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Redeeming the Worst

Poli Psy
By Judith Levine [07.21.10]

Last week in Switzerland, Roman Polanski walked free from the chalet where he�d been under house arrest for a year.

Last year, Los Angeles County prosecutors reopened the case. European artists and intellectuals rose in Polanski�s defense. A survivor of both the Holocaust and his wife�s murder, they said, he had suffered enough � and had repaid society with his prodigious contributions to the cinema. Back in the States, the victims� rights community bellowed for Polanski�s head. ...

On one side are those who seek retribution. To them, criminals, especially sex criminals, are unchangeable (or, in modern parlance, incurable), their sins indelible. The state�s duty, therefore, is not just to protect society but also to avenge the victims.

The other side believes, foremost, in rehabilitation � in moral language, redemption. To their supporters, Polanski has attained secular redemption through art; Berkowitz, divine redemption through worship. ...

But in the law-and-order 1980s, the punishers began to win. That was thanks to (among other things) racism, political pandering, [b]privatized prisons that lobby for harsher statutes, and a victims� rights movement that started out distrusting the police but soon married the punitive state, becoming its financial dependent and political helpmeet.[/b]

Lately, recessionary budgets have opened new space for the rehabilitators. Alternatives to incarceration, especially for nonviolent offenders, are back on the table.

Except for sex offenders. The endless sex panic has seen to that.

And so Polanski�s and Berkowitz�s cases are not what they were 33 years ago.
...
Today, those 48 unserved days allowed current DA Steve Cooley to enlist the U.S. Department of Justice and foreign agents in an extensive international chase. The age of the victim gave him the public support to spend tax dollars on a personal vendetta (and boost his run for state attorney general)...

I spent a recent weekend with both these groups of people � ex-sex offenders, along with their families and allies, at the national convention of an extraordinary national movement, gathered under the umbrella of RSOL, or Reform Sex Offender Laws...

�I don�t feel welcome here,� began a tense, middle-aged man named Martin. �You�re all for the �innocent� accused, the falsely accused. But �the worst of the worst� � you�ll leave them to twist in the wind.� He paused, breathing. �Let me tell you who I am.� Then Martin described his crimes: He held up convenience stores and, after robbing the cash register, would make a woman perform fellatio on him at gunpoint. �That�s me. The worst of the worst,� he said.

�But I sat in my cell for 20 years trying to figure out what happened, trying to be a different man,� and in the 13 years since his release, he�s been �crime free,� he continued. �I paid my debt. When do I get to stop paying?�

First there was silence. Then applause. We looked at each other, as if to ask: Who among us has not sinned? Somebody whispered, �Amen.�

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