Corporate Prisons: Pilate continues to mingle the blood...

See here! For three years I have come looking for fruit on this fig tree, and still I find none. Cut it down! Why should it be wasting the soil?' 

-Luke 13:7b

Arizona, like many states, has chosen to cut education funding while increasing the funding for incarceration. As Pilate taught politicians centuries ago it is simply easier to snuff the light out of problematic populations than to actually value their existence as human beings. It was inherently easier for Pilate to simply murder another set of Galilean dissidents, this time as they worshipped at the temple, than to actually alleviate the issues causing the dissidence to begin with. It is simply easier for the Governor of Arizona to hand our youth, especially our youth of color, over to enslavement within corporate prisons than it is to alleviate the issues facing our communities, including the severe lack of a robust and funded education system. 

Surely, however, those sent to prison are more deserving of such, on account of their sin, than others. In the vast majority of cases, especially the cases that essentially provide slave labor for corporate prisons, the reality is that they are not more sinful than those who are not so enslaved. It is just that they do not have the material wealth, and the skin tone, to readily avoid being sentenced to such. There are those whom we must restrain for the basic safety of others, the majority of those corporate prisons profit from are not such individuals. It is easier, and a far quicker profit, to imprison them, however, than to nurture and care for them.

As Christians we simply are not allowed to enter into and condone these actions. We are not allowed to assume that those imprisoned are simply more sinful than those who manage to avoid imprisonment. Sometimes a tower crumbles, sometimes a police action profiles a certain ethnic group, the people in that tower and the people in that ethnic group are not spectacularly more sinful or deserving of their fate... they are simply the ones at the wrong place at the wrong time. Pilate focused his police actions on Galileans, whom he perceived as inherently dissident. Our current government focuses its police actions on People of Color, a group America has viewed as subhuman from the signing of our constitution.

As Christians we are not allowed to simply strike a person from the soil. We are not allowed to simply watch as those in power cut down the lives of those around us through imprisonment and lethal force. Our duty is to stand between the powerful and those they wish to abolish. Our duty is to clearly state that, despite what the powers might be, no one is a waste of space.

As Christians we are, in fact, called to go farther. We must ensure that basic realities, such as nourishment, attention, and care are provided to those who are at risk of being destroyed by the forces our government places against them. We are, indeed, called to bring about a system where such things are readily provided, with out question, to each and every individual as a basic reality.

To do otherwise is to not stand with Jesus, but with Pilate... and to stand with Pilate is to stand with the very part of humanity that longs to sacrifice others, even God, for the sake of power and the maintaining of privilege.