Good People or Bad People, How Can You Tell?

How can you tell a good person from a bad person?

It’s certainly not a matter of outward appearance, such as style of dress or length of hair.  And it can’t be a matter of ethnicity, culture, or language—as if someone who speaks English with a thick accent is obviously criminal element.  Nor can it be readily apparent by the kind of car one drives or by virtue of the size house one lives in.

We know this.  Though, our prejudices often belie such common sense as this.

Nor is it a matter of one’s profession.  There are good and bad people in all professions.  There are bad police officers as well as bad politicians and bad preachers as well as bad teachers.  And I don’t mean bad as in, they’re doing a poor job; I mean bad as in, they are more than willing to lie, cheat, steal, and even kill, or, short of killing, are willing to ruin another person’s life, to get their way, to get what they want—to take, to use, to dominate, to get to the top and stay on top—to win.

Now, look yourself in the mirror.  Do you see a bad person?  No!?  How about a person akin to Mary Poppins, practically perfect in every way?  Truth be told, most of us fall somewhere in the middle, a mixed bag of goodness and badness.

One day Jesus was approached by a man who wanted to know what he must do to ensure that he would get into heaven.  He knelt before Jesus and said, “Good Teacher, what must I do to inherit Eternal Life?”  Instead of immediately addressing the question, Jesus reproached the man’s presumptiveness about the real nature of goodness: “Why do you call me good?” Jesus responded, “No one is good but God alone.”  (See Mark 10:17-31.)

How does this apply to us today?  Well, for one, when I look at the fact that our nation incarcerates more of it citizens than any other nation in the world, I have to ask: do we really have more bad people per capita than all other nations in the world?  No, we don’t.  Then why are we incarcerating so many men and women in our State and Federal prisons?  There is something wrong with the way we are doing criminal justice.

I recently read an article published in The Sun (July 2013) entitled, The Run-On Sentence: Eddie Ellis On Life After Prison.  It is an article well worth reading, especially if you are at all concerned with the amount of money we tax-payers are paying into our prison system while at the same time reducing or restricting funds to our educational system and other critical infrastructural needs.

Much of it has to do with how we determine who are the bad people among us—the no good, irredeemable types.  For example, we categorize drug addicts as bad people in need of punishment and imprisonment rather than sick or needy people in need of health care and recovery.  We all have our stereotypes.  We all have our prejudices and discriminatory biases.  But, it is not only unjust and unfair to allow such prejudices to determine our justice and criminal policies; it is also unwise and self-defeating.  If we allow injustice to prevail in one corner of our nation (such as in our criminal justice system), soon enough injustice will prevail in every corner (such as in our politics and in our economic policies).

Obviously no system is perfect.  We know this.  But let us stop kidding ourselves by assuming or pretending to think that our judicial system is the best in the world.  It needs attention and it needs fixing.  I know this first hand, for our church has a prison ministry.  Every week we go into a Pennsylvania State High Security Prison where we conduct four ten-week Restorative Justice Workshops per year.  The men who attend these workshops are much appreciative and truly want a second chance and desire to be better persons.

We on the outside however, often want nothing to do with them.  In actuality we are simply being judgmental, holier than thou, self-righteous, and prejudice.  Are incarcerated people really as evil and as bad as all that?  Some, a few, a definite small percentage, yes, they are.  But the majority, I think not.  So, we don’t need bigger and better prisons.  We should not be feeding into the new prison industrial complex (private or public).  What we need is a better social system that seeks to renew, recover, and restore those who are caught in the judicial system before they go into prison.  It’s actually cheaper than incarcerating thousands upon thousands in prisons.  Thus, it’s not just about locking up bad people, what really needs addressing is a bad system—the larger matrix of systemic injustice—class, economic, social, and racial injustice.