Who Is a Criminal?

Consider the following from Livia Gershon's Let’s Talk About (Your) Crimes:

As a woman from a white, working-class background with friends affected by incarceration, Woodall writes, she has noticed that “a form of punitiveness tends to take shape in those who have not been sanctioned or who have forgotten their own crimes…. They are quick to point out differences and slow to consider similarities between themselves and those who have been arrested.

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 Woodall led a classroom-based experiment with 209 students at the University of North Georgia. They were mostly white and majority female, with a large number of Christians and Republicans. The students filled out a survey about their attitudes toward crime. Then they completed a criminal activities checklist consisting of about 40 crimes, mainly misdemeanors, each with a number ranking its severity. They then added up the severity rankings for the crimes they had committed since age 14 and learned that the number reflected the years in prison they could be sentenced to. All of them found that they could face a year or more of incarceration.

At the start of their next class, the students filled out another questionnaire. Compared with their previous answers, their attitudes had changed dramatically. In the first survey, just 24 percent agreed with the statement “I am the same kind of person as a criminal,” while 59 percent disagreed. After going through the checklist, 45 percent agreed and 25 percent disagreed. Agreement that a criminal record should stay with a person and be publicly accessible fell from 61 to 44 percent. And belief in the effectiveness of harsh punishments to deter crime dropped from 56 to 37 percent.

The original article has a link to Woodall's article.

I offer this not so much for a political or legal or personal reasons, but religious ones. Remember what Jesus said about not judging others.

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12/18/21