From our friends at the General Board of Church & Society of the United Methodist Church:

I wanted to make you aware of a unique idea to organize your community to move closet towards the abolition of the death penalty. Please read through and feel free to contact Laura Porter 914-238-6736 or laura@pearcemedia.com with any questions.

Equal Justice USA is reaching out to law enforcement in every state to have a dialog about the death penalty. The purpose is to have round table discussions with police chiefs, prison superintendents and many rank and file members of law enforcement in order to find out where law enforcement place the death penalty on their priority list. This discussion is not so much about issues of morality, but rather, issues of prioritization. Given the enormous costs of administering the death penalty, would law enforcement place other priorities before it or not? Would they prefer funds to be spent on other crime reduction programs?

How can you implement this?

For law enforcement to feel comfortable enough to attend such a round table with abolitionists, then people they trust must do the inviting. The discussions can be small and informal. There are many ways to get a discussion started:

If you know law enforcement, you can invite them over for coffee.
Your pastor (or other respected member in your community) can invite law enforcement members to a discussion at your church.
Professors at local colleges may be willing make invitations and most teachers in criminal justice programs are former law enforcement - eager for dialogs like this.
Once you have one discussion, they lead to other future discussions. The national movement is finding more and more law enforcement members who do not think the death penalty is an effective policy for them and this is a way to build bridges between communities that can have pay off when it comes time to advocate for legislation. The most important thing to remember is that we want the participants to feel respected and comfortable. The mission is to show that abolitionists and law enforcement have a lot of commonalities.

If you are interested in putting together a dialog. Please contact Laura Porter 914-238-6736 or laura@pearcemedia.com.

In Christ,

Bill Mefford
Director, United Methodists Against the Death Penalty
and Civil and Human Rights

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