Until We Reckon
by Danielle Sered
This book takes a candid look at violence and the ways our legal system miserably fails to address and prevent it. Sered explores alternative paths toward healing and accountability that are centered in community, and suggests that despite the immeasurable damage already done, a better world is possible.
“We will not work our way out of violence if we continue to believe that solving violence is about managing monsters. Nor will we do it if we continue to believe that punishment is an adequate substitute for healing.”
MY TAKEAWAYS
Violence is a self-perpetuating cycle that does not begin at random or because of the mystical concept of pure evil. “[A]lmost no one’s entry point into violence is committing it.”
“When we treat violence like an individual problem absent its larger context, the solutions we envision are individualistic. When we understand violence in the context of society and history, then healing takes a different form.”
Focusing on so-called dangerous people won’t create safe communities because “the vast majority of the time that danger is about a larger ecosystem that made the harm likely in the first place.” Systemic violence will always generate more violence.
US culture is saturated with violence and our country cages the highest number of humans in the world. If prison was effective at solving the problem of violence, “we would have eradicated it by now—because no nation has used incarceration more.”
The prison industrial complex (PIC) functions as a ‘something vs. nothing’ dichotomy which offers either more harm to the situation, or nothing at all. The system is not concerned with repairing harm; only in enforcing laws (no matter how absurd or unevenly applied those laws might be).
The PIC has vastly expanded in the names of victims of violence, when in fact “More than half of the people who survive serious violence prefer nothing to everything available to them through law enforcement.”
Mainstream narratives falsely claim that the PIC provides the only viable route to justice for “criminals”, when in fact “Recent research has established prison’s criminogenic impact—meaning that it is a measurable, statistically significant driver of crime and violence.”
Incarcerating a person lets them off the hook from truly being held accountable for their actions, separating them from the impacted individual/community while preventing the processes that would actually facilitate justice and healing. “In a fundamental way, what is required in acknowledging the impact of our actions can be harder—even scarier—than prison.”
“What if the question is not: who is dangerous and how should we punish them? But rather: who are we incapable of holding safely in our communities, and what would it take to be able to hold them?”
Restorative justice is far more effective at repairing harm and preventing further violence by taking a holistic and community-centric approach, contending that “crime causes harm to people, relationships, and community—[which] is different from thinking of crime primarily as a violation of the law.”
We will only reduce and prevent violence if we divest from violent institutions and systems (e.g. police, prisons, military, capitalism) and instead invest in community care, collective safety, and accessible resources that allow everyone to thrive—not just a select few.
“When the struggle to end what we can no longer withstand meets with the struggle to advance what we can do instead, we might just stand a chance of winning.”