From Swords to Plowshares: Call On Congress to Reduce Harm in Communities
In Micah 4:3-4, the prophet paints a peaceable world with the image of swords and spears being turned into plows and pruning hooks—tools of violence transformed into tools that cultivate life so that all may have their own grapevines and no longer need resort to violence to meet their basic needs. True justice, peace, and safety are the result when we all have access to what we need to thrive, including food, healthcare, and housing.
Increases in violent crime rates over the last two years have pushed calls for more “swords” in the form of increased funding and resourcing of police departments and law enforcement agencies across the nation, despite mixed results of effectiveness. Measuring public safety based only on the rates of the most severe violent crimes, like homicide, obscures the myriad of other problems that exist in a community ecosystem. Incidents of substance abuse and mental health crises often result in a police response when first responders trained to specifically handle these crises could be more appropriate and effective. To address a complex problem like crime, we should have an expanded definition of community safety and use an expanded toolbox to achieve it.
The People’s Response Act (H.R. 4194) seeks to promote proven preventative, non-carceral, health-centered approaches to community safety that address underlying causes of crime, among them: economic insecurity, mental health, and substance abuse. The bill would establish a Division of Community Safety within the Department of Health and Human Services to promote these alternative solutions by funding and coordinating research across federal agencies as well as administering grants to state, local, and tribal governments, and community-based organizations to implement them. This is not the answer, it is part of the answer to how we can cultivate peace in our communities that doesn’t resort to retributive justice or carceral solutions.
As people of faith, we are called to engage socially and politically in the struggle to implement a Just Peace, we must call on our members of Congress to take up the plow instead of the sword and pass H.R. 4194, the People’s Response Act. In fulfilling that vision of peace we are asking Congress to engage in creative solutions that don’t engage in the dangerous paradigm of the past, but rather envision a future in which all can thrive.