Some final thoughts on penology

I will stop here on the subject of penology, but there is more that could be said. Let me just make a couple of final comments.

Yes, I do believe in incarceration for some. There really truly are evil people who need to be taken away from society, who make society significantly less safe by being out and about. There are also some truly damaged people who are, perhaps, best served by being kept in preventative detention. I am not naïve; I have been involved in prison ministry in my past, and there are people that are so truly evil that it is a good thing that there were bars between them and me. However, I also believe that there are many crimes that are best dealt with by tactics such as diversion programs, restitution programs, forced work programs, etc., etc., programs that do not require the use of high amounts of taxpayer monies but fulfill the goal of keeping society safe and of being a negative reinforcement to various types of criminals, particularly those involved in non-violent crimes. Why do white-collar criminals in the USA end up in minimum-security prisons with few restrictions? Frankly because with many of them you can put up one strand of barbed wire fence, tell them to stay inside and they will with little oversight. We can creatively deal with many crimes, as do other countries, without loss of safety in our society, simply by using alternative means of punishment. And by doing that, we will also keep the “lesser” criminals away from the schooling of the major criminals.

I have not dealt with the death penalty because those who qualify for the death penalty are another type of prisoner altogether, and I did not wish to get drawn off into that debate. Over 80% of the prisoners in the USA do not qualify for the death penalty. It is those that I wanted to talk about.

I will remind all of us that our system of common law does have mercy built into it. That is why we give judges discretion. That is also why people such as governors and the President are given the right to pardon people outright. I find it ironic that we, who preach about the woman caught in adultery, are often among the first to jump up screaming that the governor or the President was wrong to pardon this person or that person. And, usually, the claim is either that the people have not served their full sentence and thus this is an insult to the victims, or we say that they are not deserving of a pardon. May I remind you that the woman caught in adultery was a death-penalty case, as was St. Paul, the murderer, and neither served sentence nor was deserving of a pardon? This does not mean that the governors or the Presidents are necessarily right on each and every pardon, nor are judges always right when they give some mercy, but it is to point out that even if they are wrong, so what? Is our claim as Christians that each and every one of us must be punished to the full for each and every crime we have committed? As our Lord Jesus said, yes, please do cast the first stone and let’s see where you end up! Do you realize that in Jesus’ most clearly recorded act of penology he PARDONED the criminal because she obviously had been rehabilitated by Him?

Where in either Old Testament or New Testament does it say that each and every person must be punished to the full for each and every crime they have committed? Rather, for every Aiken there is a King David. Even for Adam and Eve, there was a Redeemer. Is it not the Old Testament that couples doing justice with loving mercy? Was not the kinsman-redeemer the person who gave mercy to someone who had lost their land, even if they had lost it through shoddy business dealings? Job takes that theme of the kinsman-redeemer and says, “For I know that my redeemer liveth, and that he shall stand at the latter day upon the earth: and though after my skin worms destroy this body, yet in my flesh shall I see God: whom I shall see for myself, and mine eyes shall behold, and not another; though my reins be consumed within me.” The theme of the kinsman-redeemer, who gives mercy even to someone underserving becomes the title of Our Lord Jesus Christ, our Redeemer. And I know that you are going to be hard-pressed to find a statement in the New Testament of full punishment for each and everyone for each and every crime!

Let me be clear, I am not saying that we ought not to punish. That would be silly, immature, dangerous, unwise, destructive, etc., and is neither what the Old Testament nor the New Testament says. But, I am saying that somehow we have lost the qualities of appropriate balance in our sentencing and of mercy  in our culture.

If there were to be a purgatory, I fear that many Christians in this country would be horrified at the sentences they would receive from the Lord our God in order to expiate each and every iota of their sin. And, yet, if there were to be a purgatory, I can just hear the Lord saying to many Christians in this country that in the same measure they poured it out upon those whom they called criminals so shall it be poured out on them. Me, I think I will stick with mercy and appropriate and wise use of various sentencing tactics. (And, no, I do not believe in purgatory.)