Compassion and justice – the Netflix show Adolescence

They are the reason for the piles of flowers, the glaring tabloid headlines, the communities in mourning, the haunted, glassy-eyed parents. They are the ‘monsters’ who have caused irreversible damage, permanent life-changing pain. They are the boys who cry for their mums at night, who want their dads to be proud.

The new smash hit Netflix show Adolescence captures a painful conflict. A clash that – as a society – we try to ignore but, at Prison Fellowship, we sit right in the middle of. What do we do with them? Those boys.

In episode 1, Jamie, a thirteen-year-old boy is with his dad in a police interview being accused of murder. He denies it. And so he is shown the irrefutable evidence: CCTV footage. His dad, for a moment, turns away from his son in anguish and revulsion over what he has witnessed. Jamie reaches for him. He turns back and embraces his son in tears, devastated at the crime, but filled with a father’s love for his child.

Sadly, Jamie has become one of them.

They are the people who sit in a circle with us in our groups in the prison chapel for the Sycamore Tree course.

It’s a familiar image to us at PF. The folded arms, the jutted jaw, the HMPPS issue grey sweater and joggers. The ‘I didn’t do anything wrong’s and the ‘It’s not my fault’s.

Jamie is younger than many of the men we work with. But not by much. Eighteen-year-olds with patchy facial hair and all the mannerisms of a year nine school boy are not so far removed from thirteen-year-olds in looks, and much less far removed in behaviour.

Those of us who spend time with them know this. And this is what we do:

During Sycamore Tree, we talk with our group about the story of Zacchaeus (Zac) from the Bible. When we ask how the people he treated badly must have felt, we get a lot of enthusiastic responses. These words are often suggested: angry, scared, frustrated, upset, sad, powerless, vengeful, hatred towards Zac. So, we get out our flipchart paper and our marker pens and we write them all down. Then, we go back to the list of questions and ask the group how they relate what Zac has done to their own offending behaviour. How did your actions make people feel? The pens are poised once again. But the answers do not come so quickly. So we press. We press where it hurts, because we have to, because empathy and compassion matter, and because a boy who is scared of having a blood test should be able to put himself in the place of a girl facing down a kitchen knife.

And most importantly, because, as Christians, we know we are just like them. Capable of terrible things. Loved beyond our imagination.

This is why Adolescence is talked about so much. The conflict we try to ignore, the question we can’t answer: how can we possibly show compassion for someone who has brutally murdered another?

His appalling lack of compassion cost a girl her life. She can never come back. Her future is gone. There will be no career, no children, no grandchildren, no 18th or 40th birthday, no silver wedding anniversary. The cost of a life never lived is extremely high. We want to hate him for it.

The truth is, we love to have a monster we can hate, or a child we can love.

Our brains and hearts twist in pain when they are the same person. But they so often are.

When we sit with our Sycamore Tree groups, it crosses my mind every time – in another place, at another time, with another upbringing or another friendship group, exposed to a different technology, who would I have been? What could I have done? What irreversible and deeply regrettable choices might I have made?

The Bible tells us no one is righteous, not even one. ‘All have sinned and fallen short.’

And yet, it also tells us that nothing can separate us from the love of God.

We believe in a God who chose to become one of us and live among us in the person of Jesus Christ. A man who laughed, cried, experienced friendship and betrayal, joy and pain, His mother’s embrace, the cruelty of a Roman execution. A human being who managed to utter the words as He was being executed, ‘Father forgive them because they don’t know what they are doing.’

How can we show compassion to a killer?

For us the answer is this: ‘we love because he first loved us’. And we forgive because he first forgave us. This is our call at Prison Fellowship – we can show compassion because we have been shown compassion.

This compassion does not mean we write off the severity or harm of destructive behaviour.

We know there is a harder day to come for our Sycamore Tree group. A victim will come and talk about their experience of losing a daughter, or a son, or a brother, of losing security and a future. We know it will be hard. We also know that for many of them this is the first time they have faced the consequences of their actions. It takes enormous courage, strength and humility to do this. They have to dig deep.

We walk with them through that painful moment, with care and gentleness. For many, these are firsts, too.

Tim Keller said that forgiveness hurts, in fact it can feel like death. But, in that death is resurrection. Our brave victims who go into prisons to speak to people know this. They shake hands with those who have committed crimes. They show grace. They show love.

We have seen young men like Jamie turn their lives around, and where they have they have taken many with them in their wake.

The power of rehabilitation isn’t just the end of destructive behaviour for one individual, it’s a new trajectory for them and those around them – their family and friends, their cell mates and those with whom they share a wing.

Forgiveness is the foundation for grace; grace leads to love; love to hope – and hope is the catalyst for the transformation of the soul.

‘We are all a bit guilty,’ says Jamie’s mum in episode 4.

She’s right. And we must own it. We must be brave enough to face who we have become as a society. We must have the courage to address our individual and cultural behaviours that contribute to deaths like that of Katie.

We will do this in the knowledge that we have a God who loves us with a father’s love. Who wants to see the rehabilitation and reconciliation of his children. 

When Jamie cries out to the investigating psychologist as she leaves, ‘Do you like me?’ we know the depth of the pain in that question. The reality of ‘Will I ever be loved again?’ ‘Will I ever know what that feels like again?’ is sinking in.

What do we do with them? They are us, and we follow our Father’s example.

The answer we can and do give with confidence is this: child, you are loved beyond your imagination.

And no one is beyond hope.