And Justice For All

essay

Photo by Luke Michael on Unsplash

---

A decade ago, as a visiting writer at a prestigious university, I attended a reception with administrators, professors, and students. One of the undergraduate students was obviously the star. She'd just been given campus-wide recognition for her research paper. A professor told me that it was the first time an undergraduate had won that particular award.

"She's as brilliant a student as I've ever had," he said.

"She must be," I said. "What's her research?"

"Prison abolition," he said.

"Ah," I said.

I'm not an academic but I know that prison abolition is a big topic for the professors who double as political activists. I'm a poet who believes in the reformation of our critically flawed justice system. I'm friends and family with cops, lawyers, judges, mental health professionals, and correctional employees who deal with those flaws on a daily basis. They’re fighting for reform, too.

"Do you think prisons should be abolished?" I asked the professor.

He said, "yes," and then justified his answer by launching into a two-minute soliloquy filled with academic jargon—a specialized vocabulary that only exists on college campuses. When it comes to professor-speak, I'm like a tourist who knows 75 words of a foreign language, so I understood enough of the jargon to follow his argument. Each of his thoughts logically led to the next but it was boring and bloodless.

"What about serial killers?" I asked. "What should we do with them when they're caught and convicted?”

"That's a common question," he said and then, like an adept politician, he answered a question that I hadn't asked.

"We can only achieve true justice through repair," he said. "We must, of course, hold the person accountable for the harm they've caused. But we can't dehumanize them. Instead of focusing on punishment, we need to measure justice by the harm that's repaired. And, to achieve that, we need to empower victims. We need them to be full partners in the restorative justice process. Their needs are paramount."

He talked in circles. I didn't.

"Okay," I said. "I'm sure there were victims and survivors who wanted Ted Bundy to be executed. So what about the victims who think that vengeance is restorative?"

"Again, a common question," he said and then launched into another monologue that included statistics about the many failures of police officers, judges, and prison staff. About the crimes committed by police officers and prison guards against inmates. About the high percentage of unsolved crimes in our communities. About police brutality. About disproportionate prison sentences. About poverty and racism and misogyny and mental illness.

I agreed with nearly all of what he said. But he still hadn't answered my question.

"There are real monsters in the world," I said. "Human monsters. In mythology, you got Beowulf and Grendel. Yeah, Beowulf is the homicide cop and Grendel is the serial killer."

"That's a simple way to put things," the professor said.

I smiled at his condescension.

"Well," I said. "Sometimes, things are simple. Was it justice to execute Ted Bundy?"

"I don't believe in capital punishment," he said.

"I don't believe in it, either," I said. "But I'm primarily against it because I know that we've executed innocent people. And we'll do it again. It's human nature to make mistakes. So we shouldn't let humans decide who does or doesn't deserve to be executed."

"I agree," the professor said.

At this point, I'm sure that some of you readers are feeling contentious and would love to challenge me.

Yeah, Sherman, you might say. But how would you feel if it was your wife or kids who were murdered?

And I'd say, I'd want those killers drawn and quartered. I'd want to be riding the horse that ripped off an arm. I'd want to be Beowulf chopping off Grendel's head. And that's exactly why fathers and husbands shouldn't be the judge, jury, and prosecutor of the people who've done their families harm.

The professor and I had found agreement on capital punishment. That was a good thing. But I wondered if he was even aware that he hadn't answered any of my questions. He'd only repeated the opinions that would win him approval from his cohort. I didn't blame him. All of us, across the political spectrum, perform for our allies.

This essay is my performance. But don't reward me for my self-awareness because self-awareness is performative, too.

"Hey," the professor said. "I've taken up too much of your time. Would you like to meet my student?"

"Absolutely," I said.

The professor introduced us to each other. We shook hands.

"Congratulations on your award," I said.

"Thank you," she said with modesty and pride.

"So your research is about prison abolition," I said.

"Yes," she said.

I certainly wasn't going to challenge her like I'd challenged her professor so I asked a far gentler question.

"I'm curious," I said. "If I'm driving down the freeway and see a drunk driver swerving all over the road—they're endangering the lives of everybody—then who should I call? Who's going to stop him?"

She didn't answer my question. Instead, she launched into her own erudite monologue about how we need to train and hire social workers who can intervene before a crime is ever committed and can de-escalate any tense situation.

I wanted to ask her if we should station social workers in parking lots to prevent drunk people from ever getting into their cars.

But I knew that satire wouldn't accomplish anything. I didn’t want to embarrass the undergraduate. She was smart and serious. And she'd been taught to speak in ways that would delight her professors. In a Catholic sense, she'd been confirmed in the faith of her academic priests.

An hour later, during my poetry reading, I told the crowd that I'd known four human monsters during my life.

"Two of them killed dogs when they were kids on the rez," I said. "Everybody knew they killed dogs. Once, the school janitor found a bunch of dead dogs hidden in a crawl space. They'd been butchered."

The crowd was silent. I let that silence last for ten seconds. That's an eternity onstage.

"I knew a man who killed three other men," I said. "Everybody had their suspicions. But he was an Indian killing Indians and nobody in power cared much about that."

More silence.

