wonderful, but without some on-the-ground perspective, I wonder if the whole wish to be a healer isn't cast out like and idealistic orphan. I guess everyone, even Jesus, finds his own balance.
One of my favorite poems (cuss-word alert) is "Homage to My Father," by Seido Ray Ronci ... I would post it but the machine makes a hash of the verses... and apologies that the quickest link I could find was to my own blog.
So does this mean we need to treat more crimes like we do rapes and murders? Harsher sentences and more stringent consideration before release. Or does it mean we need to find another way to treat property crimes.
@vinlyn - I too, like AllbuddhaBound, are left with questions after reading your post. What was your position?
I didn't know I had to state a position.
@vinlyn - You don't, of course. Usually though, when someone adds something to a conversation, they are trying to communicate something. Certainly you've communicated a great deal of statistics. I was just wondering if you'd connect the dots for me and share how you think the OP's ideas and yours went together.
@betaboy healing is a wonderful attitude to constantly engender. or as often as you can bring it to mind. spark spark crackle fire blaze blaze blaze
seeing people as victims can limit one's activity. so recalling that... the pure essence of radiance-love is bursting forth from every pore.. ourselves and others, we can have a sort of "end point" or "finish line" for helping sprouting friends bloom past the transitory phase of "victim"
you know what i mean? mind set to unexcelled enlightenment
healing is a very powerful stepping stone
not like how you can hop over a creek or use a stepping stone, not like that
more like a magical floating stone that helps us leap over the grand canyon
so good and important and helpful
the brahma viharas .. i wish we taught these in schools everywhere
but people will listen when they are ready to listen
and if you are ready, really muster up as much faith and pure-heartedness as you can. this is just a holla to my lurking homies. if you want to pour nectar, you gotta clean your cup.
loving beings because you know their current state (if it's not open-loving) is like crustiness about to shed is, so far in personal experience, a very good way to be.
adopt all beings
observe how mother and father play and care for happy baby
and you're close to truth
look at who loves
within
Oh, well that's a bit of a different question.
I am a great believer of once you've served your time you should be a free man.
Then come society's "buts":
But not if the person is a child molester.
But not if the person is a rapist.
Etc.
So rather than taking a position, I'll ask a question:
What do we say to a woman who has been raped by a convicted prior rapist who is out because he has "healed"?
What do we say to a child who has been molested by a convicted prior molester who is out because he has "healed"?
After all, whether it fits our rose-colored perspective, recidivism is not rare.
In MN, sex offenders can be placed into the state sex offender treatment program, and that is after they serve any prison sentence. Sex offender program is another prison where they undergo therapies and other programs until their team deems them releasable into society. Since the 1990s when it started, 1 person been released. There are 700 of them in the program, with 50 new people added every year. It's not an easy thing to consider, for sure, rights of victims over constitutional rights of inmates/perpetrators. When looking at the statistics, the overwhelming information mostly tells us they are not able to heal. I worked there for a time. I still can't tell you what I think about it all, I just don't know.
I'm not a fan of continuing to punish people who have served their time based on an equation to determine if they might offend again. But I can think of several cases in just my state where sexual offenders were released from prison and not only did they abuse others, but several times they went on to kill their victims the second (or third, or more) time around.
We are responsible for our actions; if you can't be responsible for your actions then the society that you choose to disrespect and cause injury to, yet sustains and nourishes you, then they are obliged to deal with your actions. If you are a recidivist and not open to the healing medicine society offers (wow - an enforced retreat with the basics and more for your survival, and a cell to meditate in 24/7). If you can't see yourself after that for what you are and reform yourself into something acceptable, well you need to go for a longer retreat.
@anataman, in your opinion, what are the causes of our actions?
Healing and punishment share a lot of the same territory and their differentiation is often just a question of the worldly verses a spiritual perspective.
Tribalism verses it's transcendence or self verses selflessness.
In this conversation it appears as whether the healing and punishment reinforces the innate sense of separation that we all share or helps show how baseless it is..
Now that is an abyss in which my opinion counts for absolutely nothing.
But as you asked, my opinion is that 'we all' cause 'our actions'. But 'I act for me' and 'you act for you'.
Told you it was an abyss, and now you are staring at it and trying to figure what's going to come out of it. Well I can tell you, if you pursue it nothing but dissatisfaction with my response and what you might come back with, will ensue, unless you are open and accepting of my view.
The point is this we all have to take responsibility for our actions I am afraid. I take full responsibility for the comment above. It was a statement based on the understanding that you and I are part of a community, and cannot live in isolation.
Hope that answers your question, otherwise you might need to be a little more specific as to where you want me to go with my answers @Rodrigo
@anataman, I'm just asking, and if I'm asking, I must be open to your answer. Thank you for explaining your view
Well in that case thank you for asking the question, now what is your view? That means just as much to me?
