Customer Reviews

Good Punishment?: Christian Moral Practice and U.S. Imprisonment

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This is an important and timely book. Logan, a Mennonite who teaches at a Quaker school (Earlham College in Indiana) has provided a clear and devastating critique of the American criminal (in)justice system. In careful, even understated prose, he details layer upon layer of social devastation-to the convicts who are treated like pieces of trash, to the victims of crime who are shunted aside by the system, and to the broader society that finds more and more resources being poured into a more and more ineffective (even counter-productive) prison-industrial complex. A strong sense of humanity, grounded in his Christian faith, underlies Logan's analysis.

By far the strongest part of the book is the first half, where Logan lays out the problems. He is quite persuasive in helping us see the social consequences of our society's linking the violence of retributive philosophies and practices that takes already damaged people (convicted criminals) and damages them even further through dehumanizing punitive practices together with a powerful trend toward privatizing prisons and making them serve corporations' lust for profits.

Logan writes this book as a theologian. He seeks to develop a case for what he calls "good punishment" where violations are taken seriously but become an occasion for seeking to heal the damage done rather than an occasion to unleash the forces of vengeance and (now) capitalist extraction of profits from human misery. He draws especially on the work of the pacifist Methodist theological ethicist Stanley Hauerwas in this constructive effort.

I greatly appreciate Logan's attempt to respond to this terrible crisis theologically. Indeed, the churches and the larger society are in dire need of such responses. The Dutch law professor, Herman Bianchi, makes the evocative statement that since the western theological tradition has so much responsibility for the crises we find ourselves in, one important step in a positive direction would be to apply some "homeopathic" therapy where we draw on this same tradition for resources that might heal the damage it has done. Logan's work is an important effort at such homeopathic therapy.

It ought to be a good book, from the reviews. I just ordered it from Biblio dot com because I joined the boycott of Amazon due to its blocking of WikiLeaks account. Another source is AbeBooks dot com, not as good as Biblio but keep it in mind. Try Biblio dot com too. Same service, give money go the people!