You have people who for one reason or another commit criminal acts.

Now many have, throughout history, proclaimed that the only way to reduce crime is to increase policing and punishments. And given our long-recorded history of crime and punishment, how has that worked out?

Increased sentencing, three strikes laws, the death penalty, they have reduced crime haven’t they?

Or are they last resort of a society who looks on those who commit crime as already lost, already beyond any sort of redemption, and sort of change in who they are?

I mean look at America, with their long history of the death penalty and how it prevented murder, or didn’t to be precise.

Because what people don’t want to admit, don’t want to contemplate, let alone accept, is that for the majority of crime, and for those that commit it, society has already shown them that it doesn’t care.

It doesn’t care that they are poor, homeless, abused, bullied, lost, trapped in despair. It doesn’t care that they have no hope for the future, cannot see themselves as part of society, so they don’t see doing anything to those around them, stealing, robbing, assaulting, murdering, means anything more or less than how little the world around them seems to value their own life.

And I am not saying we shouldn’t punish those who commit crimes, that is far from what I am saying.

They need to recompense society for what they have done, but we also need to make sure they have a place within the society that has in one way or another let them down.

If a family member is in danger of being homeless, in danger of being unable to feed or clothe themselves, only the most heartless would leave them to suffer.

And as a species, as human beings, who live and feel, who fear and love, are we all not family for whatever time we have in this life?

We need to address the causes of crime, we need to support those who have suffered from crime, and we need to rehabilitate those who have committed the crime.

We need to have a world, a society, where all life is sacred, all life is valued, all life is kin to us all.

And yes, I know there are some people, a very few, filled with hate, with heartlessness, with a casual indifference to every single human being that lives, and would care as little for our suffering as the fate of a mote of dust, but those are not the majority.

Those who have suffered, who have struck out with crime, with violence, with their pain directed at any and all around them, can be saved, can be healed, can be brought back from the dark places they have gone to.

This is what we must believe, what we must work towards, what we must strive for.

For if we do not care for those of us who need it most, are we really the people we ought to, hope to, aspire to be?

We teach our children that we must love are care for each other, and if we only practice what we preach when it is easy, what sort of example is that?

Saeed Parker  - Speech at Social Justice Conference