NC pastor: Another death in another NC jail. Do we care at all?
The compassion of a community is measured by the way it cares for its most vulnerable.
Last week, a 31-year-old woman died at the Mecklenburg County jail. She had been incarcerated since late January. In that time, she made no phone call. She had no access to counsel. Her death is a tragedy, but it is not a surprise.
Last month the N.C. Department of Health released a report showing that under-staffing and overcrowding conditions at the jail are creating a dangerous environment. There wasn’t much of an outcry. Frankly, many of us just don’t care. Prison advocates have been crying out for years about the misery and suffering inmates and their families endure, but most of us don’t care to listen.
We tell ourselves that anyone in jail deserves to be there and anything that bad that happens to them is what they had coming. Our constitution says innocent until proven guilty – but our culture says guilty until proven innocent. The majority of us believe that every inmate is a dangerous drain on society – if we hear that a prisoner has been abused or exploited we suck our teeth and think they should have made better choices.
No one is more vulnerable than a person alone in a cell, facing months or years in prison. No one is more vulnerable than a sick woman alone in her cell who knows that every employee has absolute unchecked power over them –anything can happen, and if the public hears about it, the public won’t care. It is a sacred thing to care for and protect the vulnerable. And while many of us wholeheartedly support those in our community who care for the sick, the unborn, those experiencing homelessness, we do not honor and support those who serve and protect people who are incarcerated – because we do not believe that those lives have value or sacred worth.
It is too easy and comfortable to blame those who work in the correctional system. I blame all of us. Many times correction officers do not safeguard the lives in their care, because we haven’t asked them to – because the brutal truth is most of us do not believe people in jail or prison deserve care. We cannot overcrowd and underfund our jails, underpay and disrespect those who work there, and believe all the incarcerated are dangerous, guilty and worthless and then pretend to be shocked or outraged when vulnerable people are harmed.
Earlier this week I met a neighbor at church who works at the Mecklenburg county jail. She was there to pick up some fresh vegetables, and she told me how much of a difference it made because she had trouble paying her bills even though she works full time. I thanked her for her work caring for people and asked her about her job. She told me she tries every shift to look for opportunities to share a kind word because she believes that inmates’ hearts need to be encouraged. She said, ‘now, not everyone is open to it — but everyone needs it.’
The woman who died in the Mecklenburg jail is Francine Laney. I wonder about the last words she heard. Were they kind? I hope so. I hope she was cared for by someone like the neighbor I met. I hope the last hands that touched her did so with dignity and respect.
This month many Christians began observing Lent – a season of prayer and fasting and repentance that culminates with our remembering the arrest, incarceration and execution of our Lord Jesus Christ. While he was imprisoned awaiting trial, Jesus was mocked and shamed and tortured. While those who knew and loved Jesus suffered with him, the crowds loved it.
It’s painfully ironic that so many Christians will weep over what the incarcerated Jesus endured 2000 years ago, but remain indifferent to how our incarcerated neighbors suffer right now. Many will reject any comparison between Jesus and the woman who died Monday night. They’ll say Jesus was completely innocent and didn’t deserve what happened to him, but she wasn’t so she did. Making the guilty suffer is sacred to us, but it was anathema to the one who cried out from the cross, ‘Father forgive them for they know not what they do.’
A woman died in Mecklenburg county jail Monday night. We do not know her story. Will we mourn her death, or quietly celebrate it, or just not care at all?