"And when I was ten on the rez, this big white kid pretended to kidnap me and some other Indian boys and a white kid I'll call Skeet. The big kid was sixteen or seventeen and took us to this old trailer house where nobody lived. He was older. I'll call him Grendel. His sister had married an Indian and was living on the rez. And their parents had sent him to live with his sister because he'd gotten into some kind of trouble back home."

More silence.

"So, like I said, it was a pretend kidnap at first but then Grendel locked the trailer door from the inside. He'd rigged it somehow. Then he pulled out a big knife and started torturing us for real. He didn't cut us. He just gently held the blade close to our arms, legs, and necks. He left marks, not wounds. Then he took Skeet into a back bedroom."

More silence.

"We heard Skeet whimpering. But we were too small and scared to fight Grendel directly. So we started screaming as loud as we could. Then we smashed through the trailer door and ran."

More silence.

"Grendel chased us. I looked back and saw that Skeet had also made his escape. He was running in the other direction. He left the rez a few days later and we never saw him again."

More silence.

"Nine years later, I was watching TV at my girlfriend's house when I saw Grendel's face appear onscreen. He'd been arrested for murdering two little girls. I immediately realized that we rez boys had been practice for a serial killer. We'd been his full dress rehearsal."

More silence.

"Yes," I said. "I have known monsters."

More silence.

And then a woman in the audience raised her hand.

"Yes," I said.

"What happened to those two Indian boys—the ones who killed dogs?"

"One of them has been in and out of jail his whole life. I don't think he's ever killed anybody but he's done some terrible shit."

"What about the other boy?"

"He works on the rez. He drinks too much. And he's weird. But he's never been in any serious trouble."

"So maybe he wasn't a monster."

"I think he was a monster when he was young but then something changed him."

"What was the change?"

"I don't know," I said.

I stood onstage in front of a few hundred members of a college community— a decidedly leftist bunch. And I’m of the left, too. But I wanted to challenge them.

“I know that some of you don’t even believe in monsters. But they’re real. And they come from all cultures and communities. And I know that some of you want to abolish prisons. But I think that’s just a theory that lives in your head. If you abolish prisons then those monsters will roam free.”

I could hear and feel the discomfort moving through the audience. I didn’t enjoy their discomfort but I thought it was valuable.

I must have said other things to that crowd but I don’t remember any details. I’ve given hundreds of talks. The performances blend.

All these years later, there are other things that I wish I’d said that night—the kind of things that might get me escorted off a college campus now. And I also want to write some of those things now:

Dear Readers, I know that some of you believe it’s the system that creates monsters. And I agree that the system does create some monsters. Maybe even most of them. Maybe almost all of them. And I know that some of you truly believe that we can fix those monsters if we fix the system.

But some monsters can’t be fixed. There’s no retroactive magic that will lead to their repair. You can’t put a monster back together again. Restorative justice doesn’t account for psychopathy.

A few years ago, my Grendel was released from prison. He’d served his full sentence. I saw his photo in the newspaper. He looked much older and more fragile. He was seriously ill. His victim’s families had protested his release. They told journalists that they’d been living in hell since their daughters had been murdered and they didn’t want their killer to ever go free.

I agreed with them.

Then, only a few months later, Grendel died in a local hospital. His freedom hadn't lasted for long.

I don’t know where he’s buried. His sister long ago divorced her Indian husband and moved away from the rez.

And then I thought about Skeet. I thought about him running away from that trailer house all those decades ago. He’d seen what monsters do.

So I did an Internet search using his real name and discovered that the remains of an adult male that had been discovered twenty years earlier had finally been identified by DNA evidence.

It was Skeet.

In his early 30s, he’d told his family that he was moving to Chicago and then he disappeared. Grendel had nothing to do with it. He was still in prison when Skeet vanished.

There hasn’t been any further news about Skeet. No word on how he died. I have no idea what kind of man he’d become. But I do remember the sweet and eccentric kid that Skeet had been. He hadn’t lived on the rez. Instead, he’d visited his uncle every summer—the white uncle who worked for the Bureau of Indian Affairs.

If I could talk with Skeet, I wonder how he’d feel about prison abolition. What would he want to do with the monsters? His answer would be inadequate just as mine is inadequate. Just as anybody’s answer would be inadequate.

Our Grendel kidnapped two little girls and murdered them. He covered one of their bodies with pine needles and set her aflame. The other little girl’s body has never been found.

On his death bed, Grendel didn’t tell the detectives where he’d left her. He took that secret with him to the grave.

One last act of cruelty.

I hope that Skeet didn’t suffer when he died. I hope it was some unexpected but still natural cause. A brain aneurysm. Something quick.

They found him off a rural road a few miles south of a well-traveled highway. Had his body been dumped by a killer? Or had Skeet just been walking down that road to see a lake that’s said to be gorgeous?

I wonder if that landscape resembles my reservation’s landscape.

I think of Skeet running through a pine tree forest.

He was a white boy visitor to the rez who’d easily made friends with us Indian kids. He was an outsider who was accepted as an insider.

I think of him running away from that trailer house, running through the August heat.

A lot of us Indian boys have known monsters.

And a lot of white boys have known monsters, too.

Sometimes, their monsters and our monsters are the same monsters.