Prison Reform

Kalief Browder and Black Suicide

Why the suicide rate of black children is on the rise. Continue Reading »

9 Jun 2015

Letters

BARTH'S LEGACY I am grateful to Phillip Cary for his admirable review of my book Reading Barth with Charity (April). I have only one demurral. I would simply like to enter a plea for greater historical consciousness. After all, it has not yet been fifty years since Barth’s death. It seems . . . . Continue Reading »

1 Jun 2015

Mechanized Justice

by Stephanos Bibas

Justice Through Apologies: Remorse, Reform, and Punishment  by nick smith  cambridge, 413 pages, $33 For decades, American Christians have worried about the dwindling room for religion and religiously inspired morals in public life. The church–state debates in which they engage often focus on . . . . Continue Reading »

1 Apr 2015

The Pope and the Problem of Punishment

by Aaron Taylor

Pope Francis recently gave a speech to the International Association of Penal Law advocating for the improvement of prison conditions and reiterating pleas made by his predecessors John Paul II and Benedict XVI for an end to the death penalty. Continue Reading »

5 Nov 2014

Remember the Prisoners

by Peter J. Leithart

“Nobody criticizes us. We have no enemies,” Warden Burl Cain tells me as the servers load our plates with Big Lou’s brisket, ribs, chicken, grits-n-shrimp casserole, and baked beans. “I have the number for the head of the local ACLU on my cell phone, and she has my number on hers.” Continue Reading »

12 Sep 2014

Prison, Purgatory, and Heaven

by Stephen H. Webb

Several years of prison ministry have convinced me that there are substantial parallels between what we think about incarceration and how we understand salvation. After all, Christians believe that we are imprisoned by sin and that, rather than trying to escape our condition, we need to undergo a personal transformation before we can enter into the full presence of God. True, sin is universal in a way that jail is not. Nonetheless, crimes against the civil order and rebellion against God overlap in interesting and complicated ways, which makes prisoners among the most conspicuous, though certainly not the most hopeless, examples of humanity’s fallen state. Continue Reading »

2 Sep 2014

CPAC Behind Bars

by John Murdock

A few weeks back, I highlighted the friction between ascendant libertarians and ignored social conservatives at the Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC). After some time to mentally digest that red meat laden all-you-can-eat political buffet, one nutritious morsel still stands out: the . . . . Continue Reading »

1 Apr 2014