SNIPPETY SNIP>
Compassion for the serial murderer is to lock them up and away so they can't commit any more murder and mayhem. To the criminal it looks like punishment, but in truth, they are being prevented from further 'sin'. They'll have less of THAT kind of nasty karma or whatever it is to cope with. Sure it doesn't get more punitive than being in prison, but until we humans awaken en masse or develop a healing technique to eradicate the predators among us, prison is what we got.
Compassion obviously has it's sharp edges. Just because it may have a sharp edge does not make it a punishment NOR the person the compassion targets a criminal.
You'd beg a surgeon to remove your appendix before it bursts and not think twice about having a tube rammed into your trachea and a scalpel slicing you open while your viscera are extruded from your abdomen in a variety of clamps and retractors. A less effective method for appendicitis is hand holding and shoulder patting, which hurts a helluva lot less but doesn't work. That appendix needs to be RIPPED OUT of your body, it is a violent act of intrusion, but vicious, bloody surgical extraction is what we got.
Some of the best 'tools' used on me have hurt the worst, and had me wondering what in the hell I'd done to deserve such pain. I'm not saying "oh, I'm SOOOO grateful for the humiliation" or anything like that. Not at all, in fact, I've stopped doing a lot of things simply because I prefer not to be ashamed rather than plumbing the greater existential meaning. Time is of the essence! I don't really have enough of it to spend as it is, so a good swift kick up the ass it will be. If I work hard to stay honest, and look forward to the eventual FREEDOM from suffering which is what I most intensely desire, HOW I get the memo . . . well, go easy on me, I'll admit it!
But I have a responsibility in this too. If I am getting, like, a LOT of messages about the same obnoxious thing I'm doing, and wave after wave of it becoming a forum-wide nuisance to the point people are hijacking other people's threads just to yell at me, and I STILL refuse to acknowledge responsibility for it (pulling the victim card is NOT accepting responsibility), then I ought not to expect the healing hand of Jesus, now should I? This isn't a forum packed with awakened saints of unending patience, nor is it a forum full of people who have the maturity and sophistication to call a spade a spade. Someone might take you seriously, and that's a problem.
If you don't mind all the negative attention, and folks here continue to be willing to give it to you, in the very least, can you refrain from seeking attention for yourself on the threads of people who are desperate for hope?
Well, as a matter of fact, I don't know how much we are really responsible for our actions. Our society seems to be structured around the notion that each individual must be held responsible for what he/she does. But it seems more like a practical necessity, which per se doesn't make it true. I wonder if it's possible to live in community without this notion of individual responsibility.
I've spent approximately 21 months in prison, three hours at a time, in visiting. My perspective is no more valid than anyone else's and I'm certainly not trying to change anyone's mind, but my perspective might be of interest nonetheless.
I know thousands of inmates, hundreds of them well - all of them in the United States. Here's a few things that I've learned or have come to believe:
Every juvenile sentenced as an adult has had more crimes committed against them then they ever had time to perpetrate.
Power corrupts. Regardless of what their motivation for becoming a prison guard was, regardless of how they act outside the walls, power over another human being breeds reprehensible behavior.
When you don't have the psychological, emotional, or intellectual tools to make it on the outside before incarceration, then regardless of your intentions when you get out, you won't have the tools to make it when you get out.
I don't doubt either of those.
But, so what?
There were some questions in this thread that I thought were worth asking and perhaps even worth thinking about. Questions like: ...well now, I went back and looked to quote the questions which prompted my post and they were yours. Anyway, questions like:
What do we say to a woman who has been raped by a convicted prior rapist who is out because he has "healed"?
As long as things like this keep happening, then we, (imo) as a society have failed. We have both failed to protect a vulnerable member of society and we have failed to rehabilitate the rapist. While most do not care about the rapist, there is value to society in rehabilitating them - to say nothing of karma.
If my observations are correct, then he has been a victim many times himself and we might take a look at those who perpetrated crimes against him - getting at the root of the crimes. Too, if we realize that people are sent to prison as punishment - not to be punished, then we might find new ways of protecting the correctional officers from the near inevitable results of being in charge of these 'scum'.
I've no doubt that the prison guard who raped my wife eight years ago wouldn't have raped a woman on the outside. She however was less than human.
^^^ Check that out.
I am sorry to hear what happened to your wife @yagr. When people feel they are morally superior, they feel justified.
If there is a way to rehabilitate, successfully, even 50% of sexual predators, we haven't come close to finding it yet. I think the answer is more in prevention than in fixing after the fact. As a society, we fail miserably at prevention in almost every area of life. Physical disease, mental health, criminal acts. And I don't mean catching a trouble maker before they break the law (which we also fail miserably at when the opportunity does present) but helping people to not be so desperate, so afraid, so angry, so depressed, to begin with.
