by Pamela Haines

As part of CPMM’s intention to stay faithful to our minute in opposition to mass incarceration, I found myself recently at a hearing on sentencing reform at the criminal justice center in Philadelphia.

The courtroom was full. It was full of people quietly waiting to testify, or there to support and witness. Surprisingly to my mind, it was full of care and respect. The judge was uniformly kind and courteous. The commission members were attentive and respectful, and their interest in getting at the best possible outcome seemed genuine.

It was also full of irony. The commission has been on a ten-year quest to fulfill their legislative mandate to come up with an empirical tool to use in reducing sentence lengths. At best, this quest is a quixotic attempt to discover an algorithm that will predict a person’s future. More realistically, any risk assessment tool they come up with must rely on data this is so intertwined with historical injustice—like the neighborhood in which someone grew up—that it can only serve to cement greater injustice into sentencing policies.

Most of all, the room was full of stories—stories of people whose experience of trauma and oppression had made them vulnerable to the harsh oppression of what we call criminal justice.

I left with a deeper understanding of yet another strand of what is wrong in this system of mass incarceration I left with a glimmer of greater clarity about the role of the First Judicial District (the county court system of Philadelphia) as a locus of power and resistance to change. I left with a renewed respect for the work of the local ACLU in their methodical and extended courtroom observation, that has given them the authority to command respect at hearings such as these, and to sue the First Judicial District around their bail practices.

I left with a better picture of how the different parts of this massive and entangled system impact each other. There is some surface logic, for example, in borrowing from the algorithms already in use by our probation and parole system. Yet, with that practice resulting in jail time that far exceeds other places, this could end up just spreading worst practice.

But mostly I left with questions, and they are mostly about our CPMM community. How could my silent presence at this hearing move our meeting to wider engagement on minuted intention to be active on mass incarceration? How can we prioritize this issue when there are so many other urgent ones clamoring for our attention? Yet how can we not and still have integrity when Quaker opposition to slavery is referenced?

I have a vision of a core of CPMM community members joining with ACLU in their on-going work to document the results of bail hearings. I have a vision of others being present in prayer. I have a vision of these people being surrounded by a larger ring of Friends who are eager for updates and ready to take on other small tasks of support. I have a vision of us collectively under the weight of the evil of mass incarceration, and in motion as a community.