“The whole trouble lies in the fact that people think that there are conditions excluding the necessity of love in their intercourse with man, but such conditions do not exist. Things may be treated without love; one may chop wood, make bricks, forge iron without love; but one can no more deal with people without love than one can handle bees without care.”

Tolstoy, Resurrection (pt. ii, ch. xxv)

Tolstoy called for the presence of love within the Russian criminal justice system. Resurrection (1899) was Tolstoy’s last novel, and intended as an exposition of injustice of man-made laws.

From Harpers: “Resurrection is at its heart an engagement with justice, both with the criminal-justice system and with justice as a concept with essential social, political, and religious aspects. Its author has grown weary of a political debate that pits conservative upholders of autocratic rule against liberal reformers convinced they can shape a just system by issuing laws and regulations. He looks with somewhat more bemusement, even admiration, at those who take a revolutionary perspective—who are convinced of the fundamental injustice of the Russian system and who are committed not to reforming it but to sweeping it away.”

TOLSTOY TODAY?

It is impossible to argue for mass decarceration, let alone abolition, in the US today without being quickly boxed as a lunatic. And yet, one must be clearly delusional if they’re willing to flee logic, waste tax dollars and ignore discrimination to maintain the prison industrial complex. If the two ends of the spectrum are madness what does that tell us?

Single figure percentage decreases won’t make a amends for the damage mass incarceration has wrought upon the soul of America.

Let’s be radical and put more love in the system. Let’s put more love in society. Let’s build schools not prisons. It’s easier to make good men than to repair broken ones.