@yagr I actually cried when I read that about your wife. I am so so sorry it happened.
To be honest, I think you're sort of skirting the nitty-gritty question here. Since, as @karasti seems to be saying (and he's correct) we haven't figured out how to break the cycle, let's forget about what would be the ideal (since at this point it seems unobtainable). My question is -- what's realistically to be done with the rapist, the molester, the serial thief, etc.
Thanks for all the replies, folks.
Let's consider one example, sex offenders, and look at it objectively.
Are we supposed to torture them? Punish them? Lock them up and throw away the key?
People who aren't fans of healing........what exactly are they advocating?
Isn't it better to explore options - for one thing, therapy. Or, if there are medical/genetic reasons, then research into how it's affecting behavior? Wouldn't such an approach at least help people, if not today but sometime in the future? Rehabilitation is better than punishment?
Am I missing something here? Is this a Buddhist forum, or a right-wing forum filled with angry, bigoted people?
Yes, I think you are missing something. Therapy sounds wonderful. So far it pretty much hasn't worked.
I just gave an example. My point is, locking up someone seems like an absurd solution. Any alternative would appear better by way of contrast. Even if you believe they're a danger to society (and must therefore be kept away from the general population), it doesn't stand to reason that they must be tortured (in prison or in solitary confinement etc.). Such torture isn't going to bring the victims back.
So I guess my question is, do people really care about the victims, or are they only interested in punishing the perpetrator?
@betaboy, do you see the extremes you go to in your posts. No one here has advocated torture. No one. Not one single person.
And beyond that, you still haven't offered the solution that WORKS.
We have tried alternatives, and they aren't working. In MN, the average cost to keep a prisoner is about $33,000 a year. The average cost per inmate in the sex offender program is $113,000. Per inmate. Times 700 and growing. And it's not working despite access to experts and group and individual therapy and so on. So, what to do? No one is advocating torture. I think most of us would like to help people become productive humans, whether they be sex offenders or drug addicts, or whatever. But people cannot be helped until they want to be helped. Which is why I said the answer, it seems, lies far more in prevention than in reactive measures. A lot of sex offenders have themselves been victims of horrible abuse and neglect, so yes, we should still have compassion for them. But compassion doesn't mean allowing them to continue on the path they are on, and it doesn't mean not following through on consequences and protecting others from becoming victims. Sometimes the best thing we can do for someone is to protect them from hurting others further, and thereby protect them from further hurting themselves.
We can start with doing better ourselves in how we judge people, how we speak to them, how we treat them and even how we think about them. We can stand up for those who need someone to stand up for them, instead of being afraid. We all have a part in the society we have created, and a part of that does indeed come from glamorizing sex violence so the 2 have become enmeshed. It comes it in being acceptable to talk about oral sex in the 4th grade (have heard it personally). It comes from wrapping so much of our self-worth into our sexuality and our physical looks. It comes from the severe degree of duality that our society has going on.
I've studied sex offenders and predators for most of my adult life. It's not as simple as "well, we can't just keep them in prison, so why don't we help them??" because nothing we have tells us they can be helped. Meaning those who are most likely to re-offend. Child molesters, sadistic predators, and so on. That doesn't mean the 21 year old who slept with his 17 year old girlfriend falls in the same category, just to be clear. These types of people are seriously so miswired in their brains that our current tools and resources don't know how to help them. Perhaps an expansion of the Dharma Brothers prison initiative would help. But, even that takes desire to change. You cannot force someone to learn the nature of their mind and work with it. They have to want it.
So the question is not so much "how do we help them without hurting them?" It becomes "how in the world do you help someone who has no desire at this point to change?" And in some cases, "how do you help someone who doesn't believe he's even done anything wrong?"
When Mn started their sex offender treatment program, it was ground breaking. It has released 1 person in 20+ years. 1. That is a success rate of .001% The one person who was released, was released in 2012. He served 5.5 years in prison, and then 19 years in the treatment program before being released to a half way house. He abused 29 little boys to earn his sentence. He was almost 70 (if I remember right) at the time of his release so his ability to access and abuse anyone is probably significantly decreased.
Most of the statistics surrounding recivedism for sex offenders is at best, severely exaggerated. I have heard even educated people who should know better, spouting statistics like 99% of sex offenders re-offend.
John Howard Society statistics suggest that between 12 to 15% re-offend.
http://www.johnhoward.ab.ca/docs/sxoffend/page1.htm
John Howard Society has no vested interest in fudging statistics and they actually have a pretty broad group to draw on.
Quite a few studies actually show figures less than that...maybe around 5%.
So what?
