1 Jesus withdrew to the Mount of Olives. 2 But at dawn he was again in the temple, where all the people were coming to him. Sitting down, he taught them. 3 Then the scribes and Pharisees brought him a woman who had been caught in adultery, and placed her in the middle of his teaching area. 4 They said to Jesus, "Teacher, this woman has been caught in the act of adultery. 5 In our Law, Moses commanded that such women should be stoned to death. So what do you say? "6 They said this to put him to the test, so as to find grounds for accusing him. But, leaning forward, he began to write on the ground with his finger. 7 Now, as they persisted in questioning him, Jesus straightened up and said to them, "Let him who is without fault cast the first stone." 8 Then, once again, he leaned forward to write on the ground. 9 Hearing Jesus' words, the scribes and Pharisees began to leave the scene, starting with the elders, so that Jesus found himself alone with the woman in the middle of the stage. 10 After straightening up, Jesus said to her, "Madam, where are all your accusers? Has no one condemned you? "11 The woman replied, "No one, sir." Then Jesus said to her, "Neither do I condemn you. From now on, don't do it again."

Why can punishing be counterproductive?

James Forman, a law professor at Yale University who spent twenty years as a defense attorney for juvenile delinquents, recounts his experience¹. First, he tells us about David Muhammad of Oakland. At the age of 3, his parents separated and he was raised with his mother and two older brothers. At school he was considered gifted and talented, but classes bored him. The street was more appealing, and by ninth grade he had found a group of friends with whom he skipped school and sold drugs. At the age of 15, his mother moved to Philadelphia with her boyfriend, leaving Muhammad in the care of his brothers, aged 20 and 21, both of whom were also involved in the Oakland drug scene. What had to happen happened. He was arrested three times - for selling drugs, attempted murder and illegal possession of a firearm. The first two cases were dismissed; he received probation for the gun charge. You'd think everything would turn out badly for him. The opposite was true.

Today, Muhammad is a graduate of Howard University, runs a nonprofit in Oakland, a mentoring center, and is on the board of the District of Columbia's Department of Youth Rehabilitation Services. In addition, for two years he was chief probation officer for Alameda County, in the same system that had once mentored him. What happened?

Shortly after his third arrest, his girlfriend told him about a program, Omega, for troubled youth. Muhammad had his doubts, but agreed to take part. Omega's motto was: From prison to school, and it promised scholarships to teenagers who followed the program. Muhammad stopped selling drugs and started going to school, where an English teacher introduced him to black studies and a soccer coach noticed his athletic qualities. By his senior year, his 0.6 GPA had become 3.8; Omega kept its commitment and helped finance his enrollment at Howard University.

Muhammad's story comes at a time when, between 2000 and 2020, the number of incarcerated youth in the U.S. fell by 77% and juvenile prisons decreased by 58%. Why? Firstly, in the early 2000s, the media revealed the scandal of youth prisons rife with rampant violence and cruelty, having individual custom-built cages where young people deemed violent were taught their lessons, regularly tear-gassed, pepper-sprayed and forced into solitary confinement. What's more, incarcerating a young person cost an average of US$88,000, rising to US$250,000 in some states. This created pressure for their closure.

But what Professor Forman was about to discover was more fundamental. First, he was surprised at how often judges said they locked up teenagers because they cared about them. We're referring here to young people convicted not of murder or other serious crimes, which account for less than 10% of all crimes, but of minor offences such as selling drugs or stealing cars. These judges felt it was important to punish, even with light sentences of a few months in prison, to make young people understand that their actions had consequences. But can even a light sentence be counterproductive?

A New York program called the Court Employment Project made a decisive observation. The program offered an alternative to incarceration for delinquent adolescents. The young people selected were divided into two groups: some were incarcerated for a few weeks or a month, while others were allowed to return home and avoid incarceration altogether. Those who were locked up - even briefly - were less likely to succeed than those who were released. Ten years later, one wanted to validate these results. A number of minors were selected at random, some of whom were assigned to a tough judge, and others, with similar backgrounds and charges, to a lenient one. The result? The kids who were locked up did worse. They were 12% less likely to graduate from high school. And they were 23% more likely to be incarcerated as adults."

When Susan Burke, director of Utah's juvenile justice system and whose job it was to keep young people in prison, read the report, which suggested that even a short stay in detention could increase, not decrease, the likelihood that a young person would steal or vandalize again, she remained skeptical, until confronted with her son's situation. Given his difficulties, she decided to send him to a day treatment program. Although this withdrawal was only for three months, and her son was able to return home every evening, it was nevertheless very traumatic. Her son found it difficult to return to school, to make friends and connect with people; he was constantly asked where he had been. All this convinced Mrs. Burke that prison or any action that cut the teenager off from his environment was counterproductive, and that fewer prisons meant less crime, less crime meant fewer prisons. Of course, many of these young people need help, and over the past three decades there has been a remarkable explosion of initiatives designed to provide that help. So the question arises: wouldn't the strategies that have worked for young people be just as effective for adults?

