My Contributing piece on the Death Penalty which is going to be featured by a Anti-Death Penalty Activist Group.
My father was a social worker at the Utah State Penitentiary for 20 years. He had an outstanding record & did a lot to improve the lives of inmates at the Prison. He gave the woman's prison an atrium & even kittens because my father really cared about the mental health of the prisoners under his care.
When I was a young girl my father began taking me to the prison because he felt the prisoners needed to be around children, supervised of course, to be emotionally well. I remember going in homemade dresses with matching bows that my mother sewed me. One of my first memories of my father was of him saying, "You can play in front of the prison offices, don't pick the flowers & there is a sniper training a rifle on your head so no sudden movements."
Through the years my dad would come home & talk to me about his job as a social worker. I remember a prisoner who had died but nobody wanted to claim the body & father had to decide what to do with the remains. When a prisoner burned his Book of Mormon because God hadn't broken down the walls after intense prayer. A man being stabbed to death in front of my father & my father having to see the aftermath of a gruesome prison death. My father throughout his life tried to bring Humanity to a cold & dark world which is the prison system many of us never see.
As a small child my father had a soft blue suede vest which went with his best blue suit. It was soft, shiny & I would rub my face on the vest when he was away.
One day on TV I saw a prisoner marched for a preceding that had a connection to his execution. There were men escorting the prisoner & for their protection the media wouldn't show their faces but just their clothing. I could see my fathers blue vest on the TV screen. I never could look at that vest again without remembering that it was one of the last things a condemned man had seen before he died.
My father took me to meet some prisoners before their execution. I remember seeing a man shackled head to toe but a few feet away in my dad's office. I remember thinking that the condemned looked like normal people. Just people worried about the things other people worry about.
My father would tell me that the execution process didn't deter crime & it didn't help. That it was a waste of money that stretched the emotional distress of victims families for years. He even once said that one person only received the Death Penalty, in his opinion, as a stern message to people who engaged in inter-racial relationships because the executed inmate was a black man who dated white women. That the Death Penalty was another form of oppression to frighten communities.
I believe that the money spent on the expensive Death Penalty system would be better spend on offering support & mental health services to those affected by crime. Supporting victims families & mental wellness are always a better use of public funds rather than being used to support a cumbersome, burdensome & inflated Death Penalty system.
I think it's very important to be a life affirming Nation & from cradle to grave we should honor Human Life. Incarcerate the guilty for life, yes, but allow God to decide the fate of those behind bars in His time.