The public is in a frenzy over the topic, people are in prison over it, they remain on sex offender lists for interminable periods, their lives are ruined.
So I'm going to ask the question again: What is the practical solution? And by practical I mean programs that work AND will be passed by legislatures.
As far as I can see -- none. That's the problem.
It varies widely depending on how you take the group. Sex offenders as a whole reoffend less frequently, yes. But that is because the majority of sex offenders fall into groups less likely to offend (statutory rape, rape and other offenses during drunken college years and so on). Within the separate groups, the rate is different, and that is why most states separate released offenders into leveled groups. Also, the rate increases to 25% over a 15 year post-release period for the general "sex offender" grouping. How exactly a study determines the recidivism rate depends on the type of sex offenders they are following. Some groups go up to 35% and higher. So, it is not a group you can simply lump all sex offenders into a group and say their recidivism rate is all the same. One of the highest groups within typical sex offenders is people who molest young children, specifically little boys. Also, sadistic sexual predators (the rarest type) have some of the highest rates of recidivism. A lot of variation.
For clarity, when I was talking about statistics above I was talking about the people within the MN treatment program and not sex offenders as a general group. Those remanded to treatment after their prison sentence are the most likely to reoffend based on their previous crimes (usually multiple crimes and multiple victims) and based on their admission that they would likely reoffend.
Also it is worth noting that the majority of child molestion/rape is the result of a family member and/or close friend. Once a person of that type is arrested and serves time, their ability to recommit the crime goes down. It doesn't mean their desire to recommit a crime goes down, just that their access to those family members and friends children goes down a lot because of the obvious lack of trust. It takes time to be released, get off probation, and build friendships again which is why their recidivism rate in particular is low in the first 5 years of release, but goes up by almost double at the 15 year mark.
Sadly, most people who quote extremely high recidivism rates get their information from Law and Order. No joke. They did a study on that, too.
Very interesting, Karasti.
In the healing process, the patient must be willing to accept the medicine, or must be convinced that it's for his own good. Then, there's the situation where you, the healer, will have to go against the patient's will, just to rid him of his suffering. You'll be forced to give the panaceum the hard way. It will be the healer's choice. About reward-punishment and hero-villain duality, that's how the world works. Everyone gets what everyone deserves and everyone is a hero or a villain according to society's moral standards. But those things are relative, and some get much more rewards than they deserve ( most celebrities ) though they did nothing of value, while others get to be society's enemies just for doing the right thing ( morally ). So, how and where should a healer apply the ointment ?What is it with the YELLOW backgrounds. Yellow is not my favourite colour, BLUE is.
Also it's much more conducive to healing. lol
O/T Post:
Yellow/black are the two most opposite 'colours' in the spectrum. This is why wasps are black and yellow.... why traffic wardens once upon a time wore black and yellow (and were "affectionately" known as 'Yellow Perils') and to enforce strictly no parking laws, double-yellow lines are all over the place.... Yellow and black command attention.
Carry on.
But I hate wasps more than I dislike bluebottles and I dislike traffic wardens even more (in the context of awarding me about 5 fines this year alone).
I suppose I don't pay enough attention to the warning signs. Going to get stung again and again!!!!
Time to like black and gold:
Hmmmmmmmmmmmm.
Who says you can't meditate to music. Lol
I love Sam Sparro
Well I've made at least one woman happy tonight...lol
I thought wasps were white anglo saxon protestants. Now I learn they're black?
...and yeller....
I laughed so I hard I snorted.
At my desk at work.
Now they all think I'm crazy.
As usual
being crazy aint that bad
I thought he was a dog in that Disney film.
I love gnarls barclay and this video about being crazy
Can't stand Disney. Sexist anthropomorphic despot.
"The Norwegian prison where inmates are treated like people
On Bastoy prison island in Norway, the prisoners, some of whom are murderers and rapists, live in conditions that critics brand 'cushy' and 'luxurious'. Yet it has by far the lowest reoffending rate in Europe"
http://www.theguardian.com/society/2013/feb/25/norwegian-prison-inmates-treated-like-people
in a nutshell:
convicts serving max-21-year sentences in norway must demonstrate they wish to lead a crime-free life when they leave
can live the last 5-6 years out on Bastoy
no guns because guns "create unnecessary social distance" as this thread's contributors have colorfully illustrated the problems of "prisoner and prison guard" dynamic
they try and make the life inside as much as possible like life outside so the transition is easier (minus your liberty)
the guards undergo special training (psychological, rehabilitative, relating to the people inside) for a few years before being able to work there
yes it is amazing
and yes there is hope
Hatred is not overcome by Hatred, but by Love alone....."
There seems to be a direct correlation between how people are treated, and how they respond.....
I don't think it's so amazing.
I think it amazing that this correlation has not been practised more widely.