Last night on television,
Thomas Cahill, a man who has studied and written about history his whole life,
mentioned in passing that he believed all historical movements to be either
based in kindness or cruelty. Perhaps it is that simple. Certainly it is in
bail, where the entire movement toward a secured money system administered by
commercial sureties in America was described by Robert Kennedy in 1964 as
“cruel and costly.”
But if it is cruelty that has
led us to this place in history, then it is surely a movement of kindness that
seeks to take its place. Pretrial justice in America is merely a movement of
kindness – kindness toward all persons, especially those whom the Bible calls
the least of us.
2014 will be a year in which all Americans understand
that the infusion of secured money into bail has resulted in a bail system with
cruelty at its very core. Hopefully, they will also understand that it will be
empathy and kindness – a movement of
kindness practiced by those who
seek only to follow God’s will – that can alter a system from which so many
profit.
