Awe

Chris was growing his hair long, to dissociate from the white supremacist skinheads inside. And he was getting the tattoos on his neck removed one by one. That day, he spoke to the audience of two hundred men in blue. He talked about being a Nazi skinhead. About assaulting people of color with baseball bats. From the pews, I could see the reddening of shame wash over his face. Darwin reasoned that the blush is a manifestation of our moral beauty, signaling that we care about the opinions of others; studies 130 years later would find that others’ blushes trigger forgiveness and reconciliation in observers—a millisecond pattern of behavior joining perpetrator and victim in a transformative dynamic at the heart of restorative justice. At the end of Chris’s talk, the men in blue shifted in their seats in an awkward silence. Louis strode to the dais and embraced Chris. He noted how much courage it took for Chris to do what he had done.

At break that day Louis introduced me to a prisoner who had done time in solitary. He stood off at an oblique angle, avoiding direct eye contact. People who have done solitary can be overwhelmed by others’ faces, in particular, others’ eyes. This prisoner, Louis explained, had been part of a hunger strike protesting solitary confinement. He had pressed small notes into the handle of the broom he used to clean parts of the prison. Those notes would make their way into the hands of other prisoners, who in turn passed them on to other prisoners. It was a vast, interconnected web of resistance.

Louis explained to the prisoner that I had written an amicus brief in the case Ashker v. Governor of California, which was inspired by the moral beauty of the hunger strike that took place at California’s Pelican Bay State Prison. The Ashker in the case is white supremacist Todd Ashker, who had lived twenty-eight years in solitary at the Pelican Bay maximum-security prison in Northern California. In solitary, Ashker spent twenty-three hours a day by himself in a windowless cell about the size of a parking space. He could see no other prisoners; nor could he hear them after correctional officers covered the front of his cell with plexiglass. Guards “messed with his mail” from his family. He was not allowed to hug visitors. In my brief I argued that depriving prisoners of touch, our most powerful language of reverence, harms them physically and mentally, and worsens their chances for reform. In one study of prisoners in solitary, 70 percent showed signs of impending nervous breakdown, 40 percent suffered from hallucinations, and 27 percent had suicidal ideation. Solitary confinement is the annihilation of everyday moral beauty. One inmate summed it up aptly: “I would rather have gotten the death penalty.”

In his cell, Ashker began to call out to leaders of Mexican American and Black gangs in cells nearby and listen through a vent. Their conversations turned to stories of moral beauty: talk about parents and grandparents, fathers and uncles, sisters and brothers, and children. And how hard solitary was. Ashker and his neighbors called for a truce among the rival gangs. On July 8, 2013, Ashker led that hunger strike, which involved more than 29,000 prisoners protesting that solitary confinement is a violation of the Eighth Amendment, which prohibits the use of cruel and unusual punishment. It was the largest hunger protest in U.S. history. Now that is vast. In 2015, the case was settled in favor of the prisoners, and more than 2,000 prisoners statewide were moved out of solitary confinement.

When Louis introduced me to the SQ prisoner, we made glancing eye contact, a 250-millisecond act of recognition. I felt a rush of goose bumps at being part of something much bigger than any study I would ever do or talk I might give.

At the end of that day, the men in blue stood to recite the principles of restorative justice. After the shuffle and groaning of two hundred people rising to their feet, a silence fell over us, in that powerful, quiet moment of shared attention. And then we all recited together:

I believe that violence is not a solution to any problem.

I believe that every person is endowed with a sacred dignity.

I believe that every person is capable of changing, healing, and being restored.

I pledge to respect the dignity of every person.

I pledge to overcome violence with love and compassion.

I pledge to accompany and support anyone affected by crime on their healing journey.

I pledge to be an instrument of restoration, of reconciliation and forgiveness.