The Bureau of Justice Statistics recently released a report on sexual abuse in prisons and jails across the United States.  The results aren’t pretty (click here to read the summary):

According to the BJS, 4.4 percent of prison inmates and 3.1 percent of jail inmates reported having experienced one or more incidents of sexual victimization by other inmates and/or staff at their current facility in the preceding 12 months. While some suffered a single assault, others were raped repeatedly: on average, victims were abused three to five times over the course of the year.

These surveys are done via in-person drop-by one day visits to jails or prisons.  Given the traffic in and out of many prisons and jails throughout a year, the real number of people abused is much higher than the 88,500 yearly Americans recorded in the report.

Surprisingly, inmate on inmate abuse in female prisons was more than twice as common as the same abuse in male prisons, and men and women inmates are both more likely to be abused by prison staff than by fellow prisoners.  This latter detail is particularly shocking and should raise our collective ire.  Sexual abuse is not some form of punishment – it is not “getting what’s coming to you.”  Punishments are set by a jury and judge – they do not include sexual abuse.

Sexual abuse degrades the prisoner.  It is an attack on their human dignity, and it will scar them in an inhumane way.  It is cruel and barbaric, and it should not be encouraged, entertained, or made light of by anyone.  It is not justice – it subverts justice by striking at the core of human dignity.

Read more on this study via Just Detention International.

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CNN features a story about Kenda Creasy Dean, a Princeton Theological Seminary professor who recently conducted the “National Study of Youth and Religion.”  In the study, Dean interviewed over 3000 teens.  Her primary conclusions were pretty straightforward (read the whole article here):

Dean says more American teenagers are embracing what she calls “moralistic therapeutic deism.” Translation: It’s a watered-down faith that portrays God as a “divine therapist” whose chief goal is to boost people’s self-esteem.

…..

She says this “imposter” faith is one reason teenagers abandon churches.

“If this is the God they’re seeing in church, they are right to leave us in the dust,” Dean says. “Churches don’t give them enough to be passionate about.”

While it’s common practice to blame parents for all of the faults seen in their children, in this particular case I think the parents really are the ones to blame.  By putting a watery faith lacking conviction and depth on display in front of their children for years, they make their perspective on faith perfectly clear.  How can you blame young people for not taking their faith all that seriously when their parents have never taught them otherwise?

But parents aren’t the only ones to blame:

Churches, not just parents, share some of the blame for teens’ religious apathy as well, says Corrie, the Emory professor.

She says pastors often preach a safe message that can bring in the largest number of congregants. The result: more people and yawning in the pews.

“If your church can’t survive without a certain number of members pledging, you might not want to preach a message that might make people mad,” Corrie says. “We can all agree that we should all be good and that God rewards those who are nice.”

Most American churches have been preaching a spoiled, self-help gospel for years, and this is the natural result of that kind of preaching.  When your parents and your pastor only look to their faith in order to feel better about themselves, you’re not likely to take it very seriously.  Moreover, the second your supposed faith lets you down, you have perfect grounds for abandoning it.  After all, if it didn’t help you, what good is it?

Churches and parents need to regain awareness of their own sin and their need for God.  This will produce true humility and a recognition of the importance of faith.  Our prosperity in the U.S. makes this sobering realization more difficult, but it is a necessary step if the younger generation is ever to take faith seriously.

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The State Department released a report on the United States’ human rights record.  This report was composed for the U.N. Human Rights Council – you can see our opinion of this “council” by clicking here.

I don’t want to delve into this very deeply, but I did want to point out one of the evidences the State Department uses in its argument that the United States is a strong promoter of human rights.  Among recent “advances,” the State Department points to the Obama administration’s health care reform and finance reform efforts.

What, pray tell, do health care and finance reform have to do with human rights?  We have redefined “rights” out of existence!  The idea of a human right has ceased to carry any weight, because it means whatever we want it to mean.  Essentially, the average American today seems to think of rights as specific privileges we want to make sure everyone has.

This approach is a bastardization of an idea of fundamental importance.  Our nation was founded on the idea that human beings, as humans, have certain basic rights inherent to their very beings that cannot be added to or taken away.  They have the right to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.

Rights are absolute.  A government may trample your rights but it cannot take them away.  They are yours by definition.  By the same token, government cannot create new rights and bestow them upon the populace just because “everyone thinks it’s a good idea.”

We need to abandon our increasingly sloppy and destructive redefinitions of “rights.”  Let’s use “privileges” or some other term and leave “rights” alone while it still has some modicum of meaning.

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Some people like their idea of their community but don’t like to deal with actual people.  One such person is Elizabeth Brown – a Toronto woman who doesn’t want her new neighbors to build a new house.

Such feelings are natural enough, of course – anyone who lives on a street for 15 years, like Ms. Brown, is liable to become attached to the buildings on her street.  But this case is a bit different.  The new neighbors, Geoff and Melissa Teehan, want to replace the old house for a very legitimate reason: Melissa is disabled, and the couple hopes to build a new house with ramps, an elevator, low cupboards, etc. that will allow her to get around to the best of her ability.

Ms. Brown heard about their plans (Geoff had been blogging about their house online) and decided that she did not want to look out her window at a new, modern-looking house, regardless of her neighbors’ reasoning.  So she contacted the city council and asked to have the property declared as a “heritage property,” thereby putting severe restrictions on what can be done to the house.

As you might suspect, Brown didn’t bother to contact the Teehan’s before filing this request.  When the Teehan’s first bought the house, it did not have official “heritage property” status, but apparently the city is very lax in designating heritage areas, so Ms. Brown’s appeal will be considered and the city may attempt to halt the property changes.

The Teehan’s surprise and subsequent frustration are understandable.  From The Toronto Star (click here to read the full article; h/t Reason):

The Teehans have trouble believing, finally, that they even have staunch opponents. “I am shocked,” Geoff Teehan says, “that the facade of a home is more important than the needs of a family. Communities are made of people. They’re not made of houses.” Says Melissa, calmer: “It just saddens me. We just want our lives back. We’re not trying to upset anyone. We just want to live our lives.”

I’m very fond of old buildings and historical communities, but the Teehan’s are in the right here.  If indeed their house did not have “heritage” status when they bought it, they should be free to renovate it now.  Even if the city has the “legal right” to label the house as a heritage property, it would be a great injustice to impose that decision on the Teehan’s after they bought this home with the intention of remodeling it to meet Melissa’s needs.

Communities are indeed made up of people – some people would just rather not think about that.

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The Washington Times reports on a depressing trend in the Republican Party.  Despite all the hoopla surrounding the Tea Partiers and the fresh “Tea-Party-esque” Republican candidates who are seeing some popularity, the Republican Party is loathe to make any major moves.  Representative Paul Ryan has been promoting his “Roadmap for America’s Future” for some time now, and the plan has more recently been thrust into the limelight.  As with any comprehensive plan, very few people will agree with all of Ryan’s points, but he deserves credit for taking the time to actually compose a plan at all.

Sadly, long-standing Republicans do not share his enthusiasm.  Only 13 co-sponsors have signed on in the House, and, when asked about the plan, House Minority leader John Boehner said, “[Ryan did] some really, really good work in putting this plan together” but failed to comment further.  In fact, Boehner resorted to an Obama-like call for “an adult conversation” on these issues (read more of the article from The Times by clicking here).

We’d all like to have an adult conversation, but a real adult conversation involves putting your support behind real, tangible solutions.  Too many Republicans would rather bad mouth and point fingers at Democrats without offering anything substantive in return.  It’s easier to get reelected if you don’t commit to anything.

This has been the sad story of national politics for years (if not decades).  Let’s hope the chain gets broken this November.

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Jordan Ballor of Acton’s PowerBlog shares some great thoughts on prison reform and dehumanization (click here to read it).  He summarizes:

The term dehumanization gets used often to describe what happens to a victim, particularly of a violent crime. But it’s all [too] often what happens in the realities of the American system of criminal justice.

Simply because people commit crimes, heinous, violent, or otherwise, it does not mean that they cease to be human persons.

I’ve long held that many of the inhumane elements of our prison system would be improved with a more straightforward application of justice.  People who steal from others should be forced to repay their debts.  This benefits the victim, points to true justice, and allows the criminal to repay his debt and resume a rightful place in society.  This is true justice.  Simply putting such people in prison to live for months or years on taxpayer dollars without making any substantial contribution to society does nothing to benefit the prisoner or the victim.

This principle could be extrapolated beyond simple theft to include reasonable punishments for crimes like drug possession (perhaps such criminals could be forced into counseling, strict rehab, and serving in a rehab center).  The essential point is that we are seeking to achieve a more immediate form of justice.  You could argue that prisons are the least humane form of punishment.  They trap the prisoner for months, years, or even decades without any chance to make up for his crimes.

If this more immediate justice was in place, perhaps we could avoid the kind of inhumane treatment Ballor mentions in his article (a police officer threatened a man taking video on his cell phone, saying “Guys in jail are going to rape you”).  We too often want to categorize all inmates as lesser human beings, perpetually tainted by their crimes, instead of allowing them to redeem themselves and become contributing members of society once again.  We need to rethink this system.

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