A number of years ago my husband’s nephew suggested that we invest some funds with him in high-risk high-yield bonds. We did. After earning a good return, I asked my husband what his nephew had done with our money. He answered that his nephew, among other ventures, had invested in for-profit prisons. I was horrified. The notion that a prison could be run on a for-profit basis could mean only one thing: that prisoners were going to suffer. So I said to my husband, no more investing funds with your nephew.
This week’s double parashah, Behar-Behuqotai, rails against inhumane treatment of those at the very bottom of the social scale. True, there is no reference to prisons in these two parashiyot, but people sold into slavery, sometimes for having broken the law, are stand-ins for today’s prisoners. A slave is owned by his master and has to do his bidding, just like a prisoner. Leviticus 25, however, makes it very clear that an owner is to treat Hebrew slaves with compassion, that he should regard them as hired workers (v. 40) and not assign them backbreaking labor (parekh, v. 43 ). The rabbis of the Talmud enhance these kindness requirements with rules about feeding Hebrew slaves the same food as the master and giving them a comfortable bed on which to sleep (Bavli Kiddushin 22a). We thus see that our classical Jewish texts demand humane treatment of the most vulnerable members of society, those whom it is easy to exploit and who are defenseless if abused.
The Leviticus chapter ends with the statement, “For it is to Me that the Israelites are slaves: they are My slaves, whom I freed from the land of Egypt, I the Lord your God” (v. 55). The message is clear. Human beings may not be enslaved to each other, only to God. Even if society sanctions putting someone in jail because he or she committed a crime, a prisoner deserves to be treated fairly, which means not subjected to brutal behavior by guards, not coerced into unwanted sexual acts, and not forced to live in severely overcrowded conditions. It also means that prisons must hire enough staff to guarantee the safety of inmates. The record for private prisons in the United States shows that these stipulations are often not met. The profit motive is sharply at odds with the incentive to treat prisoners well.
Housing convicted criminals in for-profit prisons increased in the 1980s when changes in drug laws resulted in the demand for prison beds outstripping the supply. Unfortunately, private prisons acquired a reputation of sacrificing humane treatment of prisoners in order to increase earnings. A 2016 report by the U.S. Department of Justice asserted that privately operated federal facilities are less safe, less secure and more punitive than other federal prisons.
In August 2016, during the Obama presidency, the Department of Justice announced that it was ordering the federal Bureau of Prisons to begin phasing out its use of private prisons. Less than a month later, the Mississippi Department of Corrections closed the Walnut Grove Correctional facility, a private for-profit prison. This prison was characterized by a lawyer at the ACLU as “an object lesson in the horrors that result when a for-profit company has total control over human lives without oversight or accountability.” By May of this year, 2017, the Bureau of Prisons was expected to reduce by half the number of prisoners in private prisons. However, in February of this year, during the Trump presidency,Attorney General Jeff Sessions withdrew the Obama administration’s policy to reduce and ultimately end the use of private prisons. This reversal almost certainly means a return to for-profit prisons and abuse of prisoners.
As Jews imbued with Torah values, we must protest this dangerous turn of events. Since we remind ourselves many times over in our statutory prayers, at Friday night Kiddush, and at the Passover seder, that we were once slaves but were then set free, it is our moral obligation to stand up for prisoners, to speak out against the dehumanization that exists in for-profit prisons. We need to protect the rights and even lives of these very vulnerable members of our society.
Rabbi Judith Hauptman is E. Billi Ivry Professor of Talmud and Rabbinic Culture at JTS.