As you may see in the Kenarchy article, we humans are a grotesquely scapegoating species! Is there a way out? Brilliant social critic and anthropologist René Girard, together with many writers/scholars/activists in touch with his work, argues yes. A recent noted work, that also incorporates the work of Ivan Illich, is: Life at the End of Us Vs Them: Cross Culture Stories by Canadian Marcus Peter Rempel.
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excerpts:
Louisiana once again has the highest incarceration rate in the U.S., unseating Oklahoma to return to its long-held position as “the world’s prison capital.” By comparison, states like New York and Massachusetts appear progressive, but even these states lock people up at higher rates than nearly every other country on earth. Compared to the rest of the world, every U.S. state relies too heavily on prisons and jails to respond to crime.
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In fact, many of the countries that rank alongside the least punitive U.S. states, such as Turkey, Thailand, Rwanda, and Russia, have authoritarian governments or have recently experienced large-scale internal armed conflicts. Others struggle with “violent crime” on a scale far beyond that in the U.S.: South Africa, Panama, Costa Rica, and Brazil all have murder rates
more than double that of the U.S. Yet the U.S., “the land of the free,” tops them all.
But how does the U.S. compare to countries that have stable democratic governments and comparable crime rates? Next to our closest international peers, our use of incarceration is off the charts:
For four decades, the U.S. has been engaged in a globally unprecedented experiment to make every part of its criminal justice system more expansive and more punitive. As a result, incarceration has become the nation’s default response to crime, with, for example, 70 percent of convictions resulting in confinement — far more than other developed nations with comparable crime rates.
Our new analysis of incarceration rates and crime rates across the world reveals that the U.S.’s high incarceration rates are not a rational response to high crime rate, but rather a politically expedient response to public fears and perceptions about crime and violence.
Wayne Northey was Director of Man-to-Man/Woman-to-Woman – Restorative Christian Ministries (M2/W2) in British Columbia, Canada from 1998 to 2014, when he retired. He has been active in the criminal justice arena and a keen promoter of Restorative Justice since 1974. He has published widely on peacemaking and justice themes. You will find more about that on this website: a work in progress.
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As you may see in the Kenarchy article, we humans are a grotesquely scapegoating species! Is there a way out? Brilliant social critic and anthropologist René Girard, together with many writers/scholars/activists in touch with his work, argues yes. A recent noted work, that also incorporates the work of Ivan Illich, is: Life at the End of Us Vs Them: Cross Culture Stories by Canadian Marcus Peter Rempel.
