Good Punishment?: Christian Moral Practice and U.S. ImprisonmentMore than 2 million persons occupy America's prisons and jails today -- the highest per capita incarceration rate in U.S. history. With just 6 percent of the world's population, the United States now holds 25 percent of its prisoners. At what social cost do we build and fill more prisons? In Good Punishment? James Samuel Logan critiques the American obsession with imprisonment as punishment, calling it "retributive degradation" of the incarcerated. His analysis draws on both salient empirical data and material from a variety of disciplines -- social history, anthropology, law and penal theory, philosophy of religion -- as he uncovers the devastating social consequences (both direct and collateral) of imprisonment on such a large, unprecedented scale. A distinctive contribution of this book lies in its development of a Christian social ethics of "good punishment" embodied as a politics of "healing memories" and "ontological intimacy." Logan earnestly explores how Christians can best engage with the real-life issues and concerns surrounding the American practice of imprisonment. |
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African African American alienation American Angela Angela Y argues Black males capital punishment Chesney-Lind Chris Christ Christian ethics church collateral social consequences communities contemporary context convicted correctional Crime and Punishment cultural Davis Death Penalty Democracy drug economic ethics of punishment Evangelium Vitae example forgiveness Gender God’s Harsh Justice Hauerwas's healing memories human imprisonment practices incarceration individual inmates institutions Jeffrey Stout Jesus John Howard Yoder large-scale imprisonment liberal lives Mauer ment moral murder nation nonviolent offenders ontological intimacy peaceable penal Penitence percent philosopher politics of healing politics of ontological prison system prison-industrial complex prisons and jails private prison problem Punishing Christians Quoted in Hauerwas Race racial racism rape reconciliation reform rehabilitation restorative justice retributive degradation Scared Straight sentencing society at large society’s Stanley Hauerwas story theological tian tion tradition U.S. prison understanding University Press vengeance violence War on Drugs White Whitman women Yoder York Zehr