I thought I'd use this surprising observation to introduce today's Gospel, which tells the story of the adulterous woman confronted with Jesus' judgment; for the same question is asked: should we punish? Before getting into the story itself, it's worth recounting the history of the adulteress' manuscript.

Although the story of the adulterous woman appears in our Bibles in the Gospel of John, there's nothing Johannine about it: the whole style and vocabulary is Lucanian. So what happened? The oldest and most reliable manuscripts completely ignore this text, as do the majority of the Church Fathers. Some 11th and 12th century manuscripts place the story in Luke's Gospel, following Lk 21:38. At the beginning of the 5th century, it appears in its current place in the Gospel of John, in the Latin translation by s. Jerome, known as the Vulgate, and in a codex called Bezae. Saint Augustine knows of its existence. So what could have happened to make a text that is most probably authentic to Luke, and to which the Didascalia Apostolorum (3rd c.) seems to bear witness, disappear in this way? The most plausible explanation is that the early Christian communities did not feel able to reconcile what appeared to be laxity on Jesus' part with the strict penitential discipline of the Church, and it was only when this discipline became more liberal in the 5th century that the story of the adulteress was considered acceptable. And since the story had become a loose end whose origins had been lost, it was inserted into John's Gospel, just before the passage where Jesus says he judges no one (Jn 8:15).

Let's read the story again. We are in the temple in Jerusalem, early in the morning, as Jesus sits teaching the people who are clinging to his lips. The scribes, Bible scholars, and the Pharisees, whose name means "separated", i.e. whose religious fundamentalism and piety separate them from the majority of the Jewish population, bring to Jesus a woman caught in the act of adultery. Remember that Jewish law forbade adultery, i.e. sexual relations between a man (married or not) and a married woman, because such relations violated the husband's right of ownership over his wife (Ex 20, 14.17). And the penalty was clear: "If a man commits adultery with his neighbor's wife, both must be put to death" (Lev 20:10). In our story, why do we bring only the woman, forgetting the man? The story doesn't say. So Jesus is asked: "The Law of Moses prescribed that such women should be stoned to death. What do you say?" The author of the story makes it clear that this is a trick question to find grounds for an accusation against him: indeed, if Jesus opts for stoning, he violates the Roman prohibition addressed to the Jews to exercise capital punishment (the Jews will have to go through the Roman Pilate to execute Jesus), if he opts for non-stoning, he violates Jewish religious Law. The story continues with the expression of Jesus' indifference to the question posed as he remains silent and instead leans forward to write on the ground with his finger. It's only after the scribes and Pharisees have insisted that he offers the familiar response: "Let him who is without fault cast the first stone". But what exactly does this answer mean?

Let's start with what this sentence does not mean. It does not mean that a judge in our courts must be free of any fault in order to exercise judgment. Otherwise, no one could be a judge. No, we're not talking about the moral state of the person passing judgment. The key to understanding this phrase is given to us at the end when Jesus says: "Has no one condemned you?" That's what's at stake here. For to condemn someone is to establish a separation between oneself and the other, to say that one personally belongs to the world of good, and that the other belongs to the world of evil, two different countries. Since we're dealing with a text by Luke, let's consider the following passages from his gospel: "Do you think that if these Galileans were thus slaughtered by Pilate, it means that they were greater sinners than all the other Galileans?" (Lk 13:2); "And those eighteen people whom the tower of Siloam crushed when it collapsed, do you think that they were more guilty than all the other inhabitants of Jerusalem? "(Lk 13:4) In other words, we are all in the same boat, and the act of adultery or an equivalent fault could very well have been committed by oneself; the person we wish to condemn is not a stranger, but a brother or sister in the same family. In condemning, we enter into a lie about ourselves.

The author ends this story by recounting the departure of the scribes and Pharisees, starting with the "wisest", i.e. the elders, which usually makes us smile. But this should be interpreted as a realization that humanity is one, that it is impossible to condemn others without condemning ourselves, and that it is impossible to punish others without punishing ourselves.

Should we give up denouncing evil? Not at all. And Jesus' attitude is not one of laxity. Listen to him: "Neither do I condemn. From now on, don't do it again". For me, the image that guides me is that of a loving mother faced with a child who has strayed down the wrong path. Her child's situation hurts her terribly, because it's her own flesh and blood that's going astray. Will she say, "I'm cutting you off"? Will she say, "I'm going to punish you"? No, she has only one goal: to help her child find his way back; she knows he needs help. Condemning, punishing and imposing punishment are all counterproductive.

---

¹ This article was published on January 28, 2025 in the New York Times under the title: What Happened When America Emptied Its Youth Prisons. Here is a copy of the full text.

 

-André Gilbert, Gatineau, February 2025