Conversion and the Rehabilitation of the Penal System: A Theological Rereading of Criminal Justice
Andrew Skotnicki
Abstract
The contemporary practice of criminal detention is a protracted exercise in needless violence predicated upon two foundational errors. The first is the inability to view those enmeshed in its rubrics and institutions as human beings fully capable of responding to an affirmative accompaniment rather than maltreatment and invasive forms of therapy. The second is a pervasive dualism that erects an illusory barrier between criminal detainees and those empowered to supervise, punish, and/or rehabilitate them. This book maintains that the criminal justice system can only be “rehabilitated” by elimin ... More
The contemporary practice of criminal detention is a protracted exercise in needless violence predicated upon two foundational errors. The first is the inability to view those enmeshed in its rubrics and institutions as human beings fully capable of responding to an affirmative accompaniment rather than maltreatment and invasive forms of therapy. The second is a pervasive dualism that erects an illusory barrier between criminal detainees and those empowered to supervise, punish, and/or rehabilitate them. This book maintains that the criminal justice system can only be “rehabilitated” by eliminating punishment and policies based upon deterrence, rehabilitation, and the hyper-incapacitation of the urban poor in favor of the original justification for the practice of confinement: conversion. The latter will be presented as a progressive expansion of one’s intellectual, moral, and spiritual horizons that is self-generated and leads to the goal of including everyone and everything in a careful embrace.
Keywords:
conversion,
morality,
imprisonment,
violence,
dualism
Bibliographic Information
| Print publication date: 2019 |
Print ISBN-13: 9780190880835 |
| Published to Oxford Scholarship Online: March 2019 |
DOI:10.1093/oso/9780190880835.001.0001 |
