Rethinking God, Justice, and Treatment of Offenders

Abstract

SUMMARY The connection between religious belief, in particular how people in the West have viewed God, and retributive criminal justice practices runs deep. God has been understood to be the basis for the practices of human beings inflicting severe punitive pain upon other human beings judged guilty of violating community standards. God is understood, most of all, to be “holy” (that is, unable to countenance sin of any kind). God's holiness “forces” God to act punitively-and justifies God's agents (either in the church or in society) also acting punitively. This retributive theology dominated Western worldviews in the Middle Ages and formed the bases for criminal justice practices which began to be institutionalized during that time. However, a closer look at the founding document of the Christian tradition, the Bible, challenges such retributive theology. Biblical understandings of justice point more in the direction of restorative than retributive justice. Biblically, “justice” has to do not so much with punishment as with healing, restoring relationships, and fostering the well-being of the entire community. Present-day alternatives to retributive criminal justice are emerging which reflect the general thrust of biblical justice. These include victim-offender reconciliation programs, sentencing circles, and family group conferences. The success of such programs provides encouragement for those who hope for criminal justice practices which effect healing more than simply punitive pain.

Cite this work

No public copy is stored for this record, so only the metadata is cited.

Stored only when both papers are in the corpus — 19 citations exist upstream.

Papers that cite the same references — the relational fallback while embeddings are still backfilling.