H eadlines
Laurie Jubelirer is a criminal
justice and civil rights lawyer.

Courtesy of Laurie Jubelirer
Bob Lankin is a lawyer-turned-
financial adviser who volunteers
with the SCI-Phoenix Jewish
congregation. Courtesy of Bob Lankin
Rilka Spieler disagrees. She
is a member of Matir Asurim,
a new Philadelphia-based
network of chaplains, activists
and those “directly impacted
by incarceration,” working
to provide resources to those
incarcerated. Spieler doesn’t believe
that prisons serve to reform
a population at all. Following
the words of political activist
and abolitionist Angela Davis,
Spieler believes that “prisons
disappear people.”
“If you put somebody in
a prison, especially far away
from their family, or away
from their community, that’s
You don’t need to have a sentence that long to discourage people
from committing crimes. After a while, it’s just plain punishment, and
excessive punishment is against the Jewish religion.”
BOB LANKIN
people in the U.S. are serving
life sentences without parole;
Jordan is one of them.

Lankin is among a group
of lawyers and activists that
believes these long sentences
become retribution.

“You don’t need to have
a sentence that long to
discourage people from
committing crimes,” Lankin
said. “After a while, it’s just
plain punishment, and exces-
sive punishment is against the
Jewish religion.”
Criminal defense and civil
rights lawyer Laurie Jubelirer,
who is Jewish, agrees; she
believes that those incarcerated
deserve second chances.

“We’re all human beings,”
Jubelirer said. “Why should
we be defined by our worst
behavior?” Like other rabbis who work
with those incarcerated, Rabbi
Moishe Mayir Vogel posits
that these long sentences are
inconsistent with the Jewish
New Year’s promise of new
beginnings. JEWISHEXPONENT.COM
“As human beings, we
make mistakes,” Vogel said.

“We know that we continue to
grow.” Vogel is the executive
director at the Northeast
Regional Headquarters of the
Aleph Institute, an organiza-
tion that provides resources
for incarcerated Jews and
Jews readjusting to life on
the outside. He points out the
double standard of punishing
some individuals, while all
individuals err.

“Those in the prison system
— they suffer tremendously;
some of their wrongdoings
are exposed,” he said. “We,
as human beings, we all have
skeletons in our closet.”
Lankin and Vogel both
affirm the necessity of prisons.

However Vogel agrees with
Lankin that incarceration can
move into the slippery slope
of retribution: Those incarcer-
ated should be treated “as a
child who is punished by their
parents,” but never punished
out of anger.

it,” Spieler said.

Mirroring the thoughts
of Rabbis David Bauer and
Elyse Wechterman — both
chaplains at SCI-Phoenix —
Spieler thinks that removing
an individual from their
community denies them the
opportunity to apologize to
those they’ve hurt.

“The way to have people
atone is to actually be in
community and be in relation-
ship with the people they’re
working to make amends
with,” Spieler said. “If you
remove people from their
community, then they aren’t
given that opportunity.”
Jubelirer and Lankin
advocate for restorative justice,
the coming together of the
victim and perpetrator to share
their experiences and come
away with a deeper mutual
understanding, as a systemic
change to isolating those
who’ve committed a crime in
prisons. Though
Jordan did
not speak
about the
JEWISH EXPONENT
circumstances that led to his
arrest and conviction, he was
certain about being given the
opportunity to meet with
those he hurt: “I would still
apologize to those people, if
given the choice, for hurting
them, their loved ones and
their family.”
Restorative justice is just
the beginning of imagining
a world where prisons could
be obsolete, Spieler said.

Whatever changes are made
to the system, Spieler believes
there needs to be a dialogue
between the perpetrator and
those they’ve harmed — a
major tenet of teshuvah.

For those on the inside,
however, who have been denied
these opportunities, complete
teshuvah can still be done and
has been done, Wechterman
said. “The way that we seek
forgiveness is by recognizing
that what we’ve done is wrong;
owning our responsibility for it;
learning how we can do better,”
Wechterman said. “And then,
when given the opportunity
and confronted with the same
choices, not doing the same
thing — making better choices.”
Last week, Jordan was
playing cards with another
man in the day room area
of his unit. Jordan said the
man said something to disre-
spect him, and Jordan started
to raise his voice a little. But
he didn’t cause a scene and
chose not to pick a fight. The
two of them laughed it off and
continued playing cards a few
minutes later.

“I can be a mean person if I
choose,” Jordan said, but said
he makes the choice not to be.

“It’s not worth it in here,”
Jordan said. “It’s not worth it
out there, either.” l
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SEPTEMBER 9, 